How an organic diet could reduce cancer risk by 25%

EATING organic food could significantly reduce your chances of getting cancer, a study has found.

Those who ate a diet rich in organic fruit, vegetables, meat and grains had a 25% lower risk of being diagnosed with any cancer within five years.

And the study found that it specifically reduced the risk of getting non-Hodgkin lymphoma (by 73%) and post-menopausal breast cancer (by 21%). Researchers suggest the results are proof some commonly-used pesticides can cause cancer. The study, by Sorbonne University in Paris, looked at the diets of almost 70,000 middle-aged people in France.

Volunteers were asked to provide information on their consumption of 16 organic products including fruit, vegetables, dairy products, meat, fish, eggs, grains and cereals and chocolate.

They were asked how often they ate each of the products with answers ranging from ‘most of the time’ to ‘never’, with points scored depending on their answers. Participants were followed up after around 4.5 years. In that time, 1,340 went onto develop cancer for the first time. Those who ate the most organic food were 25% less likely to develop cancer in general.

Dr Jorge Chavarro, of the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, said the study was ‘incredibly important’, and that more research must be done because ‘cancer is a serious public health challenge and foods containing pesticide residues are widely consumed’.