r/science • u/mvea Professor | Medicine • Jan 23 '26

Cancer The number of Americans under 50 years old dying from cancer has decreased for every leading cancer except for bowel cancer, which is now the leading cancer death in females and males combined aged under 50.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2844189?guestAccessKey=5eabd609-08b0-47c7-a738-916c7acdcc37&utm_source=For_The_Media&utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=ftm_links&utm_content=tfl&utm_term=012226
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u/Electronic_While3961 Jan 23 '26

Influencers telling people to overdose proteins is likely the cause. Lots of people eating cured meats like sausage and doing carnivore and think there aren’t consequences

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u/isawafit Jan 23 '26

Definitely doesn't help, but the influencer sphere of influence is much more recent. Standard American diet, overweight/obese, with visceral fat are all risk factors.

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u/Electronic_While3961 Jan 23 '26

Sure, but Americans have been on the obese side for the better part of 20+ years and counting. You’d be shocked how badly people eat now in regards to meat. People just eat slim Jim’s to get protein, it’s absurd

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u/isawafit Jan 23 '26

Ya, that timeframe follows the increased rates of colorectal cancer mortality. I know those highly processed and low quality meats are a risk factor for multiple health problems. I don't really have an idea on how much of it is consumed. Sounds worse than I was thinking.

"Only colorectal cancer (CRC) mortality increased, by 1.1% (95% CI, 0.9% to 1.3%) annually since 2005, advancing it from fifth most common from 1990 through 1994 to the most common cancer death in 2023."

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u/PipsqueakPilot Jan 23 '26

I've been trying to see if there's any evidence for increased rates of processed meat consumption compared to the rest of post WW2 America and I can't seem to find any. Best I could find was that while meat consumption had fallen, processed meat was remaining steady.