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Population study: followed a group

Study of 450,111 adults: swapping to less processed food linked to lower cancer risk

Kliemann and colleagues · The Lancet. Planetary health · 2023

Original title: Food processing and cancer risk in Europe: results from the prospective EPIC cohort study.

Under review. A person has not yet checked this summary against the paper. It is written from the PubMed abstract. Until a person checks it, search engines are asked not to list this page.

What the study found

Points to harm

Swapping 10% of ultra-processed foods for minimally processed foods went with lower risk of head and neck cancers (0·80), colon cancer (0·93) and liver cancer (0·73). Swapping processed foods lowered overall cancer risk (0·96).

The study at a glance

Type of study
Population study: followed a group
Who or what was studied
450,111 people · 450,111 adults from 10 European countries followed for cancer
What was tested
Swapping 10% of ultra-processed food for 10% minimally processed food, and cancer at 25 body sites
What it measured
The question itself: death, heart disease, diabetes and cancer
Who has a stake
No stake declared
No competing interests declared; funded by cancer charities.
Journal
The Lancet. Planetary health, 2023
Source
PubMed record 36889863. This page is based on the abstract only.

How much this study counts

  • –Shows a link, not a cause: people chose their own habits, and other differences between them may explain the result.
  • ✓Followed people over time, so habits were recorded before the outcome happened.
  • ✓Large: 450,111 people.
  • ✓Measured the question itself: death, heart disease, diabetes and cancer.
  • ✓No competing interests declared.
  • •Summarized from the PubMed abstract only. The full paper may hold details the abstract leaves out.

✓ Strength– Limit• Note

These points come from fixed rules about the type of study, its size and length, what it measured, and who has a stake. Every study on Digestery gets the same rules.

Where this study sits

Each dot is one on-topic paper on this question. Steps near the top answer the question more directly.

↑ Stronger evidence

  1. Trials in people: death and chronic disease

    2

    1 no difference, 1 harm

  2. Trials in people: other measures

    3

    1 mixed, 1 no direction, 1 harm

  3. Trials in people: lab tests or safety

    1

    1 mixed

  4. Population studies

    17

    1 mixed, 16 harm

    ↑ This study is the ringed dot

  5. Blood levels and genes

    0

    None among the papers we read.

↓ Weaker evidence

  • Points to benefit
  • Mixed
  • No difference
  • No direction
  • Points to harm

How it fits with the other research

The short answer to “Are ultra-processed foods bad for your health?”

Linked to worse health; cause not proven.

Confidence: low. Based on 38 on-topic papers.

Read the full answer

Of the other 16 papers on the same step: 1 mixed, 15 harm. This one found harm. It agrees with most of them.

Other papers on the same step

See all 38 studies on this question

How this page was made

Label

First read of the abstract
Claude Sonnet
Independent second read
Claude Haiku
Differences settled
The two reads agreed on every checked field. Claude Opus 5.5.
Headline
Claude Sonnet, from the checked study record. A script checked its numbers and wording.
Numbers
Checked against the abstract by a script
“How much this study counts”
Fixed rules, the same for every study
Source check by a person
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