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A doctor has made a worrying claim that ‘every new patient’ at his cancer clinic is under the age of 45 as he seems to blame one thing.
Dr Nicholas DeVito is an oncologist from Duke University in North Carolina, US, and says he’s seen a real switch up in the demographic of patients over recent years.
Now to be clear, there is no single cause for cancer. Instead, it’s believed that the interaction of various factors can lead to the disease. But there are factors that can increase the risk to someone's health, like smoking or being obese.
And for DeVito, he reckons there’s a pretty major thing that all these young new patients at his clinic have in common.
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Based on what the doctor is seeing each day, the data he is analysing and the conversations he has with patients, it’s the rise of junk food diets he blames.
DeVito explains that gastrointestinal cancers are on the rise among people under 50 years old and ‘particularly in bile duct and stomach cancer, the rate increases with each younger generation’.
He wrote for STAT News: “Food can play a major role here, making one’s knowledge of ingredients, the American food system, and how what they eat affects their body critical for decreasing cancer incidence.”
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The expert says ultra-processed foods has ‘emerged as a potential cause for gastrointestinal cancers’ as they represent up to nearly three-quarters of what Americans are eating.
DeVito went on to slam: “A lack of regulation in the US has allowed additives that are 'generally recognised as safe' to flood the food system.
"This differs from the European Union, where ingredients need to demonstrate safety before consumption.
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"Ultra-processed foods are prominently displayed on grocery store end caps and gleefully (and sometimes deceptively) advertised.”
He believes a ‘collective effort’ can help reduce deaths related to ultra-processed foods although it is ‘no small feat’.
Devito said: “The desire to protect Americans from substances that cause cancer and other diseases should transcend party affiliation and political motivation to overcome industrial lobbying efforts.
"This was possible with tobacco, and it is possible with food.
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“To be sure, this will require Americans to make different choices about what they eat to prioritise their health over the profit of corporations and, at times, even their own convenience."
So, in the long run, the doc hopes that later in his career, he will eventually practice in a era where the US ‘has turned the tide against early-onset gastrointestinal cancers and few, if any, of my patients are under age 50’.
Jess Battison