Women can take comfort this week that fat from meat, eggs and dairy produce won't increase their risk of breast cancer. So says a European study of 319,826 women.

According to Eleni Linos from Stanford University Medical Center and Walter Willett from Harvard School of Public Health: “We are now fortunate to have reports from many large cohort studies conducted worldwide, which include well over one million women and many thousands of cases of breast cancer, that are quite consistent in showing no overall relation of meat or dairy products consumed in midlife or later to breast cancer risk." Small exceptions came from increased risk links in post -menopausal women with high intakes of processed meat and in pre-menopausal women with high butter intakes. Still, it doesn't cover other forms of cancer like lung, pancreatic and colorectal cancer.

Which leads me to Reynold Spector of the Skeptical Inquirer. Human nutrition research and practice, according to him, is plagued by pseudoscience and unsupported opinions. This is not an accusation he is directing at the European cancer study. But, he contends, when it comes to dietary pyramids, food supplements, megavitamins, and weight loss regimens,  "Much current advice...is frequently unproven, erroneous, or even harmful and is often based on pseudoscience or derivative incorrect professorial opinion."

His paper is quite a read - that's to say, hard work but worthwhile. If you want persuading and read nothing else, only take a quick look at his table of observation studies above, whose conclusions, he believes, are false.

They're conclusions we're fed regularly by the media.