April 7, 2003
NUTRITION NEWS FOCUS
"Nutrition news is important.  We help you understand it!"

Today's Topic: Animal Protein and Breast Cancer

Many women are afraid that consumption of meat, eggs, and other animal
protein contributes to the risk of breast cancer because of studies
that have analyzed entire populations and case-control studies.  The
latter compare women who have been diagnosed with breast cancer with
those who have not.  This type of study suffers from recall bias -
that is, women who have recently been told they have cancer remember
their diets differently from those without that diagnosis.  To get
around this problem, groups of healthy people are questioned about
their diets and then followed for many years.

A new report from the Nurses' Health Study finds that there is no
relationship between eating red meat, fish, poultry, processed meats,
or eggs during mid-life or later and subsequent risk of breast cancer.
Almost 89,000 healthy, middle-aged women were followed for 18 years,
five assessments of diet were made during that time, and over 4,100
cases of breast cancer were analyzed.  The study appeared in the
March 20, 2003 International Journal of Cancer.
< http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/abstract/102522426/START >

HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW: Over the years of the survey,
women ate less red meat and eggs but more poultry and fish.  But no
clear trend for any food was identified.  It is possible that
measurement error of the diet led to a lack of association.  All diet
studies can be criticized for this problem.  Even when people try to
be accurate, there is about a 25 percent error in reporting of
intakes.

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Rob