The study reviewed here found that eating a lot of trans fats may increase breast cancer risk. Of the 25,000 European women who participated in the study, women who had the highest levels of trans fats in their blood were about twice as likely as women with the lowest trans fat levels to develop breast cancer.
Trans fats (also called trans-saturated fats or trans fatty acids) are formed when liquid vegetable oils go through a process called hydrogenation, which adds hydrogen to the oils to make them solids. These fats are commonly used in processed and fast food such as cookies, crackers, snack foods, fried foods, and pastries. Trans fats are used in food processing because they give foods desirable taste, shape, and texture. Foods made with trans fats also have a longer shelf-life. Solid shortening and stick margarine are common trans fats that you may have in your home.
Though trans fats were developed to replace saturated fats (which can cause heart problems), research has revealed that trans fats also cause health risks. Many local, state, and national health officials are trying to limit or ban trans fats.
Eating a healthy, well-balanced diet that is low in saturated and trans fats and high in fruits and vegetables can benefit your overall health and reduce your risk of breast cancer. Visit the breastcancer.org What Does Healthy Eating Mean? page to read about:
and other nutrition topics.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Trans-fats, which are being phased out of food because they clog arteries, may raise the risk of getting breast cancer, European researchers reported on Friday.
They found that women with the highest blood levels of trans-fats had about twice the risk of breast cancer compared to women with the lowest levels.
"At this stage, we can only recommend limiting the consumption of processed foods, the source of industrially produced trans-fatty acid," the researchers wrote in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
Trans-fats or trans-fatty acids are made in creating artificially hardened fats -- in the process of hydrogenization, for instance.
They were, ironically, meant to be healthful replacements for artery-clogging saturated fats such as butter and lard.
But the process of making vegetable oil behave like butter made it as unhealthful as butter. New York and California have banned trans-fats in restaurant foods. Canada and Britain have considered it and countless food companies have dropped them as an ingredient.
Veronique Chajes of the French national scientific research center at the University of Paris-South and colleagues studied women taking part in a large European cancer trial.
They looked at blood samples collected between 1995 and 1998 from 25,000 women who had volunteered to report on their eating and lifestyle habits and then be followed for years to see if they developed cancer.
They studied 363 women diagnosed with breast cancer, comparing their blood levels of fatty acids with those of women without cancer.
The higher the levels of trans-fatty acids, the more likely a woman was to have cancer, Chajes and colleagues found.
Women with higher levels of omega-3 fatty acids, being studied for their potential benefits to health, were not any less likely to have breast cancer, the researchers found.
Obese women are more likely to develop breast cancer, among other types of cancer, and high-fat diets are also linked with breast cancer.
Trans-fats can be found in cooking fats, baked goods, snacks and a variety of other prepared foods. Omega-3 fatty acids are found in fatty fish such as salmon, walnuts and leafy green vegetables.
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