THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN COLORECTAL CANCER AND THE CONSUMPTION OF PROCESSED FOODS: A LITERATURE REVIEW (Atena Editora)

Abstract

Cancer, also called malignant neoplasia, corresponds to a disordered cellular proliferation that can develop in different regions of the human body, compromising the functioning of the tissues of the affected organs. At the same time, it is known that, due to the advent of the industrialization process associated with the greater frenetic nature of contemporary life, the consumption of processed foods has increased significantly in recent years. In this sense, together with the growth in the consumption of processed foods, the incidence of a special type of the aforementioned illness, colorectal cancer (CRC), which represents malignant neoplasms that affect the regions of the large intestine, has been growing considerably and marking society contemporary, making it possible to assume that there is a relationship between such factors. Under this bias, the specific objectives of this scientific work are: to epidemiologically analyze the relationship between the consumption of processed foods and CRC, the effect of such products on carcinogenesis and its estimates for the future, in order to seek to achieve the general objective, which is to analyzethe relationship between colorectal cancer and the consumption of processed foods. Thus, this is a literature review based on the following guiding question: "What is the relationship between colorectal cancer and the consumption of processed foods?". In this sense, in order to seek to answer this question, searches were carried out in the EMBASE, LILACS, MEDLINE and SciELO databases, using the descriptors “Colorectal Neoplasms”, “Food, processed” and “Risk Factors”, combined using the Boolean operator “AND”. Texts in their complete versions were selected as inclusion criteria, from the years 2018 to 2023, within a five-year interval, published in Portuguese, English or Spanish, resulting in a total of 25 articles. After screening in stages, and, according to the exclusion criteria, documents of the review type or that presented subjects that did not directly correspond to all of the aforementioned descriptors were discarded, 9 articles that specifically addressed the relationship between the colorectal cancer and the consumption of processed foods. Thus, based on the work analyzed in this literature review, with the general and specific objectives having been met, it was possible to identify a significant relationship between the consumption of processed foods and the development of colorectal cancer in different regions of the world.