The Nutrition Working Group

Diet is one of the most complex exposures to investigate in relation to chronic disease, particularly cancer. Large multicentre nutritional studies such as EPIC raise additional challenges to measure, compare, and analyse dietary exposure in a comparable way across countries and to generalize evidence and recommendations. The Nutrition Working Group aims to support the EPIC network with standard operating procedures to collect, handle, and analyse the EPIC dietary data derived via country-specific dietary questionnaires. This includes the compilation and matching with standardized nutrient or other food component databases of major research interests (Slimani et al., 2007; Van Puyvelde et al., 2020; Huybrechts et al., 2022) (e.g. nutrients, food additives and contaminants, food biodiversity and processing, dietary patterns and scores, and environmental impact indicators). Other major activities within the Working Group involve the provision of comparable evidence on dietary exposures across the EPIC participating countries, using a unique data set of standardized 24-hour dietary recalls obtained from a representative sample of the EPIC cohort (N ≈ 37 000). The Nutrition Working Group aims to investigate the (relative) validity of dietary parameters computed in EPIC through comparison with dietary biomarkers whenever possible. These analyses that deliver information for the analysis and interpretation of diet–disease associations are regularly published using univariate and (new) multivariate (Kliemann et al., 2023) approaches that integrate dietary and biomarker measurements.

Selected publications

  1. Slimani N, Deharveng G, Unwin I, Southgate D A T, Vignat J, Skeie G, et al. (2007). The EPIC nutrient database project (ENDB): a first attempt to standardize nutrient databases across the 10 European countries participating in the EPIC study. Eur J Clin Nutr. 61(9):1037–56. https://doi.org/10.1038/sj.ejcn.1602679 PMID:17375121
  2. Van Puyvelde H, Perez-Cornago A, Casagrande C, Nicolas G, Versele V, Skeie G, et al. (2020). Comparing calculated nutrient intakes using different food composition databases: results from the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition (EPIC) cohort. Nutrients. 12(10):2906. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu12102906 PMID:32977480
  3. Huybrechts I, Rauber F, Nicolas G, Casagrande C, Kliemann N, Wedekind R, et al. (2022). Characterization of the degree of food processing in the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer and Nutrition: application of the Nova classification and validation using selected biomarkers of food processing. Front Nutr. 9:1035580. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnut.2022.1035580 PMID:36590209
  4. Iguacel I, Schmidt JA, Perez-Cornago A, Van Puyvelde H, Travis R, Stepien M, et al. (2021). Associations between dietary amino acid intakes and blood concentration levels. Clin Nutr. 40(6):3772–9. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.clnu.2021.04.036 PMID:34130023
  5. Peterson L, Lee H, Huybrechts I, Biessy C, Neuhouser ML, Haaland B, et al. (2023). Reliability estimates for assessing meal timing derived from longitudinal repeated 24-hour dietary recalls. Am J Clin Nutr. S0002-9165(23)46259-4. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajcnut.2023.02.026 PMID:36921904
  6. Freisling H, van Bakel MME, Biessy C, May AM, Byrnes G, Norat T, et al. (2012). Dietary reporting errors on 24 h recalls and dietary questionnaires are associated with BMI across six European countries as evaluated with recovery biomarkers for protein and potassium intake. Br J Nutr. 107(6):910–20. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007114511003564 PMID:21791145
  7. Crispim SP, Geelen A, de Vries JHM, Freisling H, Souverein OW, Hulshof PJM, et al. (2012). Bias in protein and potassium intake collected with 24-h recalls (EPIC-Soft) is rather comparable across European populations. Eur J Nutr. 51(8):997–1010. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00394-011-0279-z PMID:22143464
  8. Kliemann N, Rauber F, Bertazzi Levy R, Viallon V, Vamos EP, Cordova R, et al. (2023). Food processing and cancer risk in Europe: results from the prospective EPIC cohort study. Lancet Planet Health. 7(3):e219–32. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(23)00021-9 PMID:36889863
  9. Laine JE, Huybrechts I, Gunter MJ, Ferrari P, Weiderpass E, Tsilidis K, et al. (2021). Co-benefits from sustainable dietary shifts for population and environmental health: an assessment from a large European cohort study. Lancet Planet Health. 5(11):e786–96. https://doi.org/10.1016/S2542-5196(21)00250-3 PMID:34688354
  10. Hanley-Cook GT, Huybrechts I, Biessy C, Remans R, Kennedy G, Deschasaux-Tanguy M, et al. (2021). Food biodiversity and total and cause-specific mortality in 9 European countries: an analysis of a prospective cohort study. PLoS Med. 18(10):e1003834. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1003834 PMID:34662340


Contact details/Working Group leader

Inge Huybrechts, PhD
Team Leader, Lifestyle Exposure and Interventions Team (LEI)
Nutrition and Metabolism Branch (NME)
International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC/WHO)
25 avenue Tony Garnier
CS 90627
69366 LYON CEDEX 07
France
HuybrechtsI@iarc.who.int / EPIC-Diet@iarc.who.int

Ms Genevieve Nicolas, MSc
Sr Research Assistant Data management/analysis 
Nutrition and Metabolism Branch (NME)
International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC/WHO)
25 avenue Tony Garnier
CS 90627
69366 LYON CEDEX 07
France
NicolasG@iarc.who.int