{"doi":"10.3945/ajcn.112.047142","title":"Is everything we eat associated with cancer? A systematic cookbook review","abstract":"<h4>Background</h4>Nutritional epidemiology is a highly prolific field. Debates on associations of nutrients with disease risk are common in the literature and attract attention in public media.<h4>Objective</h4>We aimed to examine the conclusions, statistical significance, and reproducibility in the literature on associations between specific foods and cancer risk.<h4>Design</h4>We selected 50 common ingredients from random recipes in a cookbook. PubMed queries identified recent studies that evaluated the relation of each ingredient to cancer risk. Information regarding author conclusions and relevant effect estimates were extracted. When >10 articles were found, we focused on the 10 most recent articles.<h4>Results</h4>Forty ingredients (80%) had articles reporting on their cancer risk. Of 264 single-study assessments, 191 (72%) concluded that the tested food was associated with an increased (n = 103) or a decreased (n = 88) risk; 75% of the risk estimates had weak (0.05 > P ≥ 0.001) or no statistical (P > 0.05) significance. Statistically significant results were more likely than nonsignificant findings to be published in the study abstract than in only the full text (P < 0.0001). Meta-analyses (n = 36) presented more conservative results; only 13 (26%) reported an increased (n = 4) or a decreased (n = 9) risk (6 had more than weak statistical support). The median RRs (IQRs) for studies that concluded an increased or a decreased risk were 2.20 (1.60, 3.44) and 0.52 (0.39, 0.66), respectively. The RRs from the meta-analyses were on average null (median: 0.96; IQR: 0.85, 1.10).<h4>Conclusions</h4>Associations with cancer risk or benefits have been claimed for most food ingredients. Many single studies highlight implausibly large effects, even though evidence is weak. Effect sizes shrink in meta-analyses.","journal":"The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition","year":2013,"id":1373,"datarank":0.7593892549540452,"base_score":5.062595033026967,"endowment":5.062595033026967,"self_citation_contribution":0.7593892549540452,"citation_network_contribution":0.0,"self_endowment_contribution":0.7593892549540452,"citer_contribution":0.0,"corpus_percentile":null,"corpus_rank":null,"citation_count":157,"citer_count":0,"citers_with_citation_signal":0,"citers_with_endowment":0,"datacite_reuse_total":0,"is_dataset":false,"is_dataset_confidence":0.1301,"is_oa":false,"file_count":0,"downloads":0,"has_version_chain":false,"published_date":"2013-01-01","fair_score":null,"fair_percentile":null,"algorithm_id":"datarank_citation_only_1hop_v6","ranking_scope":"data_only","authors":[{"id":148,"name":"John P. A. Ioannidis","orcid":"0000-0003-3118-6859","position":2,"is_corresponding":false},{"id":16764,"name":"Jonathan D. Schoenfeld","orcid":"0000-0002-5119-0401","position":0,"is_corresponding":true}],"reference_count":56,"raw_metadata":null,"created_at":"2026-03-01T18:20:47.508186Z","pmid":null,"pmcid":null,"fwci":null,"citation_percentile":null,"influential_citations":0,"oa_status":null,"license":null,"views":0,"total_file_size_bytes":0,"version_count":0,"fair_f":null,"fair_a":null,"fair_i":null,"fair_r":null,"fair_zscore":null,"fair_rationale":null,"fair_model":null,"fair_agent_version":null,"fair_fulltext_source":null,"fair_has_llm":null,"fair_computed_at":null,"clinical_trials":[],"software_tools":[],"db_accessions":[],"linked_datasets":[],"topics":[]}