Despite observational studies indicating a potential association between diverse food intakes and the onset of nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), the causal relationship remains unclear. This study adopted a two-sample Mendelian randomization (MR) design with the objective of investigating the potential causal link between specific food intakes and the risk of developing NAFLD. The food intakes GWAS data for this study were acquired from the Cole_UKB_Diet_GWAS datasets. The genetic variants associated with NAFLD were obtained from a large-scale GWAS meta-analysis of NAFLD, which contained 8,434 cases and 770,180 controls of Europeans. The study didn’t reveal any causal associations between genetically proxied 24 specific food intakes and the risk of NAFLD. These findings suggest that there is no genetic evidence supporting a causal link between specific food intakes and NAFLD. Therefore, the MR study implies that the identified food intakes may have neither protective nor detrimental effects on NAFLD.