US scientists have discovered that eating as little as a quarter of a grapefruit a day could raise the risk of developing breast cancer by 30%.

It's believed that the fruit increases the oestrogen levels in the blood, the hormone has long been associated with breast cancer.

The study was conducted by universities of Southerb California in LA and Hawaii studied more than 50,000 women who were post-menopausal including 1,657 suffering with breast cancer.

For the study the women filled in a questionnaire which asked how ofen they ate the fruit and the size of their portions.

The findings showed that those women who ate a quarte of a grapefruit a day were at a greater risk than those women who didn't eat the fruit at all.

Dr Joanne Lunn, a nutrition scientist from the British Nitrition Foundation said: "This is an interesting study of a large group of post-menopausal women whose diet and healthhave been followed for many years.

"However, this study is simply a piece of the jigsaw that will eventually help us to understand how our diets affect our health.

"Although we are beginning to get a better awareness of how our diets can modify the risk of diseases such as cancer, we are still a long way from identifying particular foods that might specifically increase or decrease risk."

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