New research suggests that by eating a Mediterranean diet, women can reduce their risk of womb cancer by as much as 57 percent.

The study, which looked at over 5,000 Italian women, showed those who stuck closely to the Mediterranean diet saw a large reduction in womb cancer risk, Cancer Research U.K. reported.

"Our research shows the impact a healthy balanced diet could have on a woman's risk of developing womb cancer. This adds more weight to our understanding of how our [everyday] choices, like what we eat and how active we are, affect our risk of cancer," said Cristina Bosetti, lead author from the IRCCS-Istituto di Ricerche Farmacologiche.

The participants' adherence to the Mediterranean diet was judged based on nine criteria: "eating lots of vegetables, fruits and nuts, pulses, cereals and potatoes, fish, monounsaturated fats but little meat, milk and other dairy products and moderate alcohol intake."

The researchers found women who stuck closely to the diet by eating between seven and nine of the key food groups lowered their risk of womb cancer by 57 percent; those who ate six of the elements reduced their risk by 46 percent and those who stuck to five reduced their risk by 34 percent.

 "While we know that getting older and being overweight both increase a woman's risk of womb cancer, the idea that a Mediterranean diet could help reduce the risk needs more research. This is partly because this study was based on people remembering what they had eaten in the past," said Julie Sharp, Cancer Research UK's head of health information.

The findings were published in a recent edition of the British Journal of Cancer.