Want to lower your risk of cancer? Eat healthy.

Eating foods like fruits, vegetables, and whole grains has been touted as a great way to stay healthy. It's said to help prevent everything from diabetes to the common cold to visiting the doctor at all. But a new study has found that your diet can have a real impact on your likelihood of getting cancer, too.

The study, published on Wednesday in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute: Cancer Spectrum, found that about 5.2 percent of all new cancer diagnoses in the United States in 2015 were linked with a poor diet. That figure is "comparable to the proportion of cancer burden attributable to alcohol," said Fang Fang Zhang, a cancer epidemiologist at Tufts University and the study's lead author.

The "poor diet" that correlated with cancer cases was defined with seven factors: "a low intake of vegetables, fruits, whole grains and dairy products and a high intake of processed meats, red meats and sugary beverages," CNN explained. While 5.2 percent of all cancer cases might not seem like a lot, certain types of cancers had a much more tangible link: Colorectal cancers were linked to a poor diet more than 38 percent of the time.

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Diet, Zhang explained, is one of the few risk factors for cancer you can actually control. While further research will be required to determine exactly how the diet risk changes with age and other factors, focusing on an improved diet can reduce "cancer burden and disparities in the U.S.," Zhang said.

Learn more about the study at CNN.