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THE (HINA STUDY
CHART 4.9: PLANT FAT INTAKE AND BREAST CANCER
FEMALE
e NETHERLANDS
e e UKee DENMARK
NEW ZEALAND CANADA
e IRELAND BELGIUM e eeSWITZERLAND
USA
e AUSTRALIA eSWEDEN
NORWAye AUSTRIA e e GERMANY
e FRANCE elTALY
e CZECHOSLOVAKIA
FINLANDe eHUNGARY
e PORTUGAL
POLAND e HONG KONGeeBULGARIA
CHILE ROMANIAe e e VENEZUELA
e epANAMA
e PUERTO RICO YUGOSLAVIA
PHILIPPINEse eCOLOMBIA
TAIWANe e JAPAN e MEXICO
eCEYLON
THAILAND e e EL SALVADOR
10 20 30 40
Vegetable Fat Intake (g/day)
50
eSPAIN
eGREECE
60 70
findings in Chart 4.7. The correlation between dietary fat and animal
protein in rural China was very high, at 70-84%,33 similar to the 93%
seen when comparing different countries.^25
This is important because in China and the international studies, fat
consumption was only an indication of animal-based food consumption.
Thus, the association between fat and breast cancer might really be tell-
ing us that as consumption of animal-based foods goes up, so does breast
cancer. This is not the case in the U.s., where we selectively add or re-
move fat from our foods and our diets. We get as much or more fat from
plant-based food (potato chips, French fries) as we get from processed
animal-based foods (skim milk, lean cuts of meat). China does not tin-
ker with fat in their food supply as we do here.
At this very low range of dietary fat in China, from 6%-24%, I ini-
tially thought that dietary fat would not be linked with diseases like
heart disease or the various cancers, as it is in the West. Some people
in the U.S.-like many of my colleagues in science and medicine-call
a 30% fat diet a "low-fat" diet. Therefore, a low-fat diet containing only