For years, the common assumption has been simple: eating less fat may help lower cancer risk. New research suggests the picture is much more complicated.
Scientists report that when it comes to pancreatic cancer, the specific type of fat in the diet may be more important than the total amount consumed.
The findings, published in Cancer Discovery, a journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, indicate that different fats can have dramatically different effects on cancer development.
"It's really the type of fat that you're consuming, not just total fat content," says Christian Felipe Ruiz, PhD, an associate research scientist in Yale School of Medicine's Department of Genetics and lead author of the study. "Depending on the type of fat that you consume, it can go completely different ways. We found that some fats promote cancer, as we would expect, while other fats are really good at suppressing cancer."
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