What I find interesting is the concept of dead food versus live food. This is just something I wonder about. For example a dead apple is one that was picked a year ago, sold today, kept in storage until now. Long shelf life - is the crucial change in our eating that I can see. When was the last time you had a fresh apple? Does the food industry want us to consider the health benefits of a dead apple versus a living apple?
Let think twinkies! You can open a package of twinkies and let it sit out for a long time. A long time. A long, long time. They you can eat it. Long shelf life means it does not succumb to digestion by random microbes etc in the environment. Does the twinkie then succumb to the random microbes in your gut? I think not, but what do I know.
Then there is living food. You can take milk, put a culture in it and let it grow for 10 hours. Instant pot, heating pad, whatever. Then you eat it. It is now filled with living cultures. It tastes better to me than any store bought yogurt, costs exactly the same as the same quantity of milk. With a chopped apple, cinnamon and a tiny bit of sugar it tastes better to me that most of the faux ice cream you get these days.
What is funny to me is the conversations we have about "ultra processed food" do no address this aspect of the issue. I keep wondering why.
"in the United States, the incidence of advanced colorectal cancer has increased by about 3% each year since around 2010 in people between the ages of 20 and 49. In 2023, colorectal cancer became the leading cause of cancer death in this age group."
Also in TFA:
"Uterine cancer and liver cancer diagnoses and deaths are rising in young women"
for millions of years we were constantly fasting, then we hunted and killed animals, eating their protein and fat, no carbs, we were constantly in ketosis
We recently begun eating carbs, And very very recently started eating tons of processed carbs (because now we got the tech)
We are rarely in ketosis, and because of high carbs/sugar consumption, we start developing insulin resistance. (the idea is simple, we create resistance for most drugs/substances we take, be it anti depressants, caffeine, nicotine and so on.. the same happens with insulin. each time you eat too much sugar, your pancreas needs to issue insulin, so your cells can absorb more sugar. they start being resistant to it, so your pancreas need to work stronger and issue more and more insulin)
insulin is oxidative and inflammatory. we simply weren't built to regulate our blood sugar levels down (we are only equipped with insulin to do so), we are more well equipped to spike glucose levels up (gluconeogenesis, glucagon, cortisol and so on...)
because we are rarely in ketosis, we rarely get into the autophagy state (which is the auto-recycling cell system). so our cells multiply and the most error prone structure is the mitochondria.
mitochondria can make energy either from glucose or fat(keto bodies). it will always prefer glucose, only fallback to keto bodies (fat) when there is no glucose available. the synthesis of ATP (energy) from keto bodies will need oxygen as input, and will yield water as output. if we have inflammation, there is no oxygen (that's why severe chronic inflammation can lead to cancer), also that's why we usually use ice when we hurt ourselves, that place is inflamed, and by putting ice on it, it will change temperature (which changes pressure) and boosts blood circulation, blood carries oxygen, oxygen helps with inflammation.
a cancer cell, with a problematic mitochondria, will not be able to metabolize fat(keto bodies), because it has a problematic carburetor. fact is that the PET scans look for high glucose metabolism places in your body, because the cancer cells are starving for glucose.
the cell DNA is like ECC memory, it has self correction, but the mitochondria lacks the self correction, so it's way simpler to have it gone bad.
every single day we are having tons of cancer cells in our bodies, which self destruct or are detected and destroyed by our immune system.
the Middle East is the region in the world with the least cancer rate in the globe, yet they are one of the top consumers of sugar. but in islam they do the ramadan, in which for one month they make intermittent fasting basically, which boosts autophagy.
anyway... do healthy keto, boost autophagy, avoid ultra processed foods.
actually, I will extend this a little bit more... if you want to enter in keto...
go to the grocery store and buy this:
- meat (ground meat is fine and easy to prepare)
- eggs (the most fresh ones if possible)
- broccoli
- butter or extra virgin olive oil
the portions will depend on your body type and so on.. but you would make meat and eggs on either butter and extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper, and steamed broccoli. in my case it was 250g of ground meat, 4-5 eggs and one whole broccoli.
you must eat the broccoli first (it's fiber, you can't actually use it, the bacteria in your stomach does, it will make them very happy). if you eat meat+eggs first, you will feel full and will not be able to eat the broccoli, if you eat broccoli first, you will not feel full at all. use salt and pepper and olive oil.
eat the whole broccoli, that's like an ETF of micronutrients, it's very diversified!
then eat eggs+meat no problem...
you gonna feel very very full... do not eat any sugar/carbs.. it can take up to 3 days for entering in ketosis..
you can eat 2 to 3 times a day, eat only when you are genuinely hungry (your hunger will change drastically on how it's built over time)
then slowly entering in ketosis..
the rationale is that you need to cut off the garbage.. meat has high quality protein and fat, so does eggs (an egg has everything needed to begin a freaking life, fun fact: no carbs/sugar in it...)
and the broccoli has micronutrients and make your gut bacteria happy.
the quality of those 3 foods will depend on some things..
for the broccoli, it's the soil... is it contaminated or not? where did it grow?
for the eggs, is the chicken healthy? did she get sun? did she eat insects, worms, or just genetic modified ration?
same for the cattle...
but you are limiting a lot the potential contaminations sources..
