This just in! Eating a diet rich in “plant-based” food can actually improve your health!
In a groundbreaking revelation, a new study finds that increasing intake of vegetables, fruit, fiber-rich grains, legumes and nuts can actually lower a woman’s risk for some breast tumors. Also great for bone health and avoiding obesity, by the way.
From Reuters: “The findings, from a large, long-running study of U.S. nurses, showed that women with diets high in plant foods — but low in red meat, sodium and processed carbohydrates — tended to have a lower risk of developing certain breast tumors.”
Wait a minute!! Does that mean red meat, sodium and processed carbs are bad for you?! Why hasn’t anyone ever told us this?!
OK, in all seriousness, apparently out of 86,000 women, the ones who closely maintained veggie-rich eating habits resembling the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet (an eating plan for lowering blood pressure), were 20 percent less likely to develop ER-negative breast cancer. Interesting!
However, Teresa T. Fung, an associate professor of nutrition at Simmons College in Boston and the lead researcher on the new study, said exactly how much any one woman might benefit from eating more vegetables — at least as far as breast cancer risk — is unclear.
Helpful.
In general, the average U.S. woman has about a 12 percent chance of developing breast cancer in her lifetime, with ER-positive tumors being most common.
So what have we learned here today? We’ve learned that eating more vegetables and other plant-based food stuffs, may be good for you but it’s unclear how much it may be good for you. We’ve learned that it might prevent cancer for some women, but maybe not necessarily for you.
Stay tuned for upcoming studies telling you that red meat is actually good for you (oh wait– that already happened) and sodium prevents heart disease (oh wait– that already happened, too.)
We just don’t know what to believe anymore!
All of these conflicting studies pretty much boil down to this: You cannot eat anything, ever. But you should eat everything, all the time.
Good luck.
