Cancer In The 1800s

Cancer was not used as a casual medical term in the 1990s, with only one in five individuals contracting cancer. Unfortunately, that number has increased in the last few years to one in three, with reports predicting that number will increase to one in two individuals contracting cancer by 2020 (Faguet, 2005). The rate by which this deadly disease has grown in the past seventy years is astonishing, but what are the causes behind this raging epidemic? The most immediate causes relate to diet, exercise, and the environment. Americans increased their sugar consumption from 12 pounds of refined sugar per person in the 1800s to 154 pounds per person in the 2000s (Cooper, 2013). While sugar does not directly cause cancer, consuming excessive amounts of sugar can lead to obesity, which increases the risk of contracting 13 different types of cancer. …show more content…
The World Health Organization classified processed meats as a Group 1 carcinogen; meaning there is strong evidence that consuming excessive amounts of processed meat does cause cancer (Walker, 2012). At the start of World War II, pesticides were introduced into the American diet and have been stimulating the growth of existing tumors ever since. According to the Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), Americans have over 100 toxic chemicals in their blood and urine, along with high levels of pesticide residue (Walker, 2012). These factors, combined with extremely decreased levels of physical activity, cause the death of 7.5 million people per year and continue to dumbfound a society desperate to change these outrageous statistics but puzzled on how to change their cancer-causing