Research
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Obesity-mediated pathways account for approximately 16% of the diet-associated cancer burden, linking dietary factors like sugar-sweetened beverages and low fruit intake to cancer via BMI increases.
Maintaining a healthy weight through diet can reduce cancer risk via obesity-mediated pathways. Focus on reducing sugar-sweetened beverages and increasing fruit intake, which are key drivers of this specific risk pathway.
GoodQualifiesHIGH confidence
Of the diet-associated cancer cases, 67 488 (95% UI ¼ 63 583 to 70 978) and 4.4% (95% UI ¼ 4.2% to 4.6%) were attributed to direct associations with suboptimal diet, and 12 589 (95% UI ¼ 12 156 to 13 038) and 0.82% (95% UI ¼ 0.79% to 0.85%) were attributed to BMI-mediated associations
Why this rating
Uses pooled analysis from prospective cohort studies for diet-BMI effects and meta-analyses for BMI-cancer risks.
Source
Preventable Cancer Burden Associated With Poor Diet in the United States
Fang Fang Zhang et al. · JNCI Cancer Spectrum · 2019
DOI 10.1093/jncics/pkz034
cohortCited 161×
Read the paper DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10
More from this paper
- Suboptimal dietary intake (specifically low whole grains, low dairy, and high processed meats) is directly associated with approximately 80,110 new cancer cases annually in US adults, representing 5.2% of all invasive cancers.Good
- Insufficient whole grain intake is the single largest dietary contributor to preventable cancer cases, followed by low dairy intake and high processed meat consumption.Good
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