I know of two women under the age of 30 who got cancer, they were spouses/girlfriends of friends of mine. I didn't know them well personally, and only met them a handful of times at outings.
Because they weren't married yet I'm sure it's just compounding their financial struggles.
I was shocked when I heard they had cancer, I almost didn't believe it. Under 30 is such a young age to be diagnosed.
It's mostly obesity, which the article sort of mentions ("known links to obesity") but kind of obscures by saying "obesity does not fully account for the rise" and "a clear answer remained elusive." The medical establishment and journalism have found it extremely uncomfortable over the past decade to notice that obesity has negative health consequences because it might embarrass some fat people, and this is more of that. We know obesity is really bad for you, including causing higher rates of cancer. We know over what time periods young people became more obese.
Have diets really gotten noticeably unhealthier over recent decades? I'm not sure that's the case. We used herbicides and pesticides 20 years ago too, of course. It's becoming increasingly clear that fiber intake is linked to cancer rates, but again I'm not sure diets 20 years ago had higher fiber on average.
> The medical establishment and journalism have found it extremely uncomfortable over the past decade to notice that obesity has negative health consequences because it might embarrass some fat people, and this is more of that.
I can't help but think about the same thing with "co-sleeping". It's been discouraged altogether on the basis that it increases the incidence of sudden death syndrome in newborns, which sounds like a sensible policy until you notice that co-sleeping actually only increases risk of SDS with obese and/or smoking parents. But you have to actually read the research for that, and it's never communicated like this.
> The medical establishment and journalism have found it extremely uncomfortable over the past decade to notice that obesity has negative health consequences because it might embarrass some fat people
Maybe, or maybe it's the bottomless pockets of the sugar industry lobby.
> Have diets really gotten noticeably unhealthier over recent decades?
Diet is only one of the factors on obesity and it's health consequences, you also have stress, sleep deprivation, lack of exercises, loneliness and isolation.
Diet and exercise (to lesser extent) are the mechanism of obesity. The other factors may affect diet and exercise. A massive other factor for the latter is driving.
Obesity indeed is a massive elephant in the room in public health discussions. And even in TFA "ultra-processed foods" are put first, which is a) just a silly category, and b) effects from poor quality nutrition are mainly via obesity.
The obesity epidemic is by far the most important public health problem in the developed world, but discussing this publicly, and thus effectively addressing it, is very difficult.
> I remember being in my 20s and not being able to sleep, but the most distracting thing I could reach for was a pile of books in my bedside table.
Back when I was young in the 90s, this was exactly how I spent the last 5-6 hours of my days, reading books in my bed until the sun came up in the morning and I actually started getting tired.
Now, I sleep much better, the bed and bedroom is limited to just two activities, sleeping and funtime with partner, otherwise I never just chill in the bed or have anything else interesting in there. And if I can't sleep, I go up again and do something else until I'm tired enough to actually lay down in the bed. Probably helps a ton, as even with the phone on the nightstand next to me, I do fall asleep relatively quick.
Lack of sleep, not because of phones but because of more demanding lives due to modern education and workplace demands. Phones might contribute too, but consider how normal it is today to work till late hours compared to previous generations.
I believe that county specific studies seem to support your thesis. For instance, countries that eat less processed food (eg Italy) and have stricter rules about pesticides didn't see an increase in stuff like colorectal cancer [1]. Some cancers incidence did grow, but others decreased keeping incidence more or less the same.
What a shame that "no definitive culprit yet" somehow becomes "nothing specific to worry about yet, carry on" instead of "we can't answer because there are too many horrifying trends all at once".
Besides all the other factors mentioned, which I think are all valid, there's also indoor air pollution from things like aerosol sprays, cleaning products, fragrance, creams, soaps, other products.
Plastics, the increase in background radiation, pesticides, and or a side effect of extra calories are all possibilities. Daily allergy medicines might also be a factor as those reduce immune response slightly.
I appreciate that comment ironically, as a concrete example of exactly how this type of conversation goes. Opinions come first, facts come later if at all, and never change the opinion.
