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Comment by thelettere | Hacker News Reader

Two good referenced articles:

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/07/cancer-among-i...

http://wholehealthsource.blogspot.com/2008/07/cancer-in-othe...

As far as what they're consuming - sugar, processed oils and processed grains are the most widespread aspects of the industrialized diet, and therefore the best suspects. Try finding a processed "food" product without either sugar or an industrialized oil.

Jobs only started experimenting with weird diets after he became an adult. Also, while industrialized crap is likely the primary culprit, other things contribute - sedentary lifestyle and lacking basic necessary nutrients (Jobs experimental diets are like nothing I've ever heard of any non-industrial tribe or society eat).

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That's a blog, from 2008, with no citations itself, and no claim of original research. So essentially it's opinion. It is confusing correlation with causation. Westernisation brought "cancer diagnosis" with it. So of course cancer rates increased, because before they "just died", then they "died of cancer". The rate of cancer didn't change, the rate of diagnosed cancer did.

Your body needs sugar (through various sources like carbs, or protein)... so sure if you cutout sugar, you won't get cancer (because you will die of malnutrition).

I'm not sure what "industrialised oil" is... how does it differ from regular oil? What about it in particular that makes it carcinogenic?

Jobs also didn't have cancer until he was an adult... are you suggesting he had some how set his body up into a condition ripe for cancer to develop? That implies that if you've ever tried "industrialized food" (in your entire life) it's already over for you, so don't worry about it.

What about children born with cancer? Is that because of their mothers diet (or their mothers diet when their mother was a child herself)? Simply by following your reasoning I've just ruled out a HUGE proportion of the population who don't have to worry, because the damage is already done.

Do you have any academic sources on the subject?

There are several citations in those posts, and a bazillion in the book I posted below.

Your attitude is all wrong though, and that is what needs fixing, above and beyond your knowledge. You ask straw man questions - you know I'm talking about added sugar. As for oil, why don't you look at the label of any processed food and then do some research on how these oils are produced? You'd discover how much worse americans health has gotten as these processed oils have largely replaced butter and animal fat as sources of lipids.

Also you do not appear familiar with how nutritional studies work and the difficulties of establishing causation. You cannot simply lock someone in a room and force them to only eat certain foods, and it is really really expensive to do longitudinal studies. We really know next to nothing based on controlled experiments on chronic conditions simply because of their limitations - but you combine the correlationary studies with evolutionary theory (especially natural selection) and studies in medical anthropology (as cited in those links) and you have as clear-cut a case as you can get in nutrition.

Groups that don't eat processed crap get cancer and the metabolic syndrome in ridiculously high numbers. Groups that don't eat processed crap don't get these diseases.

Groups that don't eat processed crap, but then suddenly are introduced to sugar and flour find their chronic health conditions going to the shithole. There is not example that I know of the contrary.

That's all the proof I need.

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