Objective  To investigate the effect of enteral nutrition and parenteral nutrition on the nutritional status of patients with gastrointestinal cancer after operation. Methods  Selected patients with gastrointestinal cancer in Affliated Hospital of Hebei University of Engineering and Handan Central Hospital from October 2016 to February 2018 evaluated the nutritional status by were using nutritional risk screening tool (NRS-2002) and scored patient-generate subjective global assessment (PG-SGA). The results showed that  there were 200 patients with high nutritional risk. According to random number table method, the patients  were divided into observation group and control group with 100 cases in each group. The control group were administrated  parenteral nutrition treatment and the observation group were received enteral nutrition therapy. Results  The incidence of complications in patients with no nutritional risk was 12.5% (27/216), and in patients with risk was 23% (46/200). The difference was statistically significant (P<0.05). Gender, mean age, mean body mass index (BMI), hemoglobin (HGB), total protein (TP), albumin (ALB), prealbumin (PA) and the types of cancer between two groups were l no statistical significance (all P>0.05). Two weeks after the nutritional therapy, hemoglobin (HGB), albumin (ALB) level of observation group were both significantly higher than those of the control group, and the difference was statistically significant (P<0.05). However, there was no statistical difference between the two groups of prealbumin (PA) and total protein (TP) (P>0.05). The incidence of complications in the study group was 8% and lower than that of the control group which was 19% (P<0.05). Conclusions  The incidence of nutritional risk is high in patients with gastrointestinal cancer, which can lead to higher incidence of complications. Enteral nutrition therapy of patients with gastrointestinal cancer can  effectively improve the nutritional status compared to parenteral nutrition treatment.