I've been on a health kick lately and on paper tinned sardines seem excellent. Tons of protein, calcium, omega 3, etc... You can get them packed in water or mustard or tomato sauce or olive oil if you are worried about seed oils (which I am, and lots are packed in sunflower oil). Low mercury.
Too bad that 100 grams of sardines can contain up to 30 milligrams of microplastics! Turns out that the ocean is full of plastic, which plankton eat since microplastics are just the right size for them, then the sardines eat the plankton. And then if you eat sardines... Of course most people aren't getting cancer from eating sardines, but microplastics are absolutely ubiquitous. Sardines are just a great example of a huge concentration of microplastics where you might not expect it. (Oh and don't forget the BPA in the tin's plastic lining! Oh it's BPA free? I guess they used BPC as a plasticizer... there are very few studies about BPC so I guess it must be safe!)
There was a study recently that showed fast foods contained huge amounts of phthalates - the researchers linked it to the plastic gloves that the food workers wear. Which is disgusting - why are we afraid of human skin touching our food? Do you honestly think people replace gloves more readily than they wash their hands?
All are seen as harmless and normalized. You can thank Big Sugar for that. The type and level of sugars is historically abnormal (as is the consumption of animal proteins).
https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2016/09/13/493739074...
The other most likely culprit is alcohol, but young people are drinking less of that.
I’m not saying the pesticides and preservatives don’t matter, I just doubt anything new has popped up to make things worse. It’s already been pretty bad for many decades.
In the case of Lawson, it could have been a case of genetics rather than diet; she appears relatively healthy and is very young. But these outliers aren’t unheard of, and make for a kind of shocking story when presented with statistics about cancer rates in younger adults increasing. The average age is much higher though, and the health of the average person getting these cancers is likely worse. This isn’t anything all that new, and more so a continuation of trends.
I suspect the rates of cancer we see wouldn’t have had a chance to decrease as a result. Cancer from poor nutrition is a cumulative thing, so we wouldn’t see meaningful changes from a few % decrease in alcohol consumption for many years (if at all).
This may be different in other countries too, so apologies if you aren’t thinking strictly within the North America bubble.
Mine would be colon proximity to pockets where we carry our omnipresent smartphones all day around. I think a simple test to this hypothesis is to see if there is correlation between tumor position and if the person is left or right handed, as the phone probably will be stored in a preferred side pocket, according to handedness.