We all know smoking causes cancer. What else? Too much sun gives you skin cancer, right? Can you think of anything else?

It’s actually sort of difficult, if you try to identify the causes of cancer only through at media-focused lense. It’s actually fairly rare that they get into the specifics of what is causing so many millions of cancer diagnoses over the years.

But then I stumbled across this article on a website called healthable.org. I might have found one of my new favorite health info websites. This is one of the most refreshingly honest discussions of what causes cancer that I’ve ever seen. Major kudos to author Ebiojo David.

Pay attention now. We are going to break it down to something a bit digestible rather than quote someone’s entire article, it lists as common cancer killers.

1. Look out for canned foods. The inner lining contains a carcinogen called bisphenol-A (BPA) that has been linked to breast and prostate cancers.
2. Saturated fats cause all sorts of health problems, but are particularly dangerous for postmenopausal women in terms of breast cancer. That means avoid the processed cheese, fast food and vegetable oils–which themselves are linked to skin cancer.
3. Similarly, you’ve got to watch out for hydrogