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Organic food consumption and the incidence of cancer in the Danish diet, cancer and health cohort

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Abstract

Purpose

Expected beneficial health effects is a major reason why people purchase organically produced foods, although the existing evidence is limited. We investigated if organic food consumption, overall and by specific food groups, is associated with the incidence of cancer.

Methods

We used data from the Danish Diet, Cancer and Health cohort. Organic food consumption was reported for vegetables, fruits, dairy products, eggs, meat, and bread and cereal products. Consumption was summarized into an overall organic food score, evaluated as a continuous variable and in categories specified as never, low, medium, and high consumption. We followed 41,928 participants for a median of 15 years, during which 9,675 first cancer cases were identified in the Danish Cancer Registry. We used cox proportional hazard models adjusted for sociodemographic and lifestyle variables to estimate associations between organic food consumption and cancer incidence.

Results

No association was observed between intakes of organic foods and incidence of overall cancer. When compared to never eating organic foods, overall organic food consumption was associated with a lower incidence of stomach cancer (low: HR = 0.50, 95% CI: 0.32–0.78, medium: HR = 0.50, 95% CI: 0.32–0.80, high: HR = 0.54, 95% CI: 0.27–1.07, p-trend = 0.09), and higher incidence of non-Hodgkin lymphoma (low: HR = 1.45, 95% CI: 1.01–2.10, medium: HR = 1.35, 95% CI: 0.93–1.96, high: HR = 1.97, 95% CI: 1.28–3.04, p-trend = 0.05). Similar patterns were observed for the specific food groups.

Conclusion

Our study does not support an association between organic food consumption and incidence of overall cancer. The scarce existing literature shows conflicting results with risk of specific cancers.

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Data availability

The datasets generated and/or analysed during the current study are not publicly available due to sensitive personal data.

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Acknowledgements

We thank Katja Boll for datamanagement and assistance.

Funding

This study was funded by the Independent Research Fund Denmark (Award number: 0134-00441B) and The Danish Cancer Society Scientific Committee (Award number: R269-A15750).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Danish Cancer Society Research Center, Strandboulevarden 49, 2100, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Julie Louise Munk Andersen, Kirsten Frederiksen, Johnni Hansen, Cecilie Kyrø, Anne Tjønneland, Anja Olsen & Ole Raaschou-Nielsen

  2. Department of Public Health, Aarhus University, Aarhus, Denmark

    Kim Overvad & Anja Olsen

  3. Department of Public Health, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Anne Tjønneland

  4. Department of Environmental Science, Aarhus University, Roskilde, Denmark

    Ole Raaschou-Nielsen

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  1. Julie Louise Munk Andersen
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Contributions

AT and KO were responsible for collection of data. JLMA, KF, JH, AT, AO and OR-N contributed to the design of this study. JLMA performed the statistical data analyses under supervision of KF. JLMA, KF and CK had access to the final dataset for the study, and takes responsibility for the integrity of the dataset and the accuracy of the data analysis. JLMA wrote the first draft of the manuscript with contributions from AO. All authors contributed to interpretation of the results and critical revision of the initial manuscript, and approved the final version.

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Julie Louise Munk Andersen.

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Competing interests

The authors declare that they have no competing interests.

Ethics approval

The study was conducted according to the guidelines in the Declaration of Helsinki and was approved by the regional ethical committees on human studies in Copenhagen and Aarhus, and by the Danish Data Protection Agency.

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Informed consent was obtained from all participants included in the study.

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Informed consent to publish was obtained from all participants included in the study.

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Andersen, J.L.M., Frederiksen, K., Hansen, J. et al. Organic food consumption and the incidence of cancer in the Danish diet, cancer and health cohort. Eur J Epidemiol 38, 59–69 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10654-022-00951-9

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