Abstract/Summary

Cancer is a complex group of diseases often with long progression periods. As a result the ability to identify associations between foods and other components of the diet with cancer events is extremely challenging. Inevitably most of the evidence is gathered from long term prospective cohort or case-control studies which are not regarded as a high level of evidence although their value is substantially improved by systematic reviews plus meta-analysis. Over the last 25 years the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF) and the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR) have had a joint programme to review and evaluate the published evidence on the relationship between diet, nutrition, physical activity and cancer. This chapter will primarily summarise the latest evidence they have published on the associations between dairy food consumption and cancer risk. Their latest key findings are 1) ‘Consumption of dairy products probably protects against colorectal cancer’, 2) There is ‘Limited-suggestive evidence that dairy products can decrease premenopausal breast cancer risk’, but the post-menopausal situation is less clear and ‘no conclusion was possible’ and 3) ‘For a higher consumption of dairy products, the evidence suggesting an increased risk of prostate cancer is limited’.