Low-fat diet tied to improved breast cancer survival odds, says study

The main goal of the diet experiment was to get women to change their eating habits, not to count calories or lose weight

Breast cancer patients may have a better chance of survival when they follow a low-fat diet heavy in fruits, vegetables and whole grains, a US study suggests.

Researchers studied 19,541 participants in the federally funded Women’s Health Initiative (WHI) who were randomly selected to join a dietary experiment focused on limiting fat intake to 20 per cent of calories. Researchers also looked at data for a control group of 29,294 women in the WHI study who didn’t alter their diets.

By the time the researchers had been tracking half the women for at least 8.5 years, 1,764 participants had been diagnosed with