Menopause Diet/Foods – How what you eat affects your symptoms
According to a new French study, eating healthy and adopting a vegetarian diet can reduce the risk of developing breast cancer during menopause.
Health is regularly linked to food. Indeed, a recent study has once again pointed to the benefits of certain diets. Conducted by French researchers and published in the journal Current Developments in Nutrition, this work has in fact just shown that having a vegetarian diet rich in healthy foods reduced the risk of breast cancer in postmenopausal women.
Less risk of breast cancer in vegetarians
In detail, the fact of consuming unprocessed plant foods would reduce the risk of breast cancer by 14% in women at menopause. The study highlights in particular that these women mainly consumed fruits, vegetables or even whole grains.
However, the vegetarian diet would not be the only miracle solution. French researchers have indeed shown that women following a vegetarian diet based on fruit juice, white bread, sweet desserts or even processed foods had a 20% higher risk of developing breast cancer.
Sanam Shah, doctoral student at the Center for Research in Epidemiology and Population Health at the University of Paris-Saclay, Inserm, Gustave Roussy and author of this study, explains in particular that “these results underline that the increase in the consumption of healthy plant foods and decreasing consumption of plant foods and less healthy animal foods could help prevent all types of breast cancer.”
To reach this conclusion, the researchers followed 65,000 postmenopausal French women. They mainly focused on the difference between healthy plant-based foods (eg whole grains, fruits, vegetables, nuts, legumes, vegetable oils, tea or coffee) as well as less healthy plant-based foods (eg .: fruit juices, refined grains, potatoes, sugary drinks or desserts).
Given their findings, the team says further research is needed to assess the links between diet and cancer risk in various populations. The objective is to define the causality(ies).
