WOMEN may be able to protect their daughters against breast cancer by eating more omega-3 fatty acids during pregnancy and breastfeeding, animal studies suggest.
Elaine Hardman at the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana looked at the effects of mothers’ diets on mice predisposed to develop breast cancer. Female mice whose mothers ate a diet rich in omega-6 fatty acids and which ate the same diet themselves after weaning all developed tumours by six months. The diets of most people in western countries are much richer in omega-6 oils than omega-3s.
In mice whose mothers ate a diet richer in…
