I know of two women under the age of 30 who got cancer, they were spouses/girlfriends of friends of mine. I didn't know them well personally, and only met them a handful of times at outings.
Because they weren't married yet I'm sure it's just compounding their financial struggles.
I was shocked when I heard they had cancer, I almost didn't believe it. Under 30 is such a young age to be diagnosed.
It's mostly obesity, which the article sort of mentions ("known links to obesity") but kind of obscures by saying "obesity does not fully account for the rise" and "a clear answer remained elusive." The medical establishment and journalism have found it extremely uncomfortable over the past decade to notice that obesity has negative health consequences because it might embarrass some fat people, and this is more of that. We know obesity is really bad for you, including causing higher rates of cancer. We know over what time periods young people became more obese.
Have diets really gotten noticeably unhealthier over recent decades? I'm not sure that's the case. We used herbicides and pesticides 20 years ago too, of course. It's becoming increasingly clear that fiber intake is linked to cancer rates, but again I'm not sure diets 20 years ago had higher fiber on average.
> The medical establishment and journalism have found it extremely uncomfortable over the past decade to notice that obesity has negative health consequences because it might embarrass some fat people
Maybe, or maybe it's the bottomless pockets of the sugar industry lobby.
> Have diets really gotten noticeably unhealthier over recent decades?
Diet is only one of the factors on obesity and it's health consequences, you also have stress, sleep deprivation, lack of exercises, loneliness and isolation.
Obesity indeed is a massive elephant in the room in public health discussions. And even in TFA "ultra-processed foods" are put first, which is a) just a silly category, and b) effects from poor quality nutrition are mainly via obesity.
The obesity epidemic is by far the most important public health problem in the developed world, but discussing this publicly, and thus effectively addressing it, is very difficult.
> I remember being in my 20s and not being able to sleep, but the most distracting thing I could reach for was a pile of books in my bedside table.
Back when I was young in the 90s, this was exactly how I spent the last 5-6 hours of my days, reading books in my bed until the sun came up in the morning and I actually started getting tired.
Now, I sleep much better, the bed and bedroom is limited to just two activities, sleeping and funtime with partner, otherwise I never just chill in the bed or have anything else interesting in there. And if I can't sleep, I go up again and do something else until I'm tired enough to actually lay down in the bed. Probably helps a ton, as even with the phone on the nightstand next to me, I do fall asleep relatively quick.
Lack of sleep, not because of phones but because of more demanding lives due to modern education and workplace demands. Phones might contribute too, but consider how normal it is today to work till late hours compared to previous generations.
I believe that county specific studies seem to support your thesis. For instance, countries that eat less processed food (eg Italy) and have stricter rules about pesticides didn't see an increase in stuff like colorectal cancer [1]. Some cancers incidence did grow, but others decreased keeping incidence more or less the same.
Besides all the other factors mentioned, which I think are all valid, there's also indoor air pollution from things like aerosol sprays, cleaning products, fragrance, creams, soaps, other products.
What a shame that "no definitive culprit yet" somehow becomes "nothing specific to worry about yet, carry on" instead of "we can't answer because there are too many horrifying trends all at once".
Plastics, the increase in background radiation, pesticides, and or a side effect of extra calories are all possibilities. Daily allergy medicines might also be a factor as those reduce immune response slightly.
I appreciate that comment ironically, as a concrete example of exactly how this type of conversation goes. Opinions come first, facts come later if at all, and never change the opinion.
Most people will have a pre-conceived opinion about this, just like they would have an opinion about politics. Put "Trump" or "DEI" or some other word in the title, and the exact same thing happens.
I’m not obese or overweight and while my main meals (breakfast and dinner) are generally very healthy - I can still eat a lot of trash (ultra processed)food as snacks.
One study (sorry, can't recall the source off the top of my head) claimed 20% of calories in the average U.S. diet was replaced by processed foods over that period. I'm over 50 years old, and it agrees with my own observations. Those "big gulp" beverages became popular in the 80s, and "low fat" foods just replaced fat with added sugar.