Most people will have a pre-conceived opinion about this, just like they would have an opinion about politics. Put "Trump" or "DEI" or some other word in the title, and the exact same thing happens.
I’m not obese or overweight and while my main meals (breakfast and dinner) are generally very healthy - I can still eat a lot of trash (ultra processed)food as snacks.
One study (sorry, can't recall the source off the top of my head) claimed 20% of calories in the average U.S. diet was replaced by processed foods over that period. I'm over 50 years old, and it agrees with my own observations. Those "big gulp" beverages became popular in the 80s, and "low fat" foods just replaced fat with added sugar.
One example: long ago I used to buy Bush's baked beans in a can. They had a vegetarian version which I assumed was healthier, and it even tasted better than the original. But one day I compared the labels and found the vegetarian version had more added sugar and more calories per serving.
We were fed a massive amount of misinformation about healthy foods in the 1980s. Hopefully things will improve from now on.
Your guess is not wild at all, and the article implies that (at least until the payment popup shows up)
My grandmother used to grow her own vegetables and fruits and had a minimal chicken farm for eggs until the early 2000s, all in her regular backyard, it's not ancient history or something that required a lot of real state.
Now there's a 15-story building and no land whatsoever where her house used to be.
As a kid I used to do that with my family: Grow our own everything.
I'm currently trying to get back to it, until then I try to eat ecological and as much as I can cooked by myself. It is hard though, not everybody can aford a plot of land (ideally next to some decent sized town)
No till farming is probably helping. I learned this year what that really means by seeing farms where they spray herbicide to kill the plants,then they plant new seed while the old dead is still standing around. They then use herbicide as a desiccant to kill the plant at harvest. They probably use pesticides too. The cycle then repeats. I was so disgusted as seeing new crops sprouting amongst the dead vegetation. It must be engineered for that. I came to the inescapable conclusion that the farmers are poisoning everyone rather than have to offer real jobs to native born laborers.
Buckets of *cide, herb and insect, through the cycle. Those no till fields full of crops are some of the most disgusting things I have ever seen. That soil will have applications and applications of *cide soaked in it top to bottom. Like eating plants from a toxic waste dump.
Disgusting. That's the critical national need for glycosphate. Feeding us all engineered stuff from toxic waste dumps so farmers can not need workers or mowing and tilling equipment.
I don’t doubt what you’ve seen, and how some farmers are doing no-till.
However, there are better ways to do no-till that don’t require large herbicide input. No-till is really good for reducing the amount of water needed to farm and preserving soil structure, which is beneficial for all kinds of reasons. It’s not inherently a bad thing.
That’s how they do lentils in Canada. They use planes to spray roundup to kill the plant (because it doesn’t die naturally like it does in Europe, because of the climate), then harvest it, then sell it in Europe (without even rinsing them).
For European lentil growers it’s illegal to use roundup. But if the roundup has been applied outside of the EU it’s not toxic nor forbidden anymore and it can be eaten by humans.
That’s one of many many many examples. We live in an insane society.
This would be a great thing for all of the AI companies to devote some energy towards. Especially with their reputations in decline. Surely there must be some patterns the AIs could find if we had enough data about the people who died from cancer.
Without counting anything out it's worth saying that artificial sweeteners are some of the most-tested food ingredients because of concern about their health impacts. It's possible that we missed something, but you have to weigh that against the chance we missed something about every other possible food ingredient (all of which have been tested less).
I used to be in this same boat whenever someone questioned my sugar-free drinks. Trust the science! Then more science saying new things about artificial sweeteners kept coming out. And then I personally (with the mindset of "they can't possibly do harm") started getting stomach issues that I can pretty much definitively link to any time I drink sucralose. Which is a shame because I loved me a coke zero. If I drink/eat it by accident I'll always know within 2 hours from an intense stabbing pain in my side. This didn't happen until I had already been drinking it for many years.
Aspartame is listed as possibly carcinogenic now after having "0 problems" for decades and having that same claim of being some of the most tested food additives on the planet. Most artificial sweeteners are also still linked to problems with insulin response, weight gain, and diabetes which are the things we were trying to prevent by drinking them in the first place. Do some more research and you'll find things like links to cognitive decline, clotting with things like xylitol, depression, gut microbiome problems / even possibly intestinal wall integrity issues (sucralose-6-acetate).
The science was settled (and probably mostly funded by the companies that sold the products) right up until it wasn't. Now there seems to be huge concerns. I wouldn't be surprised if some of these substances are banned within our lifetime.
Nah, technology advancement is full of free lunches.
It breaks our ape brain intuition that anything good must also be bad. But consider all the food tech you take for granted while singling out zero-cal sweeteners.
