Extra fibre may help women reduce breast cancer risk

Host - A high-fibre diet is another big thing we always hear about, isn't it? Does that work, does that combat cancer? You read all sorts of different conflicting stories, one day it says that it works, another report says that it doesn't work, you know, these different reports come out from different countries - who do we believe?

Azmina - Well, generally, if you look back, fibre is quite a consistent story. We've always seen good scientific evidence that when you increase fibre you get a reduction in risks of bowel cancer and digestive disorders. Often, high-fibre foods are very bulky so they fill you up and you might end up eating less, so it could help in obesity, it's certainly great in diabetes in terms of blood sugar control. This recent research was conducted at Leeds University and they researched 35,000 women over seven years, so a good long-term study.

Azmina - And what they found was that half the women ate 30g of fibre a day, that's actually quite a lot of fibre - in the UK we're having about 12g, so more than double - and they were able to reduce their risk of breast cancer by half. Now that's staggering and it's one of the very few studies that's shown a direct link between fibre and breast cancer. We knew about fibre and bowel cancer, because that sort of makes sense, you know, your digestion etc, but this is very enlightening and so it just makes you think, look at labels, start thinking, "Where do I get a bit of extra fibre from, what wholegrains can I have? How can I get the kids from a very young age to start thinking brown is sexy?" I wish you could give broccoli as a reward rather than chocolate!

Host - Exactly. But surely that's where the education should start, at school? Because by the time you're 40 or 50 years' old and you're obese, maybe that's too late to do anything about it?

Azmina - I'm not sure if it's too late because you can actually reverse conditions, you can actually prevent late-onset conditions even at those ages. But I absolutely agree, it's got to start from an early age. Yes the school has a responsibility, but I think so do we, as parents, as supporters, the media, advertising, magazines, the food industry, the government. We need to pull together to think about how we can increase healthy eating in the youngsters.