One example: long ago I used to buy Bush's baked beans in a can. They had a vegetarian version which I assumed was healthier, and it even tasted better than the original. But one day I compared the labels and found the vegetarian version had more added sugar and more calories per serving.
We were fed a massive amount of misinformation about healthy foods in the 1980s. Hopefully things will improve from now on.
Your guess is not wild at all, and the article implies that (at least until the payment popup shows up)
My grandmother used to grow her own vegetables and fruits and had a minimal chicken farm for eggs until the early 2000s, all in her regular backyard, it's not ancient history or something that required a lot of real state.
Now there's a 15-story building and no land whatsoever where her house used to be.
As a kid I used to do that with my family: Grow our own everything.
I'm currently trying to get back to it, until then I try to eat ecological and as much as I can cooked by myself. It is hard though, not everybody can aford a plot of land (ideally next to some decent sized town)
No till farming is probably helping. I learned this year what that really means by seeing farms where they spray herbicide to kill the plants,then they plant new seed while the old dead is still standing around. They then use herbicide as a desiccant to kill the plant at harvest. They probably use pesticides too. The cycle then repeats. I was so disgusted as seeing new crops sprouting amongst the dead vegetation. It must be engineered for that. I came to the inescapable conclusion that the farmers are poisoning everyone rather than have to offer real jobs to native born laborers.
Buckets of *cide, herb and insect, through the cycle. Those no till fields full of crops are some of the most disgusting things I have ever seen. That soil will have applications and applications of *cide soaked in it top to bottom. Like eating plants from a toxic waste dump.
Disgusting. That's the critical national need for glycosphate. Feeding us all engineered stuff from toxic waste dumps so farmers can not need workers or mowing and tilling equipment.
I don’t doubt what you’ve seen, and how some farmers are doing no-till.
However, there are better ways to do no-till that don’t require large herbicide input. No-till is really good for reducing the amount of water needed to farm and preserving soil structure, which is beneficial for all kinds of reasons. It’s not inherently a bad thing.
That’s how they do lentils in Canada. They use planes to spray roundup to kill the plant (because it doesn’t die naturally like it does in Europe, because of the climate), then harvest it, then sell it in Europe (without even rinsing them).
For European lentil growers it’s illegal to use roundup. But if the roundup has been applied outside of the EU it’s not toxic nor forbidden anymore and it can be eaten by humans.
That’s one of many many many examples. We live in an insane society.
This would be a great thing for all of the AI companies to devote some energy towards. Especially with their reputations in decline. Surely there must be some patterns the AIs could find if we had enough data about the people who died from cancer.
Without counting anything out it's worth saying that artificial sweeteners are some of the most-tested food ingredients because of concern about their health impacts. It's possible that we missed something, but you have to weigh that against the chance we missed something about every other possible food ingredient (all of which have been tested less).
Nah, technology advancement is full of free lunches.
It breaks our ape brain intuition that anything good must also be bad. But consider all the food tech you take for granted while singling out zero-cal sweeteners.
tl; dr the first 4 sentences:
Ultra-processed foods, obesity, microbial toxins and agricultural chemicals were all considered. But a clear answer remained elusive.
A post like this is worse than that ones that it criticizes.
You're right, of course, that commenters are idly speculating - but that's what people do in conversation: they speak from personal associations. HN is just an internet watercooler, meaning we're here for ordinary human conversation—hopefully with an accent on curiosity. It's not a scientific publication or journal, and though it's welcome to draw on such material for conversation here, it's not required.
Treating this sort of idle chat as somehow inferior and assembling it as fodder for a snarky putdown makes the conversation worse, not better. It takes things further away from the topic, it negates curiosity and interchange, and mostly it's just supercilious.
> Current "safe" dosage on coffeine is like 8 shots a day. No side effects!
Still is, since none of the side effects of caffeine could be considered "dangerous". (Unless you're taking absurdly large amounts, of course, just like anything else.)
59 comments:
Are more young people getting cancer? How much? What kinds?