Chronic inflammation is almost certainly part of this and lots of things about our modern ways of living cause higher levels of inflammation.
- Obesity and sugary drinks/food
- Various chemicals we use in agriculture, food products, cleaning, etc
- Lack of sleep
- Lack of exercise
- Stress
- Pharmaceuticals. And to be clear because I know this will be more controversial, I'm not anti-pharma, but lots of people today are being prescribed daily medication at ever young ages. We know many of these pharmaceuticals can marginally increase certain cancer risks.
- Low Vit D levels – seriously everyone should be supplementing
- Vaccines? Probably not, but I dunno... Call me a conspiracy theorist if you want, but if you're on your 5th Covid shot I feel like you might be putting your body at some marginally increased inflammatory risk there. Vaccines are quite literally deigned to induce inflammation to boost immune response after all.
- More radiation emitting devices – not sure about this one because I haven't done any research, but when I was younger people used to talk about this quite seriously and now it feels like something only conspiracy theorists say. I suspect there is some amount of truth to it even if 5G isn't going to literally give you cancer.
I think it would be more surprising if we didn't see an increase in cancer rates to be honest.
At what point is something unsubstantive versus not being allowed to become known as being substantive over political reasons? Politics has utterly poisoned the sciences.
A post like this is worse than that ones that it criticizes.
You're right that commenters are idly speculating, but that's what people do in conversation: they ramble through personal associations. HN is an internet watercooler, meaning we're here for human conversation, hopefully with an accent on curiosity. It's no kind of scientific publication or journal. It's welcome to draw on such material for conversation here, but not required.
Treating normal chatter as inferior, as fodder for a snarky putdown, is anti-conversation. It turns away from the topic, makes curious interchange less likely, and introduces hostility, which is likely to evoke worse from others. In other words, a bummer.
It's common on HN, and I assume in many similar places, for people to react to what they don't like / disagree with in others by (a) making a generalization about the group as a whole, and then (b) making a supercilious remark about it. The underlying message seems to be: I'm here like the rest of you, but I'm better.
We all resort to this at times, so I don't mean to be personally critical; but because it negates the kind of conversation that we're trying for here, it's within scope of moderation to ask people not to do it.
tl; dr the first 4 sentences:
Ultra-processed foods, obesity, microbial toxins and agricultural chemicals were all considered. But a clear answer remained elusive.
> Current "safe" dosage on coffeine is like 8 shots a day. No side effects!
Still is, since none of the side effects of caffeine could be considered "dangerous". (Unless you're taking absurdly large amounts, of course, just like anything else.)
What I find interesting is the concept of dead food versus live food. This is just something I wonder about. For example a dead apple is one that was picked a year ago, sold today, kept in storage until now. Long shelf life - is the crucial change in our eating that I can see. When was the last time you had a fresh apple? Does the food industry want us to consider the health benefits of a dead apple versus a living apple?
Let think twinkies! You can open a package of twinkies and let it sit out for a long time. A long time. A long, long time. They you can eat it. Long shelf life means it does not succumb to digestion by random microbes etc in the environment. Does the twinkie then succumb to the random microbes in your gut? I think not, but what do I know.
Then there is living food. You can take milk, put a culture in it and let it grow for 10 hours. Instant pot, heating pad, whatever. Then you eat it. It is now filled with living cultures. It tastes better to me than any store bought yogurt, costs exactly the same as the same quantity of milk. With a chopped apple, cinnamon and a tiny bit of sugar it tastes better to me that most of the faux ice cream you get these days.
What is funny to me is the conversations we have about "ultra processed food" do no address this aspect of the issue. I keep wondering why.
Are more young people getting cancer? How much? What kinds?
From TFA:
"in the United States, the incidence of advanced colorectal cancer has increased by about 3% each year since around 2010 in people between the ages of 20 and 49. In 2023, colorectal cancer became the leading cause of cancer death in this age group."
Also in TFA:
"Uterine cancer and liver cancer diagnoses and deaths are rising in young women"
for millions of years we were constantly fasting, then we hunted and killed animals, eating their protein and fat, no carbs, we were constantly in ketosis
We recently begun eating carbs, And very very recently started eating tons of processed carbs (because now we got the tech)
We are rarely in ketosis, and because of high carbs/sugar consumption, we start developing insulin resistance. (the idea is simple, we create resistance for most drugs/substances we take, be it anti depressants, caffeine, nicotine and so on.. the same happens with insulin. each time you eat too much sugar, your pancreas needs to issue insulin, so your cells can absorb more sugar. they start being resistant to it, so your pancreas need to work stronger and issue more and more insulin)
insulin is oxidative and inflammatory. we simply weren't built to regulate our blood sugar levels down (we are only equipped with insulin to do so), we are more well equipped to spike glucose levels up (gluconeogenesis, glucagon, cortisol and so on...)
