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A study published this week showed that the largest consumers of organic foods in France develop less cancer than those who never eat them, which illustrates the difficulty of establishing a causal link between diet and health.
It is impossible to categorically prove in the laboratory that this or that food reduces the risk of a disease as complex as cancer.
With regard to organic foods, only one large study had previously evaluated its effects on cancer the Million Women study involving 600,000 Britons in 2014.
found differences between consumers and non-users of biologics in terms of overall cancer risk, but found a reduction in cancer risk: non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
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The new French study, which involved in particular the University of Sorbonne, the National Institute of Agricultural Research and the National Institute of Health and and Medical Research is more detailed, although it has fewer participants, about 69,000 people, mostly women. Their results were published Monday in the American magazine Jama.
The hypothesis is that consumers of organic products ingest less synthetic pesticides in fruits, vegetables and cereals, thus reducing their risk, while some pesticides are suspected to be carcinogenic.
After their inclusion, the volunteers of the study NutriNet-Health completed a questionnaire (income, physical activity, smoking or not, body mbad index, etc.) and declared organic food eaten in the last 24 hours.
The study divided participants into four groups based on the type of ingested organic food. Then, the number of cancer cases in each group was counted in four and a half years on average.
In a quarter of those who reported eating a majority of organic foods, the risk of cancer was 25% lower than in the fourth part, which never consumed them. In absolute terms, the increase is only 0.6 percentage points, or six additional patients per 1,000 people.
The study found a statistically significant correlation only for bad cancer in postmenopausal women and for lymphoma, including non-Hodgkin's lymphoma.
The authors were concerned with correcting their results by taking into account that consumers of organic products were on average richer, less obese and less smokers.
But other invisible, environmental or lifestyle factors can also have an impact. This is the typical problem of these studies.
"People who deliberately consume organic products to the point of declaring them are probably differentiated by many other aspects ," says aNigel Brockton, director of research at the American Institute for Research Against Cancer (AICR).
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This expert recommends, instead of a particular type of food, a set of practices to reduce the risk of cancer: normal weight, physical activity, healthy diet, not too much red meat …
"The diet is a complex thing," he says. "We would never make a recommendation based on a single study, even if it is statistically significant," he adds.
Other aspects of the study were also questioned: the traces of pesticides were not measured in the participants, which provoked criticism from the experts of the Harvard in the same issue of Jama. Co-author Julia Baudry told AFP that this was only done in a small subsample.
The declarative aspect of the study is also a problem for John Ioannidis, professor emeritus of medicine at Stanford, known to have claimed that most of the published studies were untrue.
"Most people, including myself can not say exactly how much organic food they eat ," he said. "The study has a 3% chance of finding something important and 97% spreading absurd and ridiculous results."
As in the case of the consumption of red meat or cigarettes, many other studies in the same direction will be necessary to conclude on the effect of organic food.
The American Cancer Society continues to advocate the consumption of fruits and vegetables, organic or otherwise.
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