Nutrition and cancer

Abstract

It is known how diet plays an important role either in cancer occurrence or its prevention. A complete revision on the literature has been performed trying to gain knowledge on the diets that can prevent for cancer occurrence, or those that can cause malignancies. Fruits and vegetables are the foods that can prevent from cancer disease, soya and fishes also have demonstrated as preventive from some types of malignancies. Clear factors causing cancer are red meat and processed meat, dairy products and alcohol. The protective roles of vitamins, antioxidants and micronutrients still have to be deeply investigated. Obesity is a clear risk factor for cancer, calorie reduction has been proposed as a factor that has protective properties in laboratory studies, but this has to be demonstrated in a clinical scenario. The diet surveillance and an adequate selection of foods can be a useful and cheap method for malignant disease prevention in the general population.