Regularly eating sweet foods, including biscuits, ice cream, honey, and chocolate, may increase the risk of breast cancer. Results from a large case control study of more than 5000 Italian women have shown that the effects may be significant: “If real, the excess risk for frequent sweet consumption may account for 12% of breast cancer cases in this Italian population and, therefore, is far from negligible on a public health level,” say researchers in a report in Annals of Oncology (published online on 25 October; http://annonc.oxfordjournals.org, doi: 10.1093/annonc/mdj051)

Although a number of epidemiological and other studies have looked …