Why are more people under 50 getting colorectal cancer? Scientists have clues | Hacker News Reader

Why are more people under 50 getting colorectal cancer? Scientists have clues

sciencenews.org

28 pointsmomirlan23 comments

If you read the article it's antibiotics, sweetened beverages, and metabolic syndrome. We eat too many carbohydrates and not enough fiber.

IIRC, the EPIC Oxford study showed that vegetarians had more colorectal cancer than the group of 'health food buyers'. But the all-cause mortality rate was near the same.

A typical diet that has an insane amount of processed meat containing nitrites and nitrates that form nitrosamines when cooked?

I wholly expect to die from colorectal cancer.

The worst part is how they deceptively hide the nitrites/nitrates. They extract it from celery powder or sea salt and then claim "no nitrites except those naturally occurring in the ingredients". That makes it sound like there is an ingredient that has a trace amount of preservatives, when in reality they have one ingredient that is the source of all of the preservatives, and which was only included for that reason. Even if you're being conscientious, and you're aware that preservatives can occur in natural things and be distilled from those sources, you still have to read the label like a lawyer to avoid getting dosed.

I know what it is. It's sitting on the toilet with a phone for long periods of time. Also sugar. Red meat / nitrates are out as our grandparents / great grandparents all ate this stuff like crazy.

It is quite simple. When you are buying bread at the store, what you are actually buying is poison.

Citation needed

The poster might be referring to some of the additives used in the making of American bread: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2019/may/28/bread-additi...

Now a comparison of US vs. EU cases of early onset colorectal cancer would be required.

US not in the top ten, Eastern Europe overly represented

https://www.wcrf.org/cancer-trends/colorectal-cancer-statist...

I would say in E EU white bread additives are not as much a problem as is alcohol and red meat.

> consuming fish might decrease the risk of colorectal cancer

Doesn't seem to help Norway, Portugal, Japan, Croatia, or Denmark.

Too much oil, not enough grain?

Complete hare-brained theory: Countries that eat a lot of mussels and oysters.

Maybe smoked fish, processed meat sausage and blood sausage (high haem) in Scandinavia and E. Europe.

For bad diagnosis and treatment, Barbados, Samoa and Singapore seem to be outliers.

> the additives used in the making of American bread

...but far from all US bread. You tend to find the more questionable additives in the cheapest store-bought breads. But it's also not hard to find higher-quality bread that omits them.

I don't lend that Guardian article much creedence- it uses all the standard journalism/public health tricks to make its argument.

"Potassium bromate, a potent oxidizer that helps bread rise, has been linked to kidney and thyroid cancers in rodents."

if something is "linked to ... cancers in rodents", that tells us basically nothing about its safety in the industrial process and consumption by humans.

White bread ingredients explained (Wonder bread):

https://www.730sagestreet.com/wonder-bread-ingredients/

As a kid, I would snack on wonder bread. Just the bread. No ham, no cheese, no butter, no nothing. Just plain ol' wonder bread slices. I don't know what they put in it to make it so tasty and frankly I don't want to know.

The boomers should be dropping like flies, then. And of course we starting to hit the bathtub curve.

I'm impressed that you could snack on plain wonder bread. I don't think that I could have. I got through a lot, but toasted and with peanut butter.

Because humans hadn't eaten bread before the last 30 years? Try again.

Well, we existed for 10's of thousands of years before we ate bread, so yea not 30 years, but like a long time.

I think the issue is that the bread we buy today is very different from the bread our grandparents bought. Also, we are no longer dying of many of the same illnesses that killed people in centuries past, which means we're living long enough to get knocked off by colorectal cancer.

David Mitchell's rant on bread https://youtu.be/W5bKN6xP8Kk?t=34

The actor, not the author.

The video is funny but I was hoping to hear the author’s rant on bread in his typical humble, brit filtered through Japan kind of way.

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