this is just a hunch, the explosion of cancer in the west,along with sugar blood levels etc, seems to me part of the diet. the mass production of food, processed to meet the demand for cheaper food, esp meat, could be a major factor, i would welcome an expert view, for i am only drawing a conclusion from a non scientific background.
Uh...what you propose is not much more than a guess, sorry. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Cancer is a complex group of illnesses with many and varied causes. You can get primary liver cancer from applying coal oil creosote to your skin. You can get lung cancer from smoking cigarettes. You can get ovarian or prostate cancer from a simple mistake during cellular mitosis. One cancer is caused by the benzene being filtered out in your liver, one cancer is caused by methylation of lung tissue exogenomic switches and one cancer is caused by an unfortunate genetic mutation, a byproduct of normal aging. None of those examples are caused by 'cheap food'. Those are just 3 examples of the many different types of cancer we suffer from, there are a vast many others and each has its own distinct cause. Further, here in the West we are able to figure out that a person has cancer. That gives us numbers to work with and to look at. In many third world countries people just get sick and then they die. Who knows why? Maybe it was an evil spirit or a curse or he/she ate some bad monkey meat. Anyway, there are no numbers, no C.O.D. and they are just buried in the family plot out back. Try Googling "cancer" for further information on this topic. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
tx, i find this a disburbing illness, and have avoided research partly through apprehension, nice to see someone talk freely about it. best wishes
Would you be so kind as to cite that "study" you refer to? Also, would you please be so kind as to define exactly what you mean by "trans body fat"? Many of us here would appreciate that, thanks. :wave:
Your point is taken BUT I would point out that you can pick any topic you wish and the conclusion you desire and there has been a "study" done somewhere which "proves" exactly that.
Surely the increase in cancer ("explosion"?) is due mainly to us (a) living longer and (b) getting better diagnosis, isn't it? It has always seemed to me that the notion that it is somehow a product of modern living is likely to be bunk. The fact that we can now attribute a number of cancers to specific agents may make some people imagine that there was a golden era when people didn't get cancer. But I bet that is not so, except in the trivial sense that if you died at 30 of pneumonia or a septic tooth, then you hadn't had much time to get cancer. From this viewpoint it always annoys me to read in the media that such and such a medical treatment for fatal conditions has "saved" such and such number of lives. It feeds the delusion that if all such conditions could be treated then we would be immortal. This is obviously an unattainable goal, i.e. you have a ballon-squeezing problem. Everyone has to die sometime, of something. So for example, if you treat strokes and heart disease then cancer death rates will rise. Re processed meat, I think one has to remember that this is nothing new. People have preserved meat with salt and saltpetre (sodium nitrate) for hundreds of years. In fact I bet in some countries they ate a lot more than we do today, since they had no refrigerators and preserved meat would be the only meat you had, a lot of the time. In short, I think we should all relax a bit.
I wonder though , through my preliminary research on B-vitamins whether the lack of efficient amounts of this complex , together , could be a contributing factor We know better now how important these vitamins are , to al sorts of metabolic systems in the body than we have before Don't get wrong food and the type of foods are of course important But my appreciation of the B-vitamin complex has been an eye opener
I know you have a bee in your bonnet about this but I am really sceptical that many of us are B-vitamin deficient, given that the dietary sources of them are so numerous and widely consumed, viz. they are concentrated in meat, liver and meat products, and other sources include potatoes, bananas, lentils, and beans. What evidence is there of significant B-vitamin deficiency in the affluent nations of the world?
The thing is though , while we may get enough of this or that B-vitamin , is that we now know that they work in concert with each other and they are water soluble , we pee them out all the time , everyday Meaning that they need to be replenished every day and that to have one B-vitamin yet not the others in the required amount throws our system out of wack so to speak So while we can , as you say get them through diet , it is difficult to be consistent everyday with the balance of the full spectrum of the B-complex So while a I supplement with a vitamin tablet , I also take a 100mg B-complex , so everyday I get 150mg of B-vitamins
Well, we do actually eat every day, don't we? But each to his own, I suppose. Myself, I think it is verging on the neurotic to take pills unless a doctor tells you you are ill. It's a waste of money and leads to self-obsession about health.
Well, the OP's hypothesis is that processed foods cause cancer. While this may or may not be true, it is not exclusive. That means - as I mentioned above - that cancer is many different diseases and has many differing causes. Since we have found dinosaur fossils dating back more than 65 million years ago with bone cancers in them we can be assured that our diet is not the only cause of such, nor is our contemporary society. That latter is the object of great suspicion for many people in an effort understand a frightening, often fatal set of diseases. My point is that this is in error, cancer has many causes, has affected many different creatures throughout history, many whom lived long before we humans we around to mess things up. I must point out that if we are looking to actually do something about things that cause cancer, we should not smoke, consume alcohol in moderation and force those that burn coal to clean the exhaust before they dump it into the atmosphere as that contains things like mercury, lead, uranium, radium and polonium that are part of the chemical composition of the coal. That black carbon in diesel smoke is also a potent carcinogen - one of the ones our children are most exposed to here in the US, from school buses. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! River has a valid point in that a lack of B vitamins - or many other nutrients - can be detrimental to our health. I agree that we should take pains to assure ourselves of a healthy diet and supplement that as needed. As many of us are aware, I would add in regular exercise as well, for the usually - stated reasons.
