A low-carbohydrate, high-protein diet slowed tumour growth in mice compared with a typical high-carbohydrate Western-style diet.

Gerald Krystal at the BC Cancer Research Centre in Vancouver, Canada, and his colleagues compared the growth of both human and mouse tumours in mice fed diets comprising 8%, 10%, 15% or 55% carbohydrate. All four diets had the same calorie content. At the 10% and 15% levels, mice showed slower tumour growth than animals eating the high-carbohydrate diet, and did not lose weight.

In mice engineered to develop breast cancer, almost half of the animals on the Western diet developed tumours by one year of age, whereas none on the 15%-carb diet did. The authors suggest that for cancers associated with particularly high blood-glucose levels, limiting dietary carbohydrates could aid in treatment.

Cancer Res. 71, 4484–4493 (2011)