Some experts weigh in: https://www.hsgac.senate.gov/subcommittees/investigations/he...
Don't forget about 5G.
PFAS
I know of two women under the age of 30 who got cancer, they were spouses/girlfriends of friends of mine. I didn't know them well personally, and only met them a handful of times at outings.
Because they weren't married yet I'm sure it's just compounding their financial struggles.
I was shocked when I heard they had cancer, I almost didn't believe it. Under 30 is such a young age to be diagnosed.
My wild guess before reading the article: unhealthy food. A big part of which is herbicides and pesticides.
I will now read the article.
It's mostly obesity, which the article sort of mentions ("known links to obesity") but kind of obscures by saying "obesity does not fully account for the rise" and "a clear answer remained elusive." The medical establishment and journalism have found it extremely uncomfortable over the past decade to notice that obesity has negative health consequences because it might embarrass some fat people, and this is more of that. We know obesity is really bad for you, including causing higher rates of cancer. We know over what time periods young people became more obese.
Have diets really gotten noticeably unhealthier over recent decades? I'm not sure that's the case. We used herbicides and pesticides 20 years ago too, of course. It's becoming increasingly clear that fiber intake is linked to cancer rates, but again I'm not sure diets 20 years ago had higher fiber on average.
> The medical establishment and journalism have found it extremely uncomfortable over the past decade to notice that obesity has negative health consequences because it might embarrass some fat people
Maybe, or maybe it's the bottomless pockets of the sugar industry lobby.
> Have diets really gotten noticeably unhealthier over recent decades?
Diet is only one of the factors on obesity and it's health consequences, you also have stress, sleep deprivation, lack of exercises, loneliness and isolation.
Obesity indeed is a massive elephant in the room in public health discussions. And even in TFA "ultra-processed foods" are put first, which is a) just a silly category, and b) effects from poor quality nutrition are mainly via obesity.
The obesity epidemic is by far the most important public health problem in the developed world, but discussing this publicly, and thus effectively addressing it, is very difficult.
I don't think the medical establishment is covering it up; if they could sell Ozempic as preventing cancer they'd jump at the idea.
My personal bugbear is the lack of sleep & entirely tied to the phone for that.
I remember being in my 20s and not being able to sleep, but the most distracting thing I could reach for was a pile of books in my bedside table.
Now, I can't sleep, there's an endless stream of things to keep me awake.
The jokes about "5G gives you cancer" is probably not as funny, if you think about the sleep you miss while you doom scroll.
> I remember being in my 20s and not being able to sleep, but the most distracting thing I could reach for was a pile of books in my bedside table.
Back when I was young in the 90s, this was exactly how I spent the last 5-6 hours of my days, reading books in my bed until the sun came up in the morning and I actually started getting tired.
Now, I sleep much better, the bed and bedroom is limited to just two activities, sleeping and funtime with partner, otherwise I never just chill in the bed or have anything else interesting in there. And if I can't sleep, I go up again and do something else until I'm tired enough to actually lay down in the bed. Probably helps a ton, as even with the phone on the nightstand next to me, I do fall asleep relatively quick.
>The jokes about "5G gives you cancer" is probably not as funny, if you think about the sleep you miss while you doom scroll.
802.11g was good enough for that, no need for 5G.
Lack of sleep, not because of phones but because of more demanding lives due to modern education and workplace demands. Phones might contribute too, but consider how normal it is today to work till late hours compared to previous generations.
I believe that county specific studies seem to support your thesis. For instance, countries that eat less processed food (eg Italy) and have stricter rules about pesticides didn't see an increase in stuff like colorectal cancer [1]. Some cancers incidence did grow, but others decreased keeping incidence more or less the same.
[1] https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/03008916241297078
Besides all the other factors mentioned, which I think are all valid, there's also indoor air pollution from things like aerosol sprays, cleaning products, fragrance, creams, soaps, other products.
What a shame that "no definitive culprit yet" somehow becomes "nothing specific to worry about yet, carry on" instead of "we can't answer because there are too many horrifying trends all at once".
