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A new study finds that compared to people born around 1950, when colorectal cancer risk was lowest, those born in 1990 have double the risk of colon cancer and quadruple the risk of rectal cancer.
The study is led by American Cancer Society scientists and appears in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute. It finds colorectal cancer (CRC) incidence rates are rising in young and middle-aged adults, including people in their early 50s, with rectal cancer rates increasing particularly fast. As a result, three in ten rectal cancer diagnoses are now in patients younger than age 55.
To get a better understanding, investigators led by Rebecca Siegel, MPH of the American Cancer Society used "age-period-cohort modeling," a quantitative tool designed to disentangle factors that influence all ages, such as changes in medical practice, from factors that vary by generation, typically due to changes in behavior. They conducted a retrospective study of all patients 20 years and older diagnosed with invasive CRC from 1974 through 2013 in the nine oldest Surveillance, Epidemiology, and End Results (SEER) program registries. There were 490,305 cases included in the analysis.
The study found that after decreasing since 1974, colon cancer incidence rates increased by 1% to 2% per year from the mid-1980s through 2013 in adults ages 20 to 39. In adults 40 to 54, rates increased by 0.5% to 1% per year from the mid-1990s through 2013.
Also at The New York Times
Study: Colorectal cancer incidence patterns in the United States, 1974-2013; J Natl Cancer Inst (2017) 109(8): DOI: 10.1093/jnci/djw322
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Zz9zZ on Wednesday March 01 2017, @05:06PM (12 children)
So the real question is what systemic change happened to the food system in the 80s? That decade saw the rise of corporate dystopias where CEOs realized that their corporations were so big that cutting a small corner here and there could net them millions of dollars personally. Most of these corners were/are cheaper processing and manufacturing methods. We have more packaged foods than ever, perhaps some common preservatives are now overly abundant in our diets? Or some other factor? Common pesticides? A non-food possibility, the rise of the office job! Sitting all day is not good for bowel function.
Thoughts?
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 3, Interesting) by c0lo on Wednesday March 01 2017, @05:27PM (1 child)
Not even needed to consider the preservatives. Highly refined food with lack of fibre will guarantee a... ymmm... queer** colon flora.
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** classical sense of the word - odd, strange, bizarre. As that flora will fuck with your colon lining, so you may add some modern sense to the word.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Wednesday March 01 2017, @07:05PM
A good possibility.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 4, Interesting) by infodragon on Wednesday March 01 2017, @07:07PM
The change from classic coke to new coke back to classic hid the change in classic coke from using "normal" sugar to high fructose corn syrup (HFCS).
This has been a pattern everywhere, what doesn't have HFCS?
It was this period that saw a dramatic increase in HFCS and also the rise of the corn lobby and such... It's cheaper than regular sugar so falls in line with big corps making tiny changes realizing huge profits. Just thought I'd hand you a concrete example!
Don't settle for shampoo, demand real poo!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by WillR on Wednesday March 01 2017, @07:45PM
(Score: 2) by turgid on Wednesday March 01 2017, @09:10PM
Video games? Sitting on the couch all day, that and video recorders.
I refuse to engage in a battle of wits with an unarmed opponent [wikipedia.org].
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 01 2017, @10:04PM (2 children)
(Score: 2) by Zz9zZ on Wednesday March 01 2017, @10:50PM (1 child)
Corporate cost cutting has led to a ton of questionable methods, specifically you should recall the outrage over the pink slime "meat" of fast food burgers. The study consists of diagnosed cases, so the only way enhanced testing would factor into this is if people in the 70's were dying from such cancer and no one figured out the cause of death. Since the increase was strongest in younger adults this does not seem likely, if someone died of cancer in their 20s/30s I'm sure the coroner would find out it was cancer. Untreated it is a pretty brutal and quick disease.
Again you just want to grind your axe because you don't like hearing potentially negative comments about how large corporations are harming the public. You raise reasonable but usually false flags, in this case I feel perfectly fine saying observational bias is not the problem. In fact, I think you're trying to say "incomplete/inaccurate data" and not "observational bias", and as I indicated above the data is pretty easy and accurate to gather even for those primitive 1970s docs.
~Tilting at windmills~
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday March 01 2017, @11:06PM
so the only way enhanced testing would factor into this is if people in the 70's were dying from such cancer and no one figured out the cause of death.
Or they died of something else first. Let's keep in mind that cancer doesn't instantly cause health problems. It is routinely possible now to detect slow growing cancerous growths decades before it can impact someone's health. And if they die of something else before the cancer is even detectable using 1950s technology, then we have a case which 1950 era medicine would have outright ignored.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Runaway1956 on Thursday March 02 2017, @03:06AM (3 children)
A word can make a big difference. "Packaged" foods is neither good nor bad. Most food has almost always been sold in packages, of one type or another, even if it was tossed into a burlap sack for easy transport. I think you meant "processed" foods. That generally refers to ready-to-eat or heat-and-eat foods. Processed foods applies to the recent CBC article about chicken in Subway restaurants which contain half or less real chicken. The chicken is processed into some kind of bland paste, mixed with soybean, salt, and whatever other additives Subway chooses to use, and you really have no idea what you're eating. Such foods have reduced nutritional value, if they have any value at all. TV dinners have been around for a long time. They have a reputation for being bland, and lacking in nutrition. It doesn't HAVE to be that way. A company CAN package a TV dinner containing good, wholesome, unadulterated food - but it's so very tempting to cut those corners, and save a quarter of a penny on each item in the tray. It's even more tempting to get wild, and save a whole dollar on each tray.
I do believe that many home makers today only buy processed foods when they go shopping. It's so much TROUBLE to actually prepare and process your own meal from basic ingredients, like beef, potatoes, rice, raw carrots, celery, flour, herbs, real spices, etc. Much easier to toss some fake Mexican entree into the microwave, obvlivious to what the contents might be. The package says "beef and cheese" - but who measures how much beef, and how much cheese is actually in your 12 ounce serving? Maybe you got 5 ounces of beef, and 5 ounces of cheese - or maybe you only got an ounce of beef and cheese combined. "Natural and artificial flavorings" can convince you that some rolled up mud is a beef and cheese burrito.
(Score: 1) by anubi on Thursday March 02 2017, @10:56AM
My guess is the food companies will use these flavorings and texturings to take something like soy and pass it off as meat, kinda like a previous story here about Subway doing funny things with what looked like a chicken patty.
My own feeling is as long as its some perfectly plausible food dressed up and sauced to imitate something else, that's fine. Just label what you did accurately. I would likely find a good meat substitute actually preferable to the real thing, as I understand steaks aren't really all that good for me, but boy do I love a good meat burrito! Make something that tastes that good, but make it out of some textured vegetables? great! Make some for me. I already know a lot of my "dairy" stuff is made out of sawdust, but as long as it is harmless ( and might be beneficial as a fiber ), so be it. However you can keep your hydrogenated vegetable oil... back to the lab on that one.
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday March 02 2017, @03:16PM (1 child)
True. However, is "dirt" good or bad? http://www.tallinnrestaurantweek.ee/?restaurant=kakskokka&lang=en I need to know before I decide between lunch and dinner there!
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Thursday March 02 2017, @04:34PM
The "dirt" goes right over my head - is it a language thing? The lamb rump sounds good - but it's a little far for me to drive, even if I fit pontoons on the car. Dirt, though. In limited amounts, depending on the source, I've got to say that some dirt is good for you. Get the gut flora flourishing, to avoid problems like autism. From the looks of this place, I'd say any dirt you might get with your dinner is probably good dirt. Or, you could just stop by some farm along the way, and play in the dirt with the kids?