While a diet emphasizing vegetables and fruit and de-emphasizing alcohol, red meat and omega-3 fats may reduce the likelihood of breast cancer or recurrence compared to the typical U.S. diet, simply following these rules will not maximize the chemopreventive potential of your diet. Tailoring your diet to your individual circumstances and breast cancer subtype will increase the diet's potential benefits. This web page is designed to enable you to customize your diet using the information in the Food for Breast Cancer web site. The overall goal is to bathe your normal cells with nutrients that promote healthy growth and cell division. Any new breast cancer cells that do arise are to find themselves in an environment that promotes their death and inhibits their proliferation and migration.
A word about enjoying your food, food variety, and supplements
Before outlining a strategy to develop a customized diet, we would like to say a few words about food and supplements. It is important to enjoy your food because what you eat and drink counts. The idea is to replace the elements of your current diet that promote breast cancer (see foods to avoid) with foods that prevent it (recommended foods) or are neutral. Adding beneficial foods to an unhealthy diet is not likely to make as much difference as an overhaul of your diet which substantially eliminates harmful foods. This can only happen if you enjoy what you eat. For example, if you do not like broccoli, do not eat it. But maybe you might enjoy broccoli sprouts, kale or watercress, which have many of the same chemopreventive characteristics.
Several studies have found that consuming a wide variety of foods is more beneficial in preventing breast cancer than consuming a limited selection. There are synergistic actions between foods, most of which may remain to be discovered. For example, the combination of mushrooms and green tea appears to be more chemopreventive than consuming either alone. Also, simultaneously consuming olive oil and orange vegetables increases the bioavailability of the beta-carotene in the vegetables.
Vitamins and supplements can make sense for deficiency states. For example, it appears to be difficult for most of us to get enough vitamin D through exposure to sunshine and in the diet. Adequate vitamin D is important for breast cancer chemoprevention. Supplementation with vitamin D has been found to be safe at dosages required to bring most women up to optimal levels. Similarly, taking fish oil could benefit those who wish to increase their ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fats, although note that taking fish oil is not recommended during chemotherapy.
However, it has been found that cancer can be promoted by large doses of some compounds that are chemopreventive when consumed in foods. Famous examples are vitamin A and vitamin C. Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) may be another example. This is one reason why we tend to de-emphasize supplements. Often there is a U-shaped curve in which both low and high levels of a given micronutrient promotes cancer and we simply do not have enough information to determine the dosage that aligns with the cancer-preventive sweet spot at the bottom of the curve. It is not that we do not understand the attraction of genistein, DIM, ellagic acid, resveratrol, etc. However, based on the available evidence, consuming micronutrients in pill form whose safety and effective dosage have not been established is as likely to be harmful as helpful. Nor do we believe that diet alone is able to effectively treat breast cancer (please see our articles on food as cancer cure and the raw food diet).
How to design your anti-cancer diet
Your diet should depend on whether you are at high risk for breast cancer (but not diagnosed with the disease), in active treatment, or a breast cancer survivor. Each of these situations is addressed below.
High risk, but not diagnosed with breast cancer
Women at high risk for breast cancer should use the recommended, avoid and alphabetical food lists to select their foods. The goal is to consume a wide variety of chemopreventive foods while limiting cancer-promoting foods such as processed meat. While many breast cancer risk factors (such as early puberty or being tall) cannot be influenced by diet in adulthood, some risk factors can be. The links below are to web pages that provide detailed information and food lists for some high-risk circumstances:
A word about enjoying your food, food variety, and supplements
Before outlining a strategy to develop a customized diet, we would like to say a few words about food and supplements. It is important to enjoy your food because what you eat and drink counts. The idea is to replace the elements of your current diet that promote breast cancer (see foods to avoid) with foods that prevent it (recommended foods) or are neutral. Adding beneficial foods to an unhealthy diet is not likely to make as much difference as an overhaul of your diet which substantially eliminates harmful foods. This can only happen if you enjoy what you eat. For example, if you do not like broccoli, do not eat it. But maybe you might enjoy broccoli sprouts, kale or watercress, which have many of the same chemopreventive characteristics.
Several studies have found that consuming a wide variety of foods is more beneficial in preventing breast cancer than consuming a limited selection. There are synergistic actions between foods, most of which may remain to be discovered. For example, the combination of mushrooms and green tea appears to be more chemopreventive than consuming either alone. Also, simultaneously consuming olive oil and orange vegetables increases the bioavailability of the beta-carotene in the vegetables.
Vitamins and supplements can make sense for deficiency states. For example, it appears to be difficult for most of us to get enough vitamin D through exposure to sunshine and in the diet. Adequate vitamin D is important for breast cancer chemoprevention. Supplementation with vitamin D has been found to be safe at dosages required to bring most women up to optimal levels. Similarly, taking fish oil could benefit those who wish to increase their ratio of omega-3 to omega-6 fats, although note that taking fish oil is not recommended during chemotherapy.
However, it has been found that cancer can be promoted by large doses of some compounds that are chemopreventive when consumed in foods. Famous examples are vitamin A and vitamin C. Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) may be another example. This is one reason why we tend to de-emphasize supplements. Often there is a U-shaped curve in which both low and high levels of a given micronutrient promotes cancer and we simply do not have enough information to determine the dosage that aligns with the cancer-preventive sweet spot at the bottom of the curve. It is not that we do not understand the attraction of genistein, DIM, ellagic acid, resveratrol, etc. However, based on the available evidence, consuming micronutrients in pill form whose safety and effective dosage have not been established is as likely to be harmful as helpful. Nor do we believe that diet alone is able to effectively treat breast cancer (please see our articles on food as cancer cure and the raw food diet).
How to design your anti-cancer diet
Your diet should depend on whether you are at high risk for breast cancer (but not diagnosed with the disease), in active treatment, or a breast cancer survivor. Each of these situations is addressed below.
High risk, but not diagnosed with breast cancer
Women at high risk for breast cancer should use the recommended, avoid and alphabetical food lists to select their foods. The goal is to consume a wide variety of chemopreventive foods while limiting cancer-promoting foods such as processed meat. While many breast cancer risk factors (such as early puberty or being tall) cannot be influenced by diet in adulthood, some risk factors can be. The links below are to web pages that provide detailed information and food lists for some high-risk circumstances:
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