Nutritionists challenge writer's anti-dairy line

By MARTIN JOHNSTON

The theory of British researcher Professor Jane Plant that shunning milk can help beat breast cancer has earned a sour reception from New Zealand's health and nutrition community.

Professor Plant says she fought off recurrent breast cancer by giving up eating and drinking all dairy products in 1993.

The Nutrition Foundation, the Cancer Society and the dairy industry say her message is dangerous because of the health benefits of low-fat dairy products.

The professor claims her diet and lifestyle prescriptions can cure or help to prevent breast and prostate cancer, which each kill more than 10 New Zealanders a week.

Now aged 55, Professor Plant was first diagnosed with breast cancer in 1987.

She said in Auckland during a tour to lecture and promote her book Your Life in Your Hands that she underwent a radical mastectomy, radiotherapy, had her ovaries irradiated and was receiving chemotherapy at the time she gave up dairy products.

Told her condition was terminal, the geochemist, who researches links between the environment and health, was struck by statistics on China's low rate of breast cancer, which she linked to low consumption of dairy products in the Chinese diet.

She reviewed international research and concluded that there was compelling evidence of a link between dairy food consumption and breast and prostate cancers. She looked at growth hormones in milk that have been found to promote cell division and stated in her book that "cancer is uncontrolled cell division."

Asked by the Herald whether any studies contradicted her theory, she said "the odd paper says dairy is protective," but was sceptical of them because she could not discover who had funded them.

She said 63 other women with breast cancer had been helped by following her dietary and lifestyle advice in addition to conventional medicine.

New Zealanders each drink on average 92 litres of milk a year, but consumption is declining.

Cancer Society dietitian Belinda McLean said the evidence on dairy products and breast cancer was inconsistent, meaning it was impossible to make a judgment.

"There's not enough evidence to convince us that women should be advised not to include dairy products. The evidence in favour of them in terms of preventing osteoporosis [a bone-weakening disease] is much stronger.

"Women are quite receptive to the message about dairy products because there's a lot of anti-dairy mythology, probably [because of] people thinking they are fattening."

Massey University nutrition lecturer Professor John Birkbeck said there was some evidence linking saturated fats with breast and prostate cancer but none he knew of that had found abstaining from dairy foods could cure cancer.

The low breast-cancer rate among Chinese could be explained by their higher intake of soy foods.

He said the synthetic bovine growth hormone scrutinised by Professor Plant and permitted in the United States dairy industry was not employed here.

But Professor Plant said that the naturally occurring growth factor the hormone released in cow's milk was present in rising quantities despite use of the synthetic version of the hormone because of selective breeding for higher milk output.