Evidence Mounts of Animal Fat, Breast Cancer Link By Patricia Reaney LONDON (Reuters) - Evidence of a link between fatty foods and breast cancer mounted on Friday with new research showing that eating high fat milk, cheese, butter and meat may raise the odds of developing the disease. Scientists at Britain's Medical Research Council (MRC) and the charity Cancer Research UK found that women who had eaten more than 90 grams (three ounces) of fat a day had double the risk of breast cancer of those who had had half that amount. The British study, published in The Lancet medical journal, is the second in less than a week linking a high-fat diet with the biggest cancer killer in women. Scientists from Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston and Harvard Medical School reported similar results in a study of more than 90,000 young nurses in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute on Tuesday. "It is emerging evidence of a link," said Dr Sheila Bingham, deputy director of the MRC Dunn Human Nutrition Unit in Cambridge, England who conducted the British study. "The effect seems to be related particularly to saturated fat found mostly in high fat milk, meat and some cereals such as biscuits and cakes," she told Reuters. Bingham and her team studied detailed food diaries of 13,000 older women in Norfolk in eastern England who took part in the European Prospective Investigation of Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) study between 1993-1997. "The women who were eating 90 grams of fat (a day) had a two-fold risk of those who were eating 40 grams," she said. In the U.S. study of women who had not reached the menopause, when breast cancer is more common, the researchers discovered that those in the high-fat intake group had a 33 percent greater risk of the disease than those eating the least fat. Scientists had suspected an association between diet and breast cancer but earlier studies had failed to establish a link. "We believe that in the past, finding links between breast cancer and fat intake has been hampered by imprecise research methods which appear to have obscured a link between the two," said Bingham. July 17, 2003 Source:http://asia.reuters.com Remember we are NOT Doctors and have NO medical training. This site is like an Encylopedia - there are many pages, many links on many topics. Support our work with any size DONATION - see left side of any page - for how to donate. You can help raise awareness of CAM.