Do you know that your diet can cause and sometimes prevent cancer?
That’s right, some foods CAN increase the risk of cancer because of the compounds.
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While some pose a small risk, other foods contain potentially dangerous, carcinogenic compounds.
Take a look at 10 foods you eat every day that can cause cancer.
— Preserved food
These include anything that is salted, pickled or smoked. Meats such as bacon, sausage, bologna, and salami are high in fat and salt. All these processed meats contain several chemicals and preservatives, including sodium nitrates, which make them, look appealing and fresh but are well-known carcinogens. Smoked meats seem to be particularly bad as the meat picks up tar from the smoking process. Pickled foods are very high in salts. They increase the risk of getting colorectal cancer and stomach cancer.
— GMO fruits
GMO fruits or non-organic fruits contain dangerous chemicals. These include herbicides and pesticides such as atrazine, thiodicarb, and organophosphates as well as high levels of plant fertilisers. These substances can cause severe damage to our organs, particularly those in the reproductive system.
— Potato chips
Potato chips aren’t just culprits that lead to weight gain. Recent studies have also linked this tempting snack to cancer. Besides being full of trans-fats which can cause high cholesterol in most people, they have excessive sodium levels which, for many people, cause high blood pressure. They also contain plenty of additives, all which are bed for your health.
— Farmed salmon
Although fresh salmon is a great item for a healthy diet, the same cannot be said for the farmed alternative. The fish are fed unnatural diets and are contaminated with chemicals, antibiotics, pesticides, and other known carcinogens. Also, farmed salmon are fed chemicals to make their meat that reddish pink color that should occur naturally but doesn’t because of the diet of chicken litter that they are fed.
— Artificial sweeteners
There is an overwhelming number of scientific evidence that points to these sweeteners causing cancer. Aspartame is broken down in the body into a deadly toxin called DKP. When your stomach processes this chemical, it in turn, produces chemicals that can cause cancer, especially brain tumors.
— Highly Processed White Flours
Mills are no longer content with waiting for their flour to whiten with time; mills now bleach flour with chlorine gas. The EPA states that chlorine gas is a dangerous irritant that is not safe to inhale and in large quantities can be lethal.
— Refined sugars
Cancer seems to love sweet things. The Nobel laureate in medicine, German Otto Warburg, back in 1931, first discovered that tumors and cancers both use sugars to “feed” themselves and/or to increase in size. If you already have a risk for cancer, it is a good idea to stay away from desserts and sweetened foods.
— Diet anything
Diet foods such as soda and even packaged, ‘healthy’ dinners contain aspartame. This makes these foods even worse than their regular counterparts. There are numerous studies showing that aspartame causes many diseases and sicknesses such as cancers, birth defects, and heart problems.
— Alcohol
Alcohol is the second leading cause of cancer. While a moderate or low consumption of alcohol can be healthy and lead to a reduced risk of heart disease, excessive drinking is known to cause heart failure, stroke, and sudden death. Moreover, it damages the liver and kidneys.
— Canned Tomatoes
Canned foods are never good for you. This is because the lining of almost all canned foods are made with a chemical called bisphenol-A, or BPA. Tomatoes are exceptionally dangerous due to their high acidity, which seems to cause BPA to bleed from the lining of the can into the tomatoes themselves.
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Cancer
Cancer is a group of diseases involving abnormal cell growth with the potential to invade or spread to other parts of the body. Not all tumors are cancerous; benign tumors do not spread to other parts of the body. Possible signs and symptoms include a lump, abnormal bleeding, prolonged cough, unexplained weight loss and a change in bowel movements. While these symptoms may indicate cancer, they may have other causes. Over 100 cancers affect humans.
Tobacco use is the cause of about 22% of cancer deaths. Another 10% is due to obesity, poor diet, lack of physical activity and drinking alcohol. Other factors include certain infections, exposure to ionizing radiation and environmental pollutants. In the developing world nearly 20% of cancers are due to infections such as hepatitis B, hepatitis C and human papillomavirus (HPV). These factors act, at least partly, by changing the genes of a cell. Typically many genetic changes are required before cancer develops. Approximately 5–10% of cancers are due to inherited genetic defects from a person’s parents. Cancer can be detected by certain signs and symptoms or screening tests. It is then typically further investigated by medical imaging and confirmed by biopsy.
Many cancers can be prevented by not smoking, maintaining a healthy weight, not drinking too much alcohol, eating plenty of vegetables, fruits and whole grains, vaccination against certain infectious diseases, not eating too much processed and red meat, and avoiding too much sunlight exposure. Early detection through screening is useful for cervical and colorectal cancer. The benefits of screening in breast cancer are controversial. Cancer is often treated with some combination of radiation therapy, surgery, chemotherapy, and targeted therapy. Pain and symptom management are an important part of care. Palliative care is particularly important in people with advanced disease. The chance of survival depends on the type of cancer and extent of disease at the start of treatment. In children under 15 at diagnosis the five-year survival rate in the developed world is on average 80%. For cancer in the United States the average five-year survival rate is 66%.
In 2012 about 14.1 million new cases of cancer occurred globally (not including skin cancer other than melanoma). It caused about 8.2 million deaths or 14.6% of human deaths. The most common types of cancer in males are lung cancer, prostate cancer, colorectal cancer and stomach cancer. In females, the most common types are breast cancer, colorectal cancer, lung cancer and cervical cancer. If skin cancer other than melanoma were included in total new cancers each year it would account for around 40% of cases. In children, acute lymphoblastic leukaemia and brain tumors are most common except in Africa where non-Hodgkin lymphoma occurs more often. In 2012, about 165,000 children under 15 years of age were diagnosed with cancer. The risk of cancer increases significantly with age and many cancers occur more commonly in developed countries. Rates are increasing as more people live to an old age and as lifestyle changes occur in the developing world. The financial costs of cancer were estimated at $1.16 trillion US dollars per year as of 2010.
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