No dairy for breast cancer survivors

According to a study of 1,893 women, breast cancer survivors who average as little as one serving per day of high-fat dairy foods have a 49 percent higher risk of dying from breast cancer than those who eat little or no high-fat dairy.
 
The research, published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute, is the first to separate out the effects of high- and low-fat dairy on women diagnosed with breast cancer. High-fat dairy is whole milk, cream, and anything made with them such as cheese and ice cream.

Breast cancer survivors who ate one or more servings per day (according to a 120-item questionnaire they answered) also had a 64 percent greater risk of dying from all causes.

The estrogens that reside in milk fat might be the problem, the researchers said Another reason to suspect estrogens rather than fat itself was that eating more saturated fat of all kinds did not raise the women's chances of dying of breast cancer as strongly as high-fat dairy did. That suggests that fat consumption per se is unrelated to breast-cancer mortality: nuts, chocolate, coconut and fats such as those in avocados did not increase the risk.