because we are rarely in ketosis, we rarely get into the autophagy state (which is the auto-recycling cell system). so our cells multiply and the most error prone structure is the mitochondria.
mitochondria can make energy either from glucose or fat(keto bodies). it will always prefer glucose, only fallback to keto bodies (fat) when there is no glucose available. the synthesis of ATP (energy) from keto bodies will need oxygen as input, and will yield water as output. if we have inflammation, there is no oxygen (that's why severe chronic inflammation can lead to cancer), also that's why we usually use ice when we hurt ourselves, that place is inflamed, and by putting ice on it, it will change temperature (which changes pressure) and boosts blood circulation, blood carries oxygen, oxygen helps with inflammation.
a cancer cell, with a problematic mitochondria, will not be able to metabolize fat(keto bodies), because it has a problematic carburetor. fact is that the PET scans look for high glucose metabolism places in your body, because the cancer cells are starving for glucose.
the cell DNA is like ECC memory, it has self correction, but the mitochondria lacks the self correction, so it's way simpler to have it gone bad.
every single day we are having tons of cancer cells in our bodies, which self destruct or are detected and destroyed by our immune system.
the Middle East is the region in the world with the least cancer rate in the globe, yet they are one of the top consumers of sugar. but in islam they do the ramadan, in which for one month they make intermittent fasting basically, which boosts autophagy.
anyway... do healthy keto, boost autophagy, avoid ultra processed foods.
actually, I will extend this a little bit more... if you want to enter in keto...
go to the grocery store and buy this:
- meat (ground meat is fine and easy to prepare) - eggs (the most fresh ones if possible) - broccoli - butter or extra virgin olive oil
the portions will depend on your body type and so on.. but you would make meat and eggs on either butter and extra virgin olive oil, salt and pepper, and steamed broccoli. in my case it was 250g of ground meat, 4-5 eggs and one whole broccoli.
you must eat the broccoli first (it's fiber, you can't actually use it, the bacteria in your stomach does, it will make them very happy). if you eat meat+eggs first, you will feel full and will not be able to eat the broccoli, if you eat broccoli first, you will not feel full at all. use salt and pepper and olive oil.
eat the whole broccoli, that's like an ETF of micronutrients, it's very diversified!
then eat eggs+meat no problem...
you gonna feel very very full... do not eat any sugar/carbs.. it can take up to 3 days for entering in ketosis..
you can eat 2 to 3 times a day, eat only when you are genuinely hungry (your hunger will change drastically on how it's built over time)
then slowly entering in ketosis..
the rationale is that you need to cut off the garbage.. meat has high quality protein and fat, so does eggs (an egg has everything needed to begin a freaking life, fun fact: no carbs/sugar in it...)
and the broccoli has micronutrients and make your gut bacteria happy.
the quality of those 3 foods will depend on some things..
for the broccoli, it's the soil... is it contaminated or not? where did it grow?
for the eggs, is the chicken healthy? did she get sun? did she eat insects, worms, or just genetic modified ration?
same for the cattle...
but you are limiting a lot the potential contaminations sources..
Some experts weigh in: https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/he...
Don't forget about 5G.
I know of two women under the age of 30 who got cancer, they were spouses/girlfriends of friends of mine. I didn't know them well personally, and only met them a handful of times at outings.
Because they weren't married yet I'm sure it's just compounding their financial struggles.
I was shocked when I heard they had cancer, I almost didn't believe it. Under 30 is such a young age to be diagnosed.
PFAS
My wild guess before reading the article: unhealthy food. A big part of which is herbicides and pesticides.
I will now read the article.
It's mostly obesity, which the article sort of mentions ("known links to obesity") but kind of obscures by saying "obesity does not fully account for the rise" and "a clear answer remained elusive." The medical establishment and journalism have found it extremely uncomfortable over the past decade to notice that obesity has negative health consequences because it might embarrass some fat people, and this is more of that. We know obesity is really bad for you, including causing higher rates of cancer. We know over what time periods young people became more obese.
Have diets really gotten noticeably unhealthier over recent decades? I'm not sure that's the case. We used herbicides and pesticides 20 years ago too, of course. It's becoming increasingly clear that fiber intake is linked to cancer rates, but again I'm not sure diets 20 years ago had higher fiber on average.
> The medical establishment and journalism have found it extremely uncomfortable over the past decade to notice that obesity has negative health consequences because it might embarrass some fat people, and this is more of that.
