Research

Hormonal

The association between ultra-processed food consumption and colorectal cancer risk is significant in men but not in women, and there is no significant association with prostate, rectal, pancreatic, or central nervous system cancers.

If you are male, be particularly mindful of UPF intake as it is linked to a higher risk of colorectal cancer. For women, the link to colorectal cancer was not statistically significant in this study. There was no significant link found for prostate, rectal, pancreatic, or brain cancers.

GoodQualifiesMEDIUM confidence
Subgroup analyses showed that a positive association between UPFs consumption and colorectal cancer was observed among men (OR = 1.31, 95% CI: 1.15–1.50), whereas no significant association was observed among women (OR = 1.10, 95% CI: 0.94–1.29)... not rectal cancer (OR = 1.18, 95% CI: 0.97–1.43) and prostate cancer (OR = 1.03, 95% CI: 0.93–1.12).
Ying Lian et al. · Frontiers in Nutrition · 2023

Why this rating

Based on subgroup analyses of the same meta-analysis; heterogeneity was moderate to high in some subgroups.

Source

Association between ultra-processed foods and risk of cancer: a systematic review and meta-analysis

Ying Lian et al. · Frontiers in Nutrition · 2023

DOI 10.3389/fnut.2023.1175994

Meta-analysis · 13 studiesCited 37×
Read the paper
DOI resolved against Crossref · corpus check 2026-06-10

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