Is there evidence that a high-fiber diet might reduce the risk of breast cancer?
Evidence does exist that implies a beneficial relationship between a high-fiber diet and breast cancer. But the data in some studies are not definitive — quite possibly because the diets of the populations being studied have changed over the past 20 years. This is an important point because the small changes in individual breast cells (proliferative breast disease) that increase the future risk of breast cancer occur among women in their thirties and forties. However, the importance of fiber to health became widely known only 20, or so, years ago. Therefore, women who are now getting breast cancer (those in their fifties and sixties) would not have been eating a high fiber diet at the time that the cell changes first occurred. One Australian study reported that women who eat the most fiber are more likely to have a biopsy diagnosis of nonproliferative breast disease (the type that is not associated with breast cancer) than proliferative breast disease. Would eating more fiber before m