I can't help but think about the same thing with "co-sleeping". It's been discouraged altogether on the basis that it increases the incidence of sudden death syndrome in newborns, which sounds like a sensible policy until you notice that co-sleeping actually only increases risk of SDS with obese and/or smoking parents. But you have to actually read the research for that, and it's never communicated like this.
> The medical establishment and journalism have found it extremely uncomfortable over the past decade to notice that obesity has negative health consequences because it might embarrass some fat people
Maybe, or maybe it's the bottomless pockets of the sugar industry lobby.
> Have diets really gotten noticeably unhealthier over recent decades?
Diet is only one of the factors on obesity and it's health consequences, you also have stress, sleep deprivation, lack of exercises, loneliness and isolation.
Diet and exercise (to lesser extent) are the mechanism of obesity. The other factors may affect diet and exercise. A massive other factor for the latter is driving.
Obesity indeed is a massive elephant in the room in public health discussions. And even in TFA "ultra-processed foods" are put first, which is a) just a silly category, and b) effects from poor quality nutrition are mainly via obesity.
The obesity epidemic is by far the most important public health problem in the developed world, but discussing this publicly, and thus effectively addressing it, is very difficult.
I don't think the medical establishment is covering it up; if they could sell Ozempic as preventing cancer they'd jump at the idea.
My personal bugbear is the lack of sleep & entirely tied to the phone for that.
I remember being in my 20s and not being able to sleep, but the most distracting thing I could reach for was a pile of books in my bedside table.
Now, I can't sleep, there's an endless stream of things to keep me awake.
The jokes about "5G gives you cancer" is probably not as funny, if you think about the sleep you miss while you doom scroll.
> I remember being in my 20s and not being able to sleep, but the most distracting thing I could reach for was a pile of books in my bedside table.
Back when I was young in the 90s, this was exactly how I spent the last 5-6 hours of my days, reading books in my bed until the sun came up in the morning and I actually started getting tired.
Now, I sleep much better, the bed and bedroom is limited to just two activities, sleeping and funtime with partner, otherwise I never just chill in the bed or have anything else interesting in there. And if I can't sleep, I go up again and do something else until I'm tired enough to actually lay down in the bed. Probably helps a ton, as even with the phone on the nightstand next to me, I do fall asleep relatively quick.
>The jokes about "5G gives you cancer" is probably not as funny, if you think about the sleep you miss while you doom scroll.
802.11g was good enough for that, no need for 5G.
Lack of sleep, not because of phones but because of more demanding lives due to modern education and workplace demands. Phones might contribute too, but consider how normal it is today to work till late hours compared to previous generations.
If anything, food supply in the past 20 years uses a lot less pesticides and herbicides: look at the rise of organic sections in any supermarket.
Since 2000 organic food went from niche to mainstream.
I believe that county specific studies seem to support your thesis. For instance, countries that eat less processed food (eg Italy) and have stricter rules about pesticides didn't see an increase in stuff like colorectal cancer [1]. Some cancers incidence did grow, but others decreased keeping incidence more or less the same.
[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03008916241297078
What a shame that "no definitive culprit yet" somehow becomes "nothing specific to worry about yet, carry on" instead of "we can't answer because there are too many horrifying trends all at once".
Besides all the other factors mentioned, which I think are all valid, there's also indoor air pollution from things like aerosol sprays, cleaning products, fragrance, creams, soaps, other products.
Plastics, the increase in background radiation, pesticides, and or a side effect of extra calories are all possibilities. Daily allergy medicines might also be a factor as those reduce immune response slightly.
There is no increase in background radiation.
Why would you leave that comment?
An uninformed comment before you read the article isn't helping anyone.
I appreciate that comment ironically, as a concrete example of exactly how this type of conversation goes. Opinions come first, facts come later if at all, and never change the opinion.
Most people will have a pre-conceived opinion about this, just like they would have an opinion about politics. Put "Trump" or "DEI" or some other word in the title, and the exact same thing happens.
We are exposed to more more types of chemicals in our every day than ever before. Some offenders to me, besides herbicides and pesticides are:
[1]: ubiquitous flame retardants, which in America they put in every couch, carpet, and mattress
[2]: ubiquitous microplastics pollution,
[3]: joint effect of Obesity and Ultra-Processed Foods
[1] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2022&q=flame+retar... [2] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_ylo... [3] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_ylo...
Wasn't microplastics just debunked as not a thing?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/13/micropla...
Upon reading: A bit unclear but yes it seems like unhealthy food + new microbe mutations + obesity
They talk about obesity as a separate cause than ultra processed food, I thought it was quite related, something I need to look into
I’m not obese or overweight and while my main meals (breakfast and dinner) are generally very healthy - I can still eat a lot of trash (ultra processed)food as snacks.
