It’s sad but real, for us, many of the best tasting foods are the worst.
That’s because they’re designed artificially to pump up the tastes that we naturally crave – sugar and salt – to levels that’re never present in nature.
In other situations, the rising or packaging processes are the ones that cut corners and endanger the safety of consumers.
Don’t let the world’s megafood producers mess around with the health of your children!
Check our list of 15 cancers that cause food to be avoided, or at least eaten in moderation.
Microwave popcorn
Popcorn is usually a fairly safe snack, and it’s just too bad that it really gets incredibly unhealthy by the most convenient way to pop.
The explanation is that a chemical called perfluorooctanoic acid (PFOA) lines certain microwave containers.
Many studies have revealed that eating PFOA can cause kidney, lung, liver, pancreatic and testicular cancers.
Soda
You should know that soda is not the healthiest in general due to extremely high sugar levels, which leads to weight gain, inflammation and insulin resistance.
But you may not have realized that soda often contains artificial colorings and chemicals such as 4-methylimidazole derivatives (4-MI), which are believed to increase the risk of cancer.
Canned foods
The problem with food canned is stockpiling. Nearly all aluminum cans are filled with bisphenol-A, or in short, BPA which causes cancer.
Tomatoes and other high-acidity foods are especially harmful to consume from a can since the acid appears to leech BPA directly into the food at high levels. Buy fresh or frozen items, unless the can is labelled as BPA-free.
Potato chips
Not only are chips exceedingly high in fat and sodium, they also contain artificial flavors, preservatives, and food colors that the body just can’t recognize as food.
The method of preparation – frying at high heat – achieves that desirable crispy texture but also creates acrylamide, which is a recognized carcinogen that’s also found in cigarettes.
Processed, smoked, and red meats
This list contains such items as beef, hamburgers, hot dogs, bacon, sausage, and meat for lunch.
Processed meats are an concern as they contain preservatives such as sodium nitrate which is perfect to keep the product looking fresh but may cause cancer.
Smoked meat is harmful because it takes on tar while smoking!
And red meat in general has been shown to increase the risk of cancer by as much as 22 per cent in studies.
Farmed salmon
In most fish your body needs the safe Omega-3 fats, but farmed salmon are fed an unhealthy diet full of pesticides, chemicals, antibiotics and other established carcinogens.
As a result, their meat is full of PCBs, mercury and dioxins that cause cancer. Unfortunately, today nearly 60 percent of the salmon are farmed in the markets.
Look for labels explicitly designating wild-caught sockeye salmon to be healthy.
Hydrogenated oils
Vegetable oil sounds like something that would be safe, but the problem is that it is obviously difficult to extract it from its source.
What makes it hydrogenated is the chemical extraction process, and then the oil is further colorized and deodorized to make it appear good to humans.
Hydrogenated oils can be used in a lot of processed foods to keep them fresher longer, but they affect the structure and durability of the cells in the body which can cause cancer.
White flour
The process of refining which makes white meal destroys most of the nutrients naturally contained in the grains.
Worse, mills then whiten the flour by bleaching it with chlorine gas, a chemicals which are lethal in large quantities.
The final product has an exceptionally high glycemic rate, which raises blood sugar and insulin levels.
This condition is thought to directly feed cancer cells in the body, as tumors depend on bloodstream sugars.
GMO foods
Genetically modified foods are engineered to be more resistant to pests in a laboratory, and to stand up to intact shipping.
No research on how safe (or not) these foods are to humans, however. We do know that all of the participants produced pre-cancerous cell growth during the first 10 days of research in a recent study with rats.
Nearly all grains (soybeans, wheat, and corn) are GMOs in America but they have been banned by several countries in Europe.
High fructose corn syrup
Simply put, this sweetener is the favorite food of cancer cells. Consuming a lot of it may not cause cancer, but it does allow it to proliferate and grow quickly.
Refined sugar in general and HFCS in particular is loaded into most packaged food at an unconscionable level.
Protect yourself by cooking and baking at home so that you can control the added sugar and replace it with healthier alternatives wherever possible.
Artificial sweeteners
Made specifically to help people lose weight, these sugar substitutes don’t even do that. They do NOT control blood sugar, and also keep your body from being able to accurately measure daily calorie consumption.
Which in turn makes you crave more sweets. Eventually, the chemicals in artificial sweeteners, in particular aspartame, transform into a lethal toxin in the body called DKP.
During digestion, DKP releases additional chemicals which cause cancer.
Alcohol
Low intake is all right but it has been shown that too much alcohol raises the risk of mouth, esophagus, liver, colon, rectum, and breast cancer. Indeed, alcohol use was believed to be the world’s second-largest cause of cancer (the first use of tobacco).
And sorry ladies, but after a menopause the risk seems to go up. Stick to just 1 glass a day.
Non-organic fruits and veggie
Traditionally grown fruit is tainted with harmful pesticides such as atrazine, thiodicarb and organophosphates.
Atrazine is a drug which is known to cause significant human health and reproductive problems.
Its use in European countries is forbidden by law but still used everyday in the US.
Unfortunately, not all chemical traces are eliminated from washing products, so it’s better to buy organic where you can.
Pickled foods
Usually pickled foods are cured using a mixture of nitrates or nitrites, salt, and vinegar.
Artificial colouring can also be applied. Though vinegar itself has some healthy qualities, high salt levels and nitrates / nitrites are very bad for your health in pickled foods.
Regular pickled food consumption has been related to increased risk of colorectal and stomach cancers.
Hot drinks
At this point you might feel discouraged that many of your favorite foods are on the cancer-causing list, so let’s wrap up with something that’s easy to avoid!
Recent studies have shown that drinking very hot drinks on a regular basis can harm your esophagus and cause cancer of the throat.
How hot will it be? Scientists claim about 65 C (149 F), which leads one to wonder why do we even drink hot beverages?
Conclusion
Unfortunately, many of these cancer-causing foods are in fact ingredients present in a lot of items that we consume daily.
Thinking about avoiding them can be daunting, particularly the comfort foods which seem to help soothe the stresses of everyday life.
Yet be assured that it only takes a short period of healthy eating to feel much better, and you will eventually find that your body will no longer even handle the bad stuff.
