Browse evidence-based analysis of health-related claims and assertions
Certain types of thick, gooey fibers found in foods like oats and apples can help lower bad cholesterol by grabbing onto stuff in your gut and blocking cholesterol from getting into your blood, and studies show this really works.
Mechanistic
When you eat certain fibers from foods, your gut turns them into helpful acids that can reduce swelling, protect your gut lining, lower bad cholesterol, and help your body absorb minerals better.
Eating fiber helps control blood sugar by forming a gel that slows sugar absorption, making helpful acids that affect how your body uses sugar, and boosting hormones that make insulin work better.
People around the world eat less fiber than recommended, and this might be bad for health because fiber helps prevent long-term diseases.
Descriptive
Certain types of fiber, like those in oats and apples, help your body control blood sugar and lower cholesterol by forming a gel in your gut and making healthy chemicals.
Correlational
Eating foods with fiber can help lower your chances of getting long-term illnesses like diabetes or heart disease by improving things like blood sugar, cholesterol, and gut health.
Eating a lot of ultra-processed foods might lower helpful gut chemicals that keep your stomach healthy, reduce swelling, and help your body use energy better.
Eating a lot of junk food might make adults more likely to feel depressed or have mental health issues, possibly because it messes with your gut and causes inflammation in your body.
Some ingredients in processed foods might mess up your gut, cause less healthy stuff to be made there, and lead to more swelling inside your body, which can make you sick with things like diabetes or tummy troubles.
Eating a lot of junk food might make your gut leaky, letting bad stuff from bacteria get into your blood and cause body-wide inflammation, which can lead to long-term health problems.
Causal
Eating a lot of highly processed foods might lower the good bacteria in your gut, raise the bad ones that cause inflammation, and could lead to health problems like diabetes or heart disease.
Eating fresh veggies every day is linked to a lower chance of stomach cancer in Chinese people.
If Chinese adults like eating very salty food, they might have a much higher chance of getting stomach cancer, and the saltier they like it, the bigger the risk.
Eating more than a small amount of pickled veggies each week might make Chinese adults over 6 times more likely to get stomach cancer, and the more you eat, the higher the risk.
Eating a lot of pickled veggies (more than a half-pound per week) might triple the risk of stomach cancer in Chinese adults from certain areas, even when considering how much fresh fruits and veggies they eat.
Eating more than 100 grams of salted meat each week might make Chinese adults between 40 and 75 years old almost six times more likely to get stomach cancer, even after considering other factors like smoking or diet.
A natural substance called butyrate stops colon cancer from happening by helping your body's immune system stay balanced, not by blocking certain enzymes.
A substance called butyrate can stop certain processes in cancer cells grown in a lab, which makes the cancer cells die off.
Eating more fiber might help lower your chances of getting colon cancer by changing the bacteria in your gut and making helpful chemicals.
Eating more salt doesn't seem to raise your chance of getting stomach cancer much, based on a big review of many studies.
Eating a lot of salty preserved foods might raise your chances of getting stomach cancer by about one-quarter compared to eating less of them, but this link isn't as strong as other ways salt could affect cancer risk.
People who always add salt to their food might have a one-third higher chance of getting stomach cancer than those who never do.
People who like salty foods more than others are 59% more likely to get stomach cancer, according to a big review of 25 studies.
People who have more nitrate and nitrite in their saliva seem to be less likely to get stomach cancer.