Organic food consumption associated with lower cancer risk

A newly published study among about 70000 French adult volunteers, examined the association between consumption frequency of organic foods, assessed through a score evaluating the consumption frequency of organic food categories, and cancer risk in the ongoing, large-scale French NutriNet-Santé cohort. After adjustment for confounders (main model), high organic food scores were linearly and negatively associated with the overall risk of cancer (HR for Q4 vs Q1, 0.75; 95% CI, 0.63-0.88; P for trend = .001; absolute risk reduction, 0.6%; HR for a 5-point increase, 0.92; 95% CI, 0.88-0.96). Accounting for other additional dietary factors did not modify the findings. After removing early cases of cancers, the overall association remained significant (HR for Q4 vs Q1, 0.70; 95% CI, 0.56-0.88; P for trend = .004). In conclusion, the results indicate that higher organic food consumption is associated with a reduction in the risk of overall cancer. The researchers observed that a higher organic food score, reflecting a higher frequency of organic food consumption, was associated with a decreased risk of developing non-Hodgkin lymphoma, postmenopausal breast cancer and all lymphomas, while no association was detected for other cancer sites. One possible explanation for the negative association observed herein between organic food frequency and cancer risk is that the prohibition of synthetic pesticides in organic farming leads to a lower frequency or an absence of contamination in organic foods compared with conventional foods and results in significant reductions in pesticide levels in urine. More info: http://bit.ly/2yYQ4OO