Hot-cold foods in diet and all-cause mortality in a Japanese community: the Takayama study.

Purpose: In the field of traditional Chinese medicine, foods are grouped as cold or hot, and the balance of hot and cold food intake is considered vital to good health. We aimed to examine prospectively whether hot-cold food intake as well as ratio of hot-to-cold foods is associated with all-cause mortality in a general population.

Methods: A total of 28,356 residents of Takayama City, Japan (response rate: 85.3%, mean age: 54.6 [SD, 12.6] years, male: 45.9%), responded to a food frequency questionnaire in 1992. This questionnaire was used to assess intakes of hot, cold, and neutral foods. Four different lists by Lu, Nishimura, Kuwaki, and Dobashi were used to classify foods as hot, cold, or neutral.

Results: During a follow-up of 16 years (loss to follow-up: 6.1%), 5339 deaths were identified. In men, hot food intake was significantly positively associated with the risk of all-cause mortality according to Nishimura's classification and significantly inversely associated with the risk according to Lu's and Dobashi's classifications. In women, hot food intake was inversely associated with the risk only according to Dobashi's classification.

Conclusions: We found no clear and consistent evidence that hot-cold food intake is associated with all-cause mortality in Japanese.