Researchers also found that consuming enriched pasta, dark bread and cold cereal were especially associated with lower risk, while they observed no similar relation to eating animal sources of protein.
"A better understanding of how dietary vegetable protein intake is associated with ovarian ageing may identify ways for women to modify their risk of early onset menopause and associated health conditions," said Maegan Boutot from the University of Massachusetts Amherst in the US
Participants were asked to report how often they ate a single serving of about 131 foods, beverages and supplements over the previous year, from "never or less than once a month" to "over 6 per day."
Researchers observed that women consuming about 6.5 per cent of their daily calories as vegetable protein had a significant 16 per cent lower risk of early menopause compared to women whose intake was approximately four per cent of calories.
"Though relatively few women in our study consumed very high levels of vegetable protein and our power for analyses of more extreme intake levels was limited, women consuming nine or more per cent of their calories from vegetable protein had a hazard ratio of 0.41," Boutot said.
The study was published in the American Journal of Epidemiology.
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