A Duke University doctor said he’s never seen anything like it in his career. According to North Carolina’s Dr. Nicholas DeVito, “every new patient” with cancer who enters his clinic is younger than 45 years old.
It’s not supposed to be this way; while cancer can strike anyone at any age, it has always been far more common in older people. So what is happening? Oncologist DeVito thinks it’s down to our modern diet. After interviewing his patients and tracking their dietary habits, Dr. DeVio said the contemporary “junk food diet” is to blame. Now he wants leaders in politics and industry to wake up to the problem.
Medical studies have found a correlation between cancer diagnoses and what are known as “ultra-processed foods” or UPF. There is no agreed upon definition of what a UFP is, but most sources consider modern store-bought bread, pizza, and convenience foods to be examples of UFPs. A good rule of thumb for determining how processed a food is—that is to say, how far away from the original whole ingredients the final product is—is to read the nutrition label. If it’s paragraphs long for something like white bread and full of ingredients that sound “scientific” or are unfamiliar, that’s likely a UFP.
About 75 percent of the food eaten in the United States is considered ultra-processed. Such foods usually contain many ingredients to preserve flavor or shelf-life, and they’re not items you would find in your grandmother’s pantry or your own.
DeVito wrote an article for STAT News that argued for treating UFPs the way government and litigators have gone after tobacco companies. If officials want to “protect Americans” from things that cause cancer and other diseases, they should put their eye on UFPs, he said.
It is not known exactly why UFPs seem to do so much harm, but research points to the lengthy list of artificial ingredients and additives having a harmful effect on what’s called the “gut microbiome.” That is, the kind and quantity of bacteria in the gut necessary for optimal health. UFPs are thought to physically irritate the walls of the intestines, too, which causes chronic swelling which can predispose a person to developing cancer.
It’s not just Dr. DeVito at Duke who is seeing a “demographic swap” among cancer patients. Overall cancer deaths in young people are up 79 percent between 1990 and 2019. The number of cancer deaths in the young rose 28 percent over that period.
The fastest-growing rates are found in cancers of the prostate and throat.
And it’s not just cancer; complications of diabetes are apparently worsened by UFPs, too.
So, what to do? Think old-fashioned. If your great grandparents would not recognize what you eat as food, maybe you shouldn’t either. Aim for meals with as many whole foods as possible. For example, a meal of beef steak with a potato and broccoli is a meal made of whole foods, while a McDonalds cheeseburger and French fries is not.
