Diet, Cooking Methods, Supplements: Public Health Impact

DCEG research on the effects of diet, cooking methods, and supplements on cancer has made a significant impact in the following areas:

Baskets of fruits and vegetables, including an apple, an orange, an ear of corn, a pear, a tomato, a red bell pepper, and grapes.

The National Toxicology Program’s Report on Carcinogens removed saccharin from their list of potential carcinogens after a DCEG study established the lack of an association between saccharin use and bladder cancer risk (Hoover and Strasser, 1980).

Several DCEG studies indicating that diets high in vegetables and fruits are associated with reduced risk of various cancers (Ziegler et al., 1981, 1986; Winn et al., 1984) influenced public health recommendations.

The Nutrition Intervention Trials in Linxian, China, were the first randomized trials to demonstrate that vitamin/mineral supplementation reduces total mortality and cancer-related deaths in a population with nutritional deficiencies (Blot et al., 1993).

DCEG researchers reported that carcinogenic heterocyclic amines are generated in meat during high-temperature cooking (Sinha et al., 1994, 1995) which led to public health recommendations on cooking practices.

DCEG studies of serum levels of vitamin D in relation to cancer mortality (Freedman et al., 2007) and breast cancer risk (Freedman et al., 2008) provided key evidence to the Institute of Medicine’s 2010 report Dietary Reference Intakes for Calcium and Vitamin D.

In studies of coffee intake, investigators confirmed previous studies showing an inverse association between coffee drinking and mortality and found similar associations in participants with genetic variants conveying both faster and slower caffeine metabolism (Loftfield E, et al. 2018).

Diet/Cooking Methods/Supplements: Full list of article citations

Learn about our current research on diet/cooking methods/supplements