More importantly, if the reporter had actually talked to more than one expert, she might have learned that there is actually a great deal of controversy over—and very little data on—the relationship between food and cancer risk. Some of the first studies to explore the relationship between breast cancer and foods found that women who ate lots of fruits and vegetables had a decreased risk of breast cancer. But now it appears that it's probably the vegetables that matter, not the fruit, and if they do matter, it's nowhere near to the extent that we thought they might. And while there have been some studies that have found that eating a lot of vegetables might reduce the risk of a breast cancer recurrence, how much you should eat and what the risk reduction would be is far from clear.
It's also not clear where Dr. Wilson's statistics came from. We could find no data whatsoever to support the recommendation of not eating corn. And while there have been some studies conducted on the benefits of the vegetables on Dr. Wilson's list, most have been done in the lab on cells or animals. And we know all too well that what happens in the lab doesn't always happen in human. (We emailed Dr. Wilson about his sources and he said he would supply references, but he never did.)
There have been some observational studies that have explored the relationship between a woman's diet and her breast cancer risk. But the most that studies like these can prove is a correlation. They can't prove causation or provide such a definitive risk reduction statistic. The fact is women who eat lots of fruits and vegetables probably also do many other healthy things and it may be the combination of foods that matters, or the combination of foods plus exercise that makes the difference in breast cancer risk. We just don't know.
The bottom-line: We know very little, really, and it's as easy to find studies that found relationships as it is to find those that did not. For example,
