Eating after breast cancer: Influences on women's actions

Objective: To explore women's dietary actions after a breast cancer diagnosis and the factors influencing those actions. Design: Individual interviews exploring women's perceptions. Setting: Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Participants: A culturally diverse convenience sample of women (N = 30) aged 40 to 60 years diagnosed with breast cancer 6 months to 15 years previously. Phenomenon of Interest: Social and personal factors that influence dietary actions. Analysis: Verbatim interview transcripts were coded and themes developed by sorting and summarizing coded transcript segments. Results: Women held a wide range of beliefs concerning the relationship between diet and breast cancer, particularly their own cancer occurrence. Actions were not always consistent with professed beliefs. Some women believed that diet contributes to breast cancer, even their own cancer, yet made no diet changes; others did not believe in such a relationship but did change their diets postdiagnosis. Family support, employment, financial resources, cultural food patterns, and other health concerns were strong influences. Conclusions and Implications: Although beliefs about diet-cancer connections affect actions concerning diet change, the relationship is not consistent. Diet change is also affected by social, cultural, and economic concerns that are at least as important as a woman's beliefs. Nutrient supplements appear to be a common, although perhaps temporary, response to diagnosis. Future research should explore the possibilities for nutrition professionals to help women think critically about the range of influences on their diets.