The disclosure that Elizabeth Edwards' breast cancer had returned has raised national awareness of this dreaded disease that will kill nearly 41,000 American women this year.

Fortunately, along with heart disease and other killer diseases, cancer is largely preventable.

The American Cancer Society estimates that more than 60 percent of all cancer deaths could be prevented by regular screenings, exercise and quitting tobacco and meat products.

Yes, meat products.

A Harvard study of more than 90,000 young nurses, published in last November's Archives of Internal Medicine, found that their risk of developing breast cancer was linked directly to meat consumption.

Those who ate the most meat had nearly twice the risk of those who ate meat infrequently.

Two studies published in the July 2003 Journal of the National Cancer Institute and the Lancet reported that consumption of animal fats raised the risk of breast cancer while consumption of vegetable fats did not. A Danish study of 117,000 women in the October 2004 New England Journal of Medicine implicated milk consumption.

The medical evidence should provide women one more incentive to explore the rich variety of meat and dairy alternatives in their supermarket's frozen foods, produce and dairy sections.

Ari Holten

Auburn