I’m sure that could have an effect.
Well since we're speculating randomly I vote for
* too much rage bait videos raising rage hormones
* too much performing for social media
* suppressing expression for fear of cancellation
* exposure to too many varieties of food/cuisine
* video games
* anime
Yes, these are all tongue-in-cheek but come on, the random speculation here is all ridiculous
Don't people eat more healthy than they did 50 years ago? Weren't microwave dinners a big thing in the 70s?
“TV” dinners were, packaged in aluminum foil. Microwaves didn’t become prevalent until perhaps the mid 80s.
ah, interesting. Ok, so TV dinners != microwave dinners, and maybe they're more healthy than microwaved dinners or food that comes in plastic.
One study (sorry, can't recall the source off the top of my head) claimed 20% of calories in the average U.S. diet was replaced by processed foods over that period. I'm over 50 years old, and it agrees with my own observations. Those "big gulp" beverages became popular in the 80s, and "low fat" foods just replaced fat with added sugar.
One example: long ago I used to buy Bush's baked beans in a can. They had a vegetarian version which I assumed was healthier, and it even tasted better than the original. But one day I compared the labels and found the vegetarian version had more added sugar and more calories per serving.
We were fed a massive amount of misinformation about healthy foods in the 1980s. Hopefully things will improve from now on.
It's an easy guess because either human genetics either radical changed or the environment did
"Silent Spring" came out over sixty years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring
got massive coverage including a worldwide CBS News broadcast back then
Government and industry were never held to account and instead deregulated everything
We still allow leaded gas to be sprayed all around airports where everyone is exposed during travel and neighborhoods nearby
Golf Course neighborhoods are some of the highest cancer rates in the country
We've learned nothing and now the environment is so saturated with toxins that the immune system is under attack from birth
Your guess is not wild at all, and the article implies that (at least until the payment popup shows up)
My grandmother used to grow her own vegetables and fruits and had a minimal chicken farm for eggs until the early 2000s, all in her regular backyard, it's not ancient history or something that required a lot of real state.
Now there's a 15-story building and no land whatsoever where her house used to be.
As a kid I used to do that with my family: Grow our own everything.
I'm currently trying to get back to it, until then I try to eat ecological and as much as I can cooked by myself. It is hard though, not everybody can aford a plot of land (ideally next to some decent sized town)
We're speedrunning so we don't get to live in a token based reality
No till farming is probably helping. I learned this year what that really means by seeing farms where they spray herbicide to kill the plants,then they plant new seed while the old dead is still standing around. They then use herbicide as a desiccant to kill the plant at harvest. They probably use pesticides too. The cycle then repeats. I was so disgusted as seeing new crops sprouting amongst the dead vegetation. It must be engineered for that. I came to the inescapable conclusion that the farmers are poisoning everyone rather than have to offer real jobs to native born laborers.
Buckets of *cide, herb and insect, through the cycle. Those no till fields full of crops are some of the most disgusting things I have ever seen. That soil will have applications and applications of *cide soaked in it top to bottom. Like eating plants from a toxic waste dump.
Disgusting. That's the critical national need for glycosphate. Feeding us all engineered stuff from toxic waste dumps so farmers can not need workers or mowing and tilling equipment.
I don’t doubt what you’ve seen, and how some farmers are doing no-till.
However, there are better ways to do no-till that don’t require large herbicide input. No-till is really good for reducing the amount of water needed to farm and preserving soil structure, which is beneficial for all kinds of reasons. It’s not inherently a bad thing.
That’s how they do lentils in Canada. They use planes to spray roundup to kill the plant (because it doesn’t die naturally like it does in Europe, because of the climate), then harvest it, then sell it in Europe (without even rinsing them).
For European lentil growers it’s illegal to use roundup. But if the roundup has been applied outside of the EU it’s not toxic nor forbidden anymore and it can be eaten by humans.
That’s one of many many many examples. We live in an insane society.
Of my close friends of my youth, two have died of cancer before the age of 40. Fuck cancer.
My college roommate died of cancer before 30. Fuck cancer
I'm sorry for your loss. Very similar story amongst my friend group as well. It's tragic
This would be a great thing for all of the AI companies to devote some energy towards. Especially with their reputations in decline. Surely there must be some patterns the AIs could find if we had enough data about the people who died from cancer.
Yes, one good data point is pollution, which all these companies are prollific at.
If I had one unqualified guess free — and boy am I unqualified here — I’d wager it’s those „zero sugar“ stuffs.
No way you can just replace (also very very not good for you) sugar with something else and end up with all the upsides and no downsides.
