An umbrella review of the evidence associating diet and cancer risk at 11 anatomical sites
File(s)
Published version
Author(s)
Tsilidis, Konstantinos
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
There is evidence that diet and nutrition are modifiable risk factors for several cancers, but associations may be flawed due to inherent biases. Nutritional epidemiology studies have largely relied on a single assessment of diet using food frequency questionnaires. We conduct an umbrella review of meta-analyses of observational studies to evaluate the strength and validity of the evidence for the association between food/nutrient intake and risk of developing or dying from 11 primary cancers. It is estimated that only few single food/nutrient and cancer associations are supported by strong or highly suggestive meta-analytic evidence, and future similar research is unlikely to change this evidence. Alcohol consumption is positively associated with risk of postmenopausal breast, colorectal, esophageal, head & neck and liver cancer. Consumption of dairy products, milk, calcium and wholegrains are inversely associated with colorectal cancer risk. Coffee consumption is inversely associated with risk of liver cancer and skin basal cell carcinoma.
Date Issued
2021-07-28
Date Acceptance
2021-07-09
Citation
Nature Communications, 2021, 12 (4579), pp.1-10
ISSN
2041-1723
Publisher
Nature Research
Start Page
1
End Page
10
Journal / Book Title
Nature Communications
Volume
12
Issue
4579
Copyright Statement
© The Author(s) 2021. Open Access This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.
License URL
Identifier
https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-021-24861-8
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2021-07-28