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Soybeans. We’ve all seen it growing in the fields of Ontario, but soy-rich foods have traditionally been fairly absent from the Western diet. Asian diets, on the other hand, have typically been rich in soy products in the past, and it was always anecdotally noted that women from Asian countries suffered from much milder cases of menopause. The perceived reason behind this? Soy-based foods are rich in isoflavones, a major group of phytoestrogens. But can the addition of soy-rich foods to a woman’s diet help their health in any other important ways? According to Dr. Wei Lu’s research group from the Institute of Preventive Medicine in Shanghai, China, they most certainly can. Breast cancer recurrence and mortality, it would seem, are inversely associated with soy intake.
In research that was recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association (302: 2437 – 2443), Dr. Lu and his colleagues undertook a massive population-based cohort study that followed 5042 female breast cancer survivors in China for a period of 4 years after their diagnosis. The numbers were quite staggering: the 4-year mortality rates were 10.3% versus 7.4% for women in the lowest versus the highest quartiles of soy protein intake, respectively. Similarly, the 4-year recurrence rates were 11.2% versus 8.0% for the same groups. These are not trivial differences.