Without counting anything out it's worth saying that artificial sweeteners are some of the most-tested food ingredients because of concern about their health impacts. It's possible that we missed something, but you have to weigh that against the chance we missed something about every other possible food ingredient (all of which have been tested less).
I used to be in this same boat whenever someone questioned my sugar-free drinks. Trust the science! Then more science saying new things about artificial sweeteners kept coming out. And then I personally (with the mindset of "they can't possibly do harm") started getting stomach issues that I can pretty much definitively link to any time I drink sucralose. Which is a shame because I loved me a coke zero. If I drink/eat it by accident I'll always know within 2 hours from an intense stabbing pain in my side. This didn't happen until I had already been drinking it for many years.
Aspartame is listed as possibly carcinogenic now after having "0 problems" for decades and having that same claim of being some of the most tested food additives on the planet. Most artificial sweeteners are also still linked to problems with insulin response, weight gain, and diabetes which are the things we were trying to prevent by drinking them in the first place. Do some more research and you'll find things like links to cognitive decline, clotting with things like xylitol, depression, gut microbiome problems / even possibly intestinal wall integrity issues (sucralose-6-acetate).
The science was settled (and probably mostly funded by the companies that sold the products) right up until it wasn't. Now there seems to be huge concerns. I wouldn't be surprised if some of these substances are banned within our lifetime.
Nah, technology advancement is full of free lunches.
It breaks our ape brain intuition that anything good must also be bad. But consider all the food tech you take for granted while singling out zero-cal sweeteners.
I’m pretty sure it’s the avocado toasts.
Chronic inflammation is almost certainly part of this and lots of things about our modern ways of living cause higher levels of inflammation.
- Obesity and sugary drinks/food
- Various chemicals we use in agriculture, food products, cleaning, etc
- Lack of sleep
- Lack of exercise
- Stress
- Pharmaceuticals. And to be clear because I know this will be more controversial, I'm not anti-pharma, but lots of people today are being prescribed daily medication at ever young ages. We know many of these pharmaceuticals can marginally increase certain cancer risks.
- Low Vit D levels – seriously everyone should be supplementing
- Vaccines? Probably not, but I dunno... Call me a conspiracy theorist if you want, but if you're on your 5th Covid shot I feel like you might be putting your body at some marginally increased inflammatory risk there. Vaccines are quite literally deigned to induce inflammation to boost immune response after all.
- More radiation emitting devices – not sure about this one because I haven't done any research, but when I was younger people used to talk about this quite seriously and now it feels like something only conspiracy theorists say. I suspect there is some amount of truth to it even if 5G isn't going to literally give you cancer.
I think it would be more surprising if we didn't see an increase in cancer rates to be honest.
We can't handle the truth.
Maybe not, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.
At what point is something unsubstantive versus not being allowed to become known as being substantive over political reasons? Politics has utterly poisoned the sciences.
A post like this is worse than that ones that it criticizes.
You're right that commenters are idly speculating, but that's what people do in conversation: they ramble through personal associations. HN is an internet watercooler, meaning we're here for human conversation, hopefully with an accent on curiosity. It's no kind of scientific publication or journal. It's welcome to draw on such material for conversation here, but not required.
Treating normal chatter as inferior, as fodder for a snarky putdown, is anti-conversation. It turns away from the topic, makes curious interchange less likely, and introduces hostility, which is likely to evoke worse from others. In other words, a bummer.
It's common on HN, and I assume in many similar places, for people to react to what they don't like / disagree with in others by (a) making a generalization about the group as a whole, and then (b) making a supercilious remark about it. The underlying message seems to be: I'm here like the rest of you, but I'm better.
We all resort to this at times, so I don't mean to be personally critical; but because it negates the kind of conversation that we're trying for here, it's within scope of moderation to ask people not to do it.
https://archive.ph/VlBAm
tl;dr ultra processed foods and pesticides
tl; dr the first 4 sentences: Ultra-processed foods, obesity, microbial toxins and agricultural chemicals were all considered. But a clear answer remained elusive.
I would just point everyone to scientific research about smoking in 1969ties. High endorsement and no risk at all.
Current "safe" dosage on coffeine is like 8 shots a day. No side effects!
> Current "safe" dosage on coffeine is like 8 shots a day. No side effects!
Still is, since none of the side effects of caffeine could be considered "dangerous". (Unless you're taking absurdly large amounts, of course, just like anything else.)
Why did you write it as "1969ties"?
Not the commenter, but the same tobacco companies came up with many of the highly processed foods
Just because system is trying to kill u, does not mean to stop all fun.
The normalization of anabolic steroid usage is likely a large contributor to certain cancers in men.
Probably not common enough to move the needle much; they’re not _that_ normalised.
And tattoos, too.