Research

Mixed

Higher consumption of ultra-processed foods (UPFs) is associated with an increased risk of overall cancer incidence and cancer-related mortality, with specific significant associations observed for ovarian and breast cancer mortality.

To lower your risk of cancer, try to reduce the proportion of ultra-processed foods in your diet. This includes items like soft drinks, packaged snacks, and reconstituted meat products. Focus on replacing these with unprocessed or minimally processed foods like fruits, vegetables, and whole grains. This change is particularly important for preventing ovarian and breast cancer mortality.

GoodSupportsHIGH confidence
Every 10 percentage points increment in UPF consumption was associated with an increased incidence of overall (hazard ratio, 1.02; 95% CI, 1.01–1.04) and specifically ovarian (1.19; 1.08–1.30) cancer. Furthermore, every 10 percentage points increment in UPF consumption was associated with an increased risk of overall (1.06; 1.03–1.09), ovarian (1.30; 1.13–1.50), and breast (1.16; 1.02–1.32) cancer-related mortality.
Kiara Chang et al. · EClinicalMedicine · 2023

Why this rating

Large-scale prospective cohort (N=197,426) with long follow-up (median 9.8 years) and rigorous adjustment for confounders, though observational design limits causal inference.

Source

Ultra-processed food consumption, cancer risk and cancer mortality: a large-scale prospective analysis within the UK Biobank

Kiara Chang et al. · EClinicalMedicine · 2023

DOI 10.1016/j.eclinm.2023.101840

cohort · n=197426Cited 178×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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