March 20, 2001
NUTRITION NEWS FOCUS
"Nutrition news is important.  We help you understand
it!"

Today's Topic: Fruits/Veggies and Breast Cancer

There is a strong belief among many scientists that high
intake of
fruits and vegetables will reduce the incidence of
several types of
cancer, including breast cancer.  Unfortunately, beliefs
are not as
convincing as data.  A recent report studied the largest
number of
breast cancer cases in relation to diet.
< <A HREF="http://jama.ama-">http://jama.ama-</A>
assn.org/issues/v285n6/abs/jma00046.html >

Eight studies were combined for analysis of over 7,000
cases of
breast cancer from among 350,000 women from four
countries.  The
conclusion was that consumption of fruits and vegetables
had no
influence on incidence of breast cancer.

HERE'S WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:  The biggest limitation
in the analysis is that each study used different
numbers of
questions about eating fruits and vegetables.  Not
surprisingly, the
study that asked 46 questions found more
fruits/vegetables consumed
than the study that used only nine questions.
Unfortunately, this
report mixed apples and oranges and didn't even leave us
with lemons.
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And Maddy wants to add-
Maybe if we did a study of color preferences we might find that more women
who preferred the color blue had breast cancer than those who favored orange.
And delving deeper we might then discover that those who liked orange ate
more fruits and veggies because many of them are orange but there are no blue
veggies!   EEEEEEEEK! We taxpayers are funding such stupid studies as the one
discussed above?!

Maddy Mason
Hudson Valley, NY