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0SCIENTIFIC REDUCTIONISM 275CHART 14.3: FAT INTAKE AND BREAST CANCER MORTALITY0FEMALE- NETHERLANDS
.UK • DENMARK
CANADA. • NEW ZEALAND
IN.. RELA D .SWITZERLAND .US
BELGIUM
AUSTRALIA •• SWEDEN
AUSTRIA. •• GERMANY - ITALY NORWAY. FRANCE
.CZECH - PORTUGAL HUNGARY • • FINLAND
CHILE HONG • KONG • POLAND
VENEZ U ELA• ••• • BULGARIA ROMANIA. .SPAIN
PANAMA • YUGOSLAVIA GREECE
PHILIPPINES COLOMBIA. PUERTO RICO
JAPAN. • • TAIWAN • MEXICO
THAILA~ .EL • SALVADOR CEYLON
20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180
Total Dietary Fat Intake (g/day)that the closer a population gets to consuming a plant-based diet, the
lower its risk of breast cancer.
But because the women in the Nurses' Health Study are so far from a
plant-based diet, there is no way to study the diet and breast cancer rela-
tionship originally suggested by the international studies. There are virtu-
ally no nurses that eat a diet typical of the countries at the bottom of this
graph. Make no mistake about it: virtually this entire cohort of nurses
is consuming a high-risk diet. Most people who look at the Nurses'
Health Study miss this flaw because, as Harvard researchers will point
out, there is a wide range of fat intake among the nurses.
The group of nurses who consume the least fat eat 20-25% of their
calories as fat, and the group of nurses who consume the most fat eat
50-55% of their calories as fat. 10 At a casual glance, this range appears to
indicate substantial differences in their diets, but this is just not true, as
almost all women uniformly eat a diet very rich in animal-based foods.
That begs the question, how can their fat intake vary dramatically while
they all uniformly consume large amounts of animal-based foods?
Ever since "low-fat" became synonymous with "healthy," technology
has created many of the same foods that you know and love, without
the fat. You can now have all kinds of low-fat or no-fat dairy products,
low-fat processed meats, low-fat dressings and sauces, low-fat crackers,
low-fat candies and low-fat "junk food," like chips and cookies. In other