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With cancer cases rising, some experts say there’s no better time to avoid junk food and processed meat.
“We advise that people eat less overly processed, high-in-saturated fat, sugar and salt food,” Matthew Lambert, a nutritionist and the health information and promotion manager at the World Cancer Research Fund, told the Daily Mail this week, according to the New York Post.
“This includes food like cakes, biscuits, pastries, (chips), sugar-sweetened drinks and fast food like pizza and burgers,” Lambert said.
Cancer has reportedly been hitting young people hard, especially adults in their 30s.
“It’s been pretty alarming to all of us,” Dr. Coral Olazagasti, assistant professor of clinical medical oncology at the University of Miami Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, told the Post in April.
“In the past, you would think cancer was a disease of the elderly population,” she added. “But now we’ve been seeing trends in recent years of people getting diagnosed with cancer earlier and earlier.”
While there are many factors, ultra-processed food and processed meat have drawn significant scrutiny.
Speaking to the American Society of Clinical Oncology last year, professor Charles Swanton said research has shown that sometimes early-onset bowel cancer can be “initiated” by gut bacteria that’s more prevalent in those whose diets are low in fibre and high in sugar.
“What we are seeing in some studies is some tumors from patients with early-onset colorectal cancer harbour mutations that might be initiated by these microbial species,” said Swanton, oncologist and chief clinician at Cancer Research UK.
It’s thought that these mutations diminish the body’s ability to fight pre-cancerous cells.
Ultra-processed foods include packaged goods, drinks, cereals and ready-to-eat products that contain colours, emulsifiers, flavours and other additives. These foods are typically high in sugar, saturated fat, salt and devoid of vitamins and fibre.
A recent study suggested that these foods make up an estimated 73% of the U.S. food supply, and that the average American adult gets more than 60% of their daily calories from them.
“These types of food have no fibre and contain virtually no essential nutrients. They should only be eaten occasionally and in small amounts,” Lambert said.
Recent research reported that people who eat 10% more UPFs (ultra-processed foods) than others have a 23% higher risk of head and neck cancer.
A junk food diet was also linked to a 24% higher risk of cancer of the esophagus, the tube connecting your throat to your stomach, which is the sixth most common cause of cancer-related death worldwide, according to the Cleveland Clinic Journal of Medicine.
The UN’s International Agency for Research on Cancer has classified processed meat as “carcinogenic to humans” and notes that there is “sufficient evidence from epidemiological studies that eating processed meat causes colorectal cancer.”
The increased cancer risk may be caused by nitrates within the meat that combine with compounds in the body to damage cells, experts believe.
Research in 2015 suggested that people who eat red and processed meat daily are 40% more likely to get bowel cancer compared to those who eat it once a week or less.
“Consumption of foods containing nitrate or nitrite preservatives, smoked or charred foods, and red meat have clear associations with cancer risk,” Dr. Nicholas DeVito, an assistant professor of medical oncology at Duke University Medical Center, wrote in a “letter to the editor” submission to STAT News published recently.
DeVito shared that most of his new patients have been under 45.
He blames poor dietary choices, like “fried foods, red meat and sugary drinks” for this troubling trend.