Greeks Cook Up Lower Cancer Risk : Health: A new study of Mediterranean women finds that olive oil in the diet may greatly reduce the risk of breast cancer.

Scientists have long been aware that Mediterranean women develop breast cancer at as little as half the rate of American women. Now they say the reason may be the use of olive oil.

A new study of women in Greece “gives additional momentum” to findings in animal tests that olive oil, alone among fat types, helps protect against breast cancer, said Dr. Dimitrios Trichopoulos, an epidemiologist at the Harvard School of Public Health and co-author of the study published in this week’s Journal of the National Cancer Institute.

Trichopoulos cautioned that the study is not conclusive. “We should be a little more careful in advising women what to do unless we are first absolutely convinced,” he said in an interview Tuesday. “We are not at that stage yet.”

But, he said, the findings provide “an explanation for the paradox that Mediterranean women consume plenty of fats, and yet they have only 50% or 60% of the risk of breast cancer, compared with other women.”

To clarify that some women who got cancer did not eat olive oil every day, the researchers analyzed questionnaires administered to 820 women with newly diagnosed breast cancer and 1,548 cancer-free women whose age and area of residence paralleled those of the women with the disease.

All the women were in Greece, where olive oil is widely used in cooking.

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The researchers found that women who consumed olive oil more than once a day had a 25% lower risk of cancer when compared to women who ate olive oil less frequently.

Trichopoulos said part of the reason the monounsaturated olive oil is better for the body is that it is less easily oxidized than polyunsaturated fats and contains plenty of antioxidant vitamins and other components, including Vitamin E.

He was quick to add:

“We don’t know whether this factor or another, as yet-unidentified factor, is essential.”

The analysis said the data came from one of the largest studies to have examined the role of diet in the cause and origins of breast cancer.

A number of studies, including the new one, show that vegetables and fruits protect from cancer of various types.

“Rather than feeling hopeless against these cancers, at least we do know vegetables and fruits in this order and vegetables prepared in olive oil may actually provide an easy and rather pleasant way of reducing risk,” Trichopoulos said.

According to the Greek study, vegetable consumption statistically reduced breast cancer risk by 12% and fruits by 8%.

Breast cancer is a major and rising problem around the world and particularly in the United States, where one in 10 women can expect to develop the disease late in life.

“There are very few things a woman can actually do to reduce her risk,” Trichopoulos said. “To be able to point out that there may be a dietary regime that is associated with reduced risk, assuming this is further confirmed, makes sense.”