Frequent salting of food increases the risk of stomach cancer, study finds

In Asian countries – where high-salt foods are popular and people frequently eat food preserved in salt, heavily salted fish, or extremely salty marinades and sauces – the link between high consumption of salt and stomach cancer has already been proven. 

Now, a long-term, prospective study by researchers at the Medical University of Vienna has now shown for the first time – basing themselves on cancer statistics on 470,000 adults from the large-scale British cohort study “UK-Biobank” – that it is true for Western countries as well.

Gastric cancer is the fifth most commonly diagnosed cancer globally, with the highest prevalence in Asia, followed by Eastern Europe and Latin America. The risk of this malignancy increases with age, but the latest statistics paint a worrying picture of an increase in adults under the age of 50.

Adding salt to food increases likelihood of developing stomach cancer

The research team led by Selma Kronsteiner-Gicevic and Tilman Kühn from the Austrian university’s Center for Public Health has just been published in the specialist journal Gastric Cancer under the title “Adding salt to food at table as an indicator of gastric cancer risk among adults: A prospective study.” 

They showed that people who frequently add salt (sodium chloride) to their food are almost 40% more likely to develop stomach cancer than those who do not use the salt shaker at the table.

Among other things, the answers to the question “How often do you add salt to your food?” were collected by questionnaire between 2006 and 2010. compared the survey results with salt excretion in urine and with data from national cancer registries. This revealed that people who said they always or frequently added salt to their food were 39% more likely to develop stomach cancer over an observation period of around 11 years than those who never or rarely added an extra pinch of salt to their food. “Our results also stood up to the consideration of demographic, socioeconomic, and lifestyle factors and were just as valid for prevailing comorbidities,” the authors said, stressing the significance of the results.

Besides salt, other risk factors for stomach cancer include tobacco and alcohol consumption, infection with Helicobacter pylori bacteria, being overweight, and obesity. The fact that a very salty diet increases the risk of stomach cancer has previously been proven in studies with Asian population groups, 

“Our research shows the connection between the frequency of added salt and stomach cancer in Western countries too,” declared first author Kronsteiner-Gicevic. “With our study, we want to raise awareness of the negative effects of extremely high salt consumption and provide a basis for measures to prevent stomach cancer,” added study leader Kühn.