A wealth of research shows that diet changes offer the potential for reducing breast cancer risk. While fatty foods have received the most scrutiny, there also appears to be a role for alcohol, organochlorine contaminants, and growth factors in dairy products among the contributors to breast cancer risk. Nicholson A. Diet and the prevention and treatment of breast cancer. Although the federal government prints brochures and booklets about how diet changes can help prevent breast cancer, only 20 percent of women were aware of this link in 1991. Levels of awareness were lower among poorer and less educated women.
Many women mistook methods for finding cancer, such as mammography, for methods to prevent it.
The study shows that much greater educational efforts are essential. The prevalence of major illness among omnivores and vegetarians was compared in studies that controlled for other lifestyle factors, and the corresponding potential health care savings were calculated in 1994 dollars. The Medicare savings attributable to vegetarian dietary practices. Am J Clin Nutr, in press. A follow-up survey seven years later showed that overall animal use had dropped substantially.