Fizzy drinks, ice cream and instant noodles could up your risk of LUNG cancer by 41%
SCOFFING fizzy drinks, ice cream and instant noodles could send your lung cancer risk soaring by 41 per cent, experts warn.
A major study has found people who munch the most ultra-processed foods – or UPFs – are far more likely to get the disease than those who avoid them.
Fizzy drinks have been linked to lung cancerGetty Images - Getty
GettyThe findings don’t prove ultra-processed foods cause cancer, rather that people should still try to cut down[/caption]
An international team of scientists said junk food is particularly bad for non-small cell lung cancer and the more aggressive small cell type.
Professor Sam Hare, consultant chest radiologist at the Royal Free London NHS Trust, said: “A quarter of lung cancer cases occur in non-smokers so we do need research exploring whether other factors are associated with lung cancer.”
The study tracked the diets and health of more than 100,000 adults in the US over 12 years and found 1,706 went on to develop lung cancer.
On average, people had nearly three servings of UPFs a day, but some had up to six.
The favourites across diets were soft drinks and lunch meats.
But the list also includes fried food, cakes, pastries, salty snacks, breakfast cereals, instant noodles and soups, margarine, sweets, burgers, hot dogs and pizza.
Those who scoffed the most UPFs were 41 per cent more likely to get lung cancer than those who ate the least, according to findings in Thorax.
The research team, tried to account for whether people smoked or not, but not how heavily, which could still skew the results.
They warned the findings don’t prove UPFs cause lung cancer, but said people should still try to cut down.
They wrote: “Although additional research in other populations and settings is warranted, these findings suggest the healthy benefits of limiting UPF.
“Limiting trends of UPF intake globally could contribute to reducing the burden of lung cancer.”
Prof Hare said further work was needed “to establish direct causation between UPFs and lung cancer”.
“Crucially, whilst the study does make some adjustments for smoking status, the amount of smoking is not factored in, which is known to be directly related to lung cancer development,” he said.
“Dietary habits also change considerably over the course of such long-term studies.
Lung cancer symptoms usually only emerge as the disease develops
“It’s difficult to directly conclude that lung cancer is related to the level of UPF consumption alone given it was only declared at the start of the study.
“That said, given the relative lack of info on non-smoking risk factors for lung cancer, it’s important that the scientific community does more studies like this – we need genuine evidence-based advancement in early diagnosis of lung cancer in non-smokers, but this study isn’t quite able to give us the answers yet.”
The findings come as a separate study looked at teenage smoking in the UK over 50 years.
Experts from the University of Michigan tracked rates in 16 and 17-year-olds from 1974 to 2018, and found it had dropped from 33 per cent to 12 per cent.
But in 2018, 11 per cent of older teens were vaping and those who did were far more likely to go on to smoke.
Writing in Tobacco Control, the authors said just 1.5 per cent of non-vaping teens picked up cigarettes, compared to 33 per cent of vapers.
“Tobacco control efforts should continue to focus on the prevention of general youth nicotine use and to specifically target youth who use e-cigarettes because their risk of cigarette smoking is similar to youth in the 1970s,” they wrote.
But some academics have slammed the findings, saying the conclusion is “not justified”.
WHAT IS LUNG CANCER + WHAT ARE THE 9 SYMPTOMS?
LUNG cancer is the most deadly common cancer in the UK.
It is considered a common cancer alongside prostate, breast and bowel, which together make up more than half of all new cases.
Around 49,000 people are diagnosed with lung cancer every year and 35,000 die from it.
Just one in 10 patients survive for a decade or more after being diagnosed and lung tumours make up 21 per cent of cancer deaths in the UK but only 13 per cent of cases.
The main reason that it is so deadly is that symptoms are not obvious in the early stages, which is why it’s sometimes called a ‘silent killer’.
When signs do appear they may include:
A cough that lasts three weeks or more, and may hurt
A cough that gets worse
Repeated chest infections
Coughing up blood
An ache or pain when breathing or coughing
Persistent breathlessness
Persistent tiredness
Loss of appetite
Unexplained weight loss
The NHS does not routinely screen for lung cancer but is rolling out more tests to smokers and ex-smokers at high risk, in a bid to catch it earlier. Testing may involve X-rays and chest CT scans.
Smoking is the number one risk factor for lung cancer and accounts for about 70 per cent of cases.
Risk may also be higher for people who have inhaled other fumes or toxic substances at work, such as asbestos, coal smoke or silica.
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