TNF and gastric cancer: To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to report a gene-diet interaction while particularly focusing on a gene functionally associated with secreted serum TNF. Another strength of this study is that we calculated an index score to reflect the inflammatory potential of a diet, assessed its association with the risk of GC and used it to examine interactions with genes, which can consider the overall intake conditions and an individual’s genetic background rather than only one risk factor.