Approved research

Diet and its associatio between health and risk of cancer

Lay summary

While there are many hypotheses about the effects of diet on the risk of developing cancer and other diseases, understanding of the health effects of diet is far from complete. We propose to develop a research programme on diet in UK Biobank. In phase 1 we will use data from the 24-hour recall to estimate nutrient intakes. We will also estimate intakes of key foods and nutrients from the dietary touchscreen questions. The 24-hour recall will be used to calibrate these estimated intakes in order to produce more refined estimates of nutrient and food intakes for the whole cohort. These new calibrated estimates for the whole cohort will be returned to UK Biobank. In phase 2 we will compare these new calibrated dietary estimates with health characteristics at recruitment, such as body fatness and blood pressure. In phase 3 we will compare diet with the concentrations of serum or plasma biomarkers for all participants in UK Biobank. In phase 4, in the first instance, when data are available for cancer incidence, we will examine the associations of dietary components with the risk of cancers of the colorectum, breast and prostate when at least 2000 incident cases of these cancers have accrued.