Researchers claim red meat ‘linked’ to breast cancer

Substituting red meat with legumes – such as peas, beans and lentils – nuts, poultry, and fish could reduce the risk, researchers from the United States claim.

Studies have previously found no significant link between consumption of red meat and breast cancer, but the team said that most previous research has been based on diet during mid and later life.

Instead they decided to assess the dietary habits of 89,000 premenopausal women aged 26 to 43 in 1991.

Their study, published today on bmj.com, assessed the women’s adolescent food intake.

In the 20-year follow-up period, medical records identified 2,830 cases of breast cancer.

The researchers estimated that for each step-by-step increase in the women’s consumption of red meat, there was a step-by-step increase in the risk of getting breast cancer.

Higher intake of red meat was associated with a 22 per cent increased risk of breast cancer overall.

And each additional serving per day of red meat was associated with a 13 per cent increase in risk of breast cancer, they said.

Substituting one serving of red meat each day of combined legumes, nuts, poultry, and fish was associated with a 14 per cent lower risk of breast cancer, they said.

But Prof Valerie Beral, director of the Cancer Epidemiology Unit at Oxford University, said: “Dozens and dozens of studies have looked at breast cancer risk associated with some aspect of diet. The totality of the available evidence indicates that red meat consumption has little or no effect on breast cancer risk, so results from a single study cannot be considered in isolation.

“Diet is notoriously difficult to measure. The most reliable measure of meat consumption is whether or not people are vegetarian. Vegetarians do not have lower risks of breast cancer than non-vegetarians, further supporting other evidence that meat consumption is unlikely to play a major role in breast cancer.”