Plastics, the increase in background radiation, pesticides, and or a side effect of extra calories are all possibilities. Daily allergy medicines might also be a factor as those reduce immune response slightly.
Well since we're speculating randomly I vote for
* too much rage bait videos raising rage hormones
* too much performing for social media
* suppressing expression for fear of cancellation
* exposure to too many varieties of food/cuisine
* video games
* anime
Yes, these are all tongue-in-cheek but come on, the random speculation here is all ridiculous
Why would you leave that comment?
An uninformed comment before you read the article isn't helping anyone.
I appreciate that comment ironically, as a concrete example of exactly how this type of conversation goes. Opinions come first, facts come later if at all, and never change the opinion.
Most people will have a pre-conceived opinion about this, just like they would have an opinion about politics. Put "Trump" or "DEI" or some other word in the title, and the exact same thing happens.
We are exposed to more more types of chemicals in our every day than ever before. Some offenders to me, besides herbicides and pesticides are:
[1]: ubiquitous flame retardants, which in America they put in every couch, carpet, and mattress
[2]: ubiquitous microplastics pollution,
[3]: joint effect of Obesity and Ultra-Processed Foods
[1] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_ylo=2022&q=flame+retar... [2] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_ylo... [3] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C5&as_ylo...
Wasn't microplastics just debunked as not a thing?
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2026/jan/13/micropla...
Upon reading: A bit unclear but yes it seems like unhealthy food + new microbe mutations + obesity
They talk about obesity as a separate cause than ultra processed food, I thought it was quite related, something I need to look into
I’m not obese or overweight and while my main meals (breakfast and dinner) are generally very healthy - I can still eat a lot of trash (ultra processed)food as snacks.
I’m sure that could have an effect.
Don't people eat more healthy than they did 50 years ago? Weren't microwave dinners a big thing in the 70s?
“TV” dinners were, packaged in aluminum foil. Microwaves didn’t become prevalent until perhaps the mid 80s.
ah, interesting. Ok, so TV dinners != microwave dinners, and maybe they're more healthy than microwaved dinners or food that comes in plastic.
One study (sorry, can't recall the source off the top of my head) claimed 20% of calories in the average U.S. diet was replaced by processed foods over that period. I'm over 50 years old, and it agrees with my own observations. Those "big gulp" beverages became popular in the 80s, and "low fat" foods just replaced fat with added sugar.
One example: long ago I used to buy Bush's baked beans in a can. They had a vegetarian version which I assumed was healthier, and it even tasted better than the original. But one day I compared the labels and found the vegetarian version had more added sugar and more calories per serving.
We were fed a massive amount of misinformation about healthy foods in the 1980s. Hopefully things will improve from now on.
It's an easy guess because either human genetics either radical changed or the environment did
"Silent Spring" came out over sixty years ago
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Silent_Spring
got massive coverage including a worldwide CBS News broadcast back then
Government and industry were never held to account and instead deregulated everything
We still allow leaded gas to be sprayed all around airports where everyone is exposed during travel and neighborhoods nearby
Golf Course neighborhoods are some of the highest cancer rates in the country
We've learned nothing and now the environment is so saturated with toxins that the immune system is under attack from birth
Your guess is not wild at all, and the article implies that (at least until the payment popup shows up)
My grandmother used to grow her own vegetables and fruits and had a minimal chicken farm for eggs until the early 2000s, all in her regular backyard, it's not ancient history or something that required a lot of real state.
Now there's a 15-story building and no land whatsoever where her house used to be.
As a kid I used to do that with my family: Grow our own everything.
I'm currently trying to get back to it, until then I try to eat ecological and as much as I can cooked by myself. It is hard though, not everybody can aford a plot of land (ideally next to some decent sized town)
We're speedrunning so we don't get to live in a token based reality
Of my close friends of my youth, two have died of cancer before the age of 40. Fuck cancer.
My college roommate died of cancer before 30. Fuck cancer
I'm sorry for your loss. Very similar story amongst my friend group as well. It's tragic
No till farming is probably helping. I learned this year what that really means by seeing farms where they spray herbicide to kill the plants,then they plant new seed while the old dead is still standing around. They then use herbicide as a desiccant to kill the plant at harvest. They probably use pesticides too. The cycle then repeats. I was so disgusted as seeing new crops sprouting amongst the dead vegetation. It must be engineered for that. I came to the inescapable conclusion that the farmers are poisoning everyone rather than have to offer real jobs to native born laborers.
Buckets of *cide, herb and insect, through the cycle. Those no till fields full of crops are some of the most disgusting things I have ever seen. That soil will have applications and applications of *cide soaked in it top to bottom. Like eating plants from a toxic waste dump.
Disgusting. That's the critical national need for glycosphate. Feeding us all engineered stuff from toxic waste dumps so farmers can not need workers or mowing and tilling equipment.
I don’t doubt what you’ve seen, and how some farmers are doing no-till.
However, there are better ways to do no-till that don’t require large herbicide input. No-till is really good for reducing the amount of water needed to farm and preserving soil structure, which is beneficial for all kinds of reasons. It’s not inherently a bad thing.
That’s how they do lentils in Canada. They use planes to spray roundup to kill the plant (because it doesn’t die naturally like it does in Europe, because of the climate), then harvest it, then sell it in Europe (without even rinsing them).
For European lentil growers it’s illegal to use roundup. But if the roundup has been applied outside of the EU it’s not toxic nor forbidden anymore and it can be eaten by humans.
That’s one of many many many examples. We live in an insane society.
This would be a great thing for all of the AI companies to devote some energy towards. Especially with their reputations in decline. Surely there must be some patterns the AIs could find if we had enough data about the people who died from cancer.
Yes, one good data point is pollution, which all these companies are prollific at.
If I had one unqualified guess free — and boy am I unqualified here — I’d wager it’s those „zero sugar“ stuffs.
No way you can just replace (also very very not good for you) sugar with something else and end up with all the upsides and no downsides.
Without counting anything out it's worth saying that artificial sweeteners are some of the most-tested food ingredients because of concern about their health impacts. It's possible that we missed something, but you have to weigh that against the chance we missed something about every other possible food ingredient (all of which have been tested less).
Nah, technology advancement is full of free lunches.
It breaks our ape brain intuition that anything good must also be bad. But consider all the food tech you take for granted while singling out zero-cal sweeteners.
I’m pretty sure it’s the avocado toasts.
https://archive.ph/VlBAm
tl;dr ultra processed foods and pesticides
tl; dr the first 4 sentences: Ultra-processed foods, obesity, microbial toxins and agricultural chemicals were all considered. But a clear answer remained elusive.
We can't handle the truth.
Maybe not, but please don't post unsubstantive comments to Hacker News.
A post like this is worse than that ones that it criticizes.
You're right, of course, that commenters are idly speculating - but that's what people do in conversation: they speak from personal associations. HN is just an internet watercooler, meaning we're here for ordinary human conversation—hopefully with an accent on curiosity. It's not a scientific publication or journal, and though it's welcome to draw on such material for conversation here, it's not required.
Treating this sort of idle chat as somehow inferior and assembling it as fodder for a snarky putdown makes the conversation worse, not better. It takes things further away from the topic, it negates curiosity and interchange, and mostly it's just supercilious.
I would just point everyone to scientific research about smoking in 1969ties. High endorsement and no risk at all.
Current "safe" dosage on coffeine is like 8 shots a day. No side effects!
> Current "safe" dosage on coffeine is like 8 shots a day. No side effects!
Still is, since none of the side effects of caffeine could be considered "dangerous". (Unless you're taking absurdly large amounts, of course, just like anything else.)
Why did you write it as "1969ties"?
Just because system is trying to kill u, does not mean to stop all fun.
Not the commenter, but the same tobacco companies came up with many of the highly processed foods
The normalization of anabolic steroid usage is likely a large contributor to certain cancers in men.
Probably not common enough to move the needle much; they’re not _that_ normalised.
And tattoos, too.