I’m actually surprised by the placement of some of these countries. I assumed Japan would be much lower.
Maybe it is per-se. Overall the Japanese diet is substantially more healthy than the US one. However Japan is also quite a white rice heavy diet on average, so comparable to the US's preponderance for processed bread. So if you're not careful in Japan you can quite easily go days without much fibre – it is much easier to get a healthy meal in Japan, but its also easy to get poor meals in Japan (e.g. 7-11 snacks) !
However the thing about Japan is they have an aggressive annual health screening programme which is mandated by law for all employed individuals (twice per year for those working in hazardous environment).
So the more interesting question for Japan might be in relation to early diagnosis and associated outcomes. I suspect both would be materially better than in the US but I haven't gone looking for the data.
It's always a mix of the "true rate" vs screening/detection rates vs "dying of other things before detection" rate
So it's not really a surprise our food and drink quality and safety would suffer alongside that
It's probably going to get worse
Indian diets are very different from the average American diet. Loads of vegetables. Even non-vegetarians get tons of fibre and are often eating 20-30 different plants in a day. Most of it fresh too.
"The data showed that the age-adjusted incidence rate fell from 55.2 per 100,000 in 2000 to 36.7 in 2022, then rose to 38.3 in 2023."
If you would like to advance a theory that this is because of a specific environmental change, your theory should cope with the fact that the rate was MUCH higher in 2000 and the rise described here is is 2023. Increased screening is said to be a likely culprit in this case for middle-aged adult prevalence but not for older adult prevalence, because screening has increased somewhat in the middle aged groups.
I am personally dealing with colon cancer, and one of the incredibly annoying things about the awful disease is the number of truly clueless people who use it to advance some culinary agenda they believe in without evidence.
It probably is, but it could be anything. For all we know, (joke,) it could be a pesticide with traces present in salads and fresh fruit, or exposure to a cleaning chemical in public transportation.
But the bigger issue is that the people pushing these theories are pushing them on moral reasons; IE, making an unfair claim that colon cancer is on the rise because people have immoral lifestyles. IE, from eating poorly or the multitude of other holier-than-thou lifestyle claims at the tip of their tongue.
Personally, my money is that we find out that regularly holding in farts increases the probability of colon cancer, and that we need a public health campaign to fart in public.
Related, I was told by a doctor to get screened after turning 50. But a reasonable self-estimate given all my risk factors puts my chances of having colon cancer at 1 in 10000. A colonoscopy has a false positive of ~2%[0] for my demographic. Meaning if I get a positive result, it's actually ~200 times more likely that I don't have cancer. It's hard to justify a screening given those odds and the 99%+ chance I will waste my time treating and worrying about a disease I don't have. My guess is an insurance company wouldn't cover a colonoscopy for those reasons.
This isn’t some mystery, this isn’t happening in a vacuum. There are correlated trends like rising profits of the food industry, food becoming plasticized. Everyone’s fat now
Your sibling comment from 1 minute earlier:
> I am personally dealing with colon cancer, and one of the incredibly annoying things about the awful disease is the number of truly clueless people who use it to advance some culinary agenda they believe in without evidence.
There’s an overconsumption of sugar
Sugar is awesome for cancer
I will say, the drink prescribed by my own GP tasted just fine, like any electrolyte sports drink in powdered form, so I think you were unlucky there!
Although everyone’s experience varies a little - for me, the prep is quite miserable, not because of the obvious, but because I feel very dehydrated/hung over for hours during it. Conversely, a friend who has relatively regular colonoscopies doesn’t share this at all.
> The authors saw the sharpest increase in incidence rates among the 45-49-year-old age group, with an increase of 12.76% annually from 2019-2023. They said that this increase is likely driven by more people undergoing colorectal cancer screening after national recommendations lowered the age to begin screening from 50 to 45.
So the rates for 45-50 year olds can’t be directly compared in the US.
The strange part about the change in colorectal cancer rates around the world is that it’s showing a large increase in much younger people. I’ve read some studies where the sampled time period showed cancer rates declining for elderly people while they increased for very young people.
"The data showed that the age-adjusted incidence rate fell from 55.2 per 100,000 in 2000 to 36.7 in 2022, then rose to 38.3 in 2023."
Were more people fat back in 2000? Was the food worse? Though I don’t really doubt that the food industry and trends like you mentioned do contribute, that stat also seems to directly contradict the hypothesis.
That’s not how science works
Show me correlating graphs to the rise in colorectal cancer. There has to be a meta-analysis about this, my money is on food being a major contributing factor
randycupertino•48m ago
traceroute66•41m ago
And that's before we get to the subject of the US healthcare system.
Of course colorectal cancer has numerous causes but it is worth considering that when reading the somewhat clickbaity headline.
jvanderbot•37m ago
margalabargala•29m ago
While rates in the US may be rising, they are still below countries like Japan, Italy, France, and the UK.
traceroute66•24m ago
Average life expectancy in Japan is 85 with average 88 female and 82 male.
Meanwhile US is 79 (avg), 81 (f), 76 (m).
So I suspect diet and lifestyle is still more likely to kill you in the US.
hparadiz•23m ago
reenorap•15m ago
selfmodruntime•17m ago
legulere•27m ago
b800h•23m ago
gib444•21m ago
Is mostly true for the UK too
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I saw a 'diabetes isn't your fault' campaign poster at my GP surgery today. I shook my head! (no mentioning T1 vs T2, so the message is obvious)
bcvvvy•15m ago
dofm•16m ago
Probably catching more cases in screening, though.
There is an obvious factor for cases in 2023, which is that a lot of backlogged cases from 2021 and 2022 will be turning up, and the mere presence of a backlog means delayed diagnosis of newer cases. Even if COVID itself doesn't cause cancers or make them worse (and that's being studied), the pandemic did.
Aurornis•17m ago
Rates are rising in other countries, too. Global phenomenon.
The rate of cancer deaths is actually growing faster in several other regions like the UK
https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/42331356/
micromacrofoot•14m ago
“The data showed that the age-adjusted incidence rate fell from 55.2 per 100,000 in 2000 to 36.7 in 2022, then rose to 38.3 in 2023.
This is the first time that we have seen an increase in the overall rate since in more than 20 years,”
Please for the love of all things, stop the kneejerk attribution... or at least read the article first.
parineum•11m ago
The "notoriously poor lifestyle" is a oft repeated meme and you're blanket implications of "additives" being causal without naming anything specific or having any sort of evidence supplied. Relying, instead, on the common "knowledge" that's memed around the internet as being self-evident.
The US also has the best healthcare in the world, it's just expensive. People from all over the world come here for treatment.