The study authors state that more countries should now enforce food labeling that clearly specifies nutritional value.

Countries need to implement better policies for food labeling so that consumers understand what they are buying.

The British Food Standards Agency developed their nutrient profiling system (FSAm-NPS) as a way to ensure that people are able to clearly see what the nutritional value is of any food product.

The system allows people to make informed dietary choices and be able to tell healthful foods from those with fewer or no benefits.

France and, more recently, Belgium have also adopted systems similar to the FSAm-NPS, but many regions are yet to implement similar schemes.

Now, a set of worrying findings that link an increased risk of cancer with the consumption of foods that have a low nutritional quality may offer solid enough evidence for policy-makers to push for a more widespread use of nutrient profiling in food labeling.

The new study was conducted by Mélanie Deschasaux, at the French National Institute for Health and Medical Research in Paris, in collaboration with specialists from numerous other research institutions.

Deschasaux and colleagues published the results of their research in the journal PLOS Medicine.

The investigators analyzed data collected from 471,495 participants from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition.

The median follow-up period was 15.3 years, and the volunteers provided information about their dietary habits as well as other relevant medical information, including cancer history.

Of all the participants, 49,794 had been diagnosed with cancer, of which 12,063 had breast cancer, 6,745 had prostate cancer, and 5,806 had colorectal cancer.

Based on the information provided, the scientists calculated the associations between foods with various nutritional qualities and the risk of developing cancer.

In the study paper, Deschasaux and colleagues report that the participants who “[consumed] on average food products with a lower nutritional quality, were at higher risk of developing cancer overall.”

More specifically, regular consumption of foods with low nutritional quality was associated with an increased risk of colorectal cancer and cancer of the upper aero-digestive tract and stomach, as well as with lung cancer in the case of men.