Women who adhere to a traditional Mediterranean diet can lower their risk of developing breast cancer post menopause than those with other eating habits, so new research states.
Researchers discovered that amongst 14,800 Greek women whose diets were monitored for a decade, those who maintained the most close regional diet were less likely to be develop breast cancer than those whose dietary habits were the least regional.
The link was picked up only amongst post menopausal women and not amongst younger women.
Within postmenopausal women, those whose diets were most Mediterranean were 22 percent less likely to develop breast cancer during the study than those who had the lowest Mediterranean scores.
The findings suggest a strong link between the diet and lower risk of breast cancer .
The researchers stated that should all their study population have strictly adhered to a traditional Mediterranean diet, around 10 percent of the 127 postmenopausal breast cancers within the group could have been avoided.
This research compliments the nature of other research which links the traditional Mediterranean diet to lower incidences of heart disease and particular cancers, like stomach and colonic cancer .
On the whole, the Mediterranean diet is rich in fresh fruit and veg, nuts, olive oil, whole grains and legumes, and quite low in dairy and red meat .