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Health

Diet doesn't deter cancer

Breast cancer's return isn't affected, a study shows.

By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published July 18, 2007

CHICAGO - Hopes that a diet low in fat and chock-full of fruits and vegetables could prevent the return of breast cancer were dashed Tuesday by a large, seven-year experiment in more than 3,000 women.

The government study found no benefit from a veggies-and-fruit diet over the U.S. recommended servings of five fruits and vegetables a day - more than most Americans get.

Researchers noted that none of the breast cancer survivors lost weight on either diet. That led some experts to suggest that weight loss and exercise should be the next frontier for cancer prevention research. The study appears in today's Journal of the American Medical Association.

"It sends us back to the drawing board," said Susan Gapstur of Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, who co-wrote an accompanying editorial in the journal.

For now, the message for the 2.4-million breast cancer survivors in the United States is that they don't need to go overboard on veggies, researchers said.

The women studied had been successfully treated for early-stage breast cancer. Their average age was 53 when the research began.

A group of 1,537 women were randomly assigned to a daily diet that included five vegetable servings, three fruit servings, 16 ounces of vegetable juice and 30 grams of fiber. Another group, 1,551 women, were assigned to get educational materials about the importance of eating five servings of fruits and vegetables a day.

The cancer returned in about the same proportion, 17 percent, of women in both groups.

[Last modified July 18, 2007, 01:53:02]