10 CARCINOGENIC FOODS YOU EAT EVERY DAY - NUTRITION - 2024

There are carcinogenic foods that, despite their harmful effects on health, are eaten daily, such as sugary soft drinks, industrial pastries, meat, sausages, milk and others that I will mention below.

In a society like ours, where the rhythms are getting faster and faster, it is very tempting to choose a type of pre-cooked, fast and processed food.

However, in this same society, there is more and more information about the impact that what we eat daily has on the development of many diseases, including the development of tumors.

More and more is known about which are those foods that help us prevent it and lead a healthy life, and also about those that, on the contrary, are more harmful and that in the long term, can create in our body the appropriate conditions for development of various types of cancer.

In what way does what we eat interact with our body increasing or decreasing this level of risk?

Thanks to the studies of the World Cancer Research Fund (WCRF), some of the main mechanisms that govern the relationship between food and disease have been identified.

Knowing both the foods that protect us and those that put us at risk is the first step in choosing a healthy and balanced diet.

Paracelsus, a doctor and alchemist of the 16th century, said a phrase that can serve as a guide:

This means that it is the daily and constant use of some foods that increases the risk of developing some types of cancers, not the sporadic use.

It is always better to avoid its consumption when possible, to give space to a diet that is as balanced and natural as possible.

10 dangerously carcinogenic foods

Today I want to pay attention to 10 foods that are considered bad for our health because of their carcinogenic power.

1- Soft drinks and industrial fruit juices

Commercial drinks, carbonated and non-carbonated soft drinks, even fruit juices that are usually given to children for snacks, are very bad for our health if taken daily.

Why? Because they contain a very high amount of sugar.

Note that a can of Coca-Cola has 27 grams of sugar, which is equivalent to nine full teaspoons.

Why is it bad to take so much sugar? What happens in our body?

When we drink a Coke, for example, our blood sugar levels spike suddenly. This triggers the production, by our pancreas, of insulin, a hormone that plays an important role in the relationship between food and cancer.

When we produce too much insulin there is, at the same time, a high production in women of testosterone, a male sex hormone.

It also favors the production of a growth factor, called IGF-I, which works as if it were a true fertilizer for cancer cells.

Some malignant tumors, such as breast tumors, are very sensitive to the combined action of these two factors: sex hormones and growth factors.

Learning to use little sugar is the first habit that we should incorporate into our daily life as the first prevention against tumors.

Many people are unaware of the harmful effect that fruit juices also have, innocently thinking that they can replace a correct supply of fresh fruit.

Error! Industrial fruit juices, apart from having a high dose of sugar, also contain less vitamins and antioxidants compared to real fruit.

In addition, when processed, they are elaborated and modified in their original structure, many preservatives are added and they lose all the necessary nutrients to maintain a good nutritional and health state.

2- Industrial pastries

I mean all processed products both sweet (donuts, muffins, cookies…) and salty (crackers, chips, cookies…).

The reasons for considering them enemies of our health lies in their content of:

- refined flours

- hydrogenated fats

- preservatives

All processed foods are made with white flour, including the regular bread that we usually buy at the bakery.

White flour is like this because it has gone through an industrial process called refining, in which the external part is removed from the cereal (in this case wheat), which is the one that contains fiber and micronutrients (antioxidants, vitamins, minerals).

Micronutrients have important functions: they improve immune defenses, reduce inflammatory processes and protect cells from free radicals.

In addition, the fiber contained in whole grains favors the proper functioning of the digestive system, protecting us from cardiovascular diseases and colon cancer. At the end of this process, the cereal is only left with starch (sugar) and proteins.

The result of all this is that the food in question almost completely loses its nutritional value, acting in our body as a triggering factor for the entire insulin process that I told you about above.

All industrial products, both sweet and salty, also have in common the presence of many hydrogenated fats or trans fats. As the name suggests, they are fats that form when vegetable oil hardens in a process called hydrogenation.

These types of fats do not exist in nature and are harmful to health because they can raise the levels of bad cholesterol in the blood and can also lower the levels of good cholesterol (HDL). They also alter the permeability of fluidity and the permeability of cell membranes and favor the formation of free radicals.

These fats are found in most commercial baked goods (fried bagels, cupcakes, and cookies), processed foods, and some margarines.

Many advertisements want us to believe that margarine, for example, is lighter and healthier than butter, without reporting the high presence of trans fats.

It is important to read the Nutrition Facts labels on foods, which will help you know what types of fat they contain and in what amount.

Finally, we must not forget the high presence of preservatives that abound in all types of processed and industrial foods.

Not all of them are toxic and harmful to health, however others (benzoic acid and its salts known as parabens) are if taken in large quantities.

3- Meat

You hear more and more about the toxicity of meat, especially red meat. But why is it better to avoid it? The answer is very simple.

First, the meat we eat today is not the same as what we ate 50 years ago. By this I mean that industrial meat production encourages a system of raising animals (which we will later eat) that is unhealthy and balanced.

The meat that fills our supermarkets comes from animals that have been given hormones and antibiotics and, when we eat it, we take these substances as well.

Red meat is also rich in saturated fat. These fats increase the risk of cancer because they make you fat and, in large amounts, make it difficult for insulin to work properly.

Another factor that makes meat dangerous is the way we cook it, which turns out to be decisive. Meat is usually cooked using high temperatures (oven, barbecue, grill, boiled), which cause the formation of dangerous substances such as heterocyclic amines, which are considered highly carcinogenic and related to bowel and breast cancer.

On the other hand, the fumes generated when the fat droplets fall, release highly carcinogenic volatile compounds (aromatic hydrocarbons) such as benzopyrene, impregnating the food.

The combination of heat, smoke and meat also produces dioxins, another carcinogen.

These substances are also found in roast chicken and grilled fish, accumulating in the most superficial part. For this reason it is very important to always remove the skin from chicken and fish.

4- Sausages

You have already heard the news several times that cold meats (chorizo, salami, sausage, ham, etc.) are highly carcinogenic.

The reason lies in the substances that are used to preserve them, being one of the most powerful known carcinogens. We are talking about nitrates and nitrites.

Nitrates are normally quite harmless, but they can be transformed into niritos, substances that have the ability to stick to hemoglobin, making it unable to carry oxygen in the blood.

Nitrites also have the ability to react with amines, substances contained in proteins, giving rise to highly carcinogenic substances called nitrosamines.

5- milk

Milk has always been associated with the idea of ​​health, growth and well-being, being a reality for a child in the first months of his life.

However, for an adult, milk is not as beneficial as we think. Several studies have shown that it increases the production of the growth factor IGF-I, responsible for the proliferation of cancer cells.

It must be borne in mind that humans are the only mammal that continues to drink milk as an adult.

However, as nature is very wise, the production of the enzyme lactase, responsible for the digestion of lactose (the sugar in milk), decreases or disappears with age. This is the reason why many adults are lactose intolerant: the activity of this enzyme is simply very low.

Milk also, although it has a great contribution of calcium, if it is consumed in excess it promotes the natural pH of our body to become more acidic due to the contribution of animal proteins.

This triggers a mechanism that our body activates so that the pH returns to its normal value. How? Using bone calcium as a pH regulator, causing long-term osteoporosis.

6- Fried

During the frying process, a highly toxic and carcinogenic substance called acrylamide is formed, which gives food its typical golden appearance.

Acrylamide is also formed in other types of cooking, such as oven cooking or grilling.

Other dangerous substances, which are formed when we fry, are aldehydes. These toxic compounds appear in some oils when they are heated to frying temperature. For this reason it is very important not to reheat the oils that we have previously used, being very careful not to generate smoke when we heat them.

In fact, aldehydes are also present in oil fumes and it is very easy to incorporate these substances into our body simply by inhaling them.

The results of many studies reveal that sunflower and flax oils, especially the former, are the ones that generate the most amount of toxic aldehydes and in less time.

On the contrary, olive oil, which has a higher concentration of monounsaturated acids (such as oleic), generates less and later these harmful compounds.

7- Light foods

By this I mean all products where the writing "Light" or "Sugar free" appears.

It is very easy to fall into the trap that these foods are healthier than those with sugar, due to all the mechanisms that I have explained to you before. However, this is not the case.

Diet drinks, for example, contain chemicals such as artificial sweeteners (saccharin, aspartame) that have a harmful impact on our health, because they can cause metabolic alterations that cause an increase in blood sugar (blood sugar concentration).

As I told you at the beginning of this article, high blood sugar is associated with the sudden and massive production of insulin, which, in turn, is connected with the production of hormones related to the proliferation of cancer cells.

A bad habit of the modern society in which we live is the uncontrolled consumption of diet drinks, with "zero" calories.

Recent studies have linked colon cancer to its consumption, especially in obese people.

8- Microwave popcorn

Popcorn is not a risky food. However, those that come in bags ready to be heated in the microwave, if they are dangerous.

The bag that most varieties of microwave popcorn come in is filled with perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA).

This chemical is the same toxic material found in Teflon pots and pans. It can remain in the environment and in the human body for long periods of time.

Several experiments on laboratory animals have shown that this chemical, once heated, is linked to infertility, cancer and other diseases.

9- Canned

Who doesn't buy canned food? It is very comfortable, ready to use and keeps over time. The problem with this type of food can be contaminated by many chemical compounds contained in the walls of the cans.

For example, most of those that preserve legumes (lentils, beans, chickpeas), have a coating of a resin that contains the carcinogenic Bisphenol A.

It is advisable to choose foods preserved in glass jars and avoid buying cans.

10- Alcohol

The base molecule of all alcoholic beverages is ethanol, which is characterized by its high toxicity and carcinogenicity.

When we have a drink, ethanol is absorbed very quickly by our body: 5% in the mouth, 15% in the stomach and 80% in the small intestine.

When the consumption of two glasses a day for men and one for women is exceeded, it has been proven that the risk of developing cancer increases, especially of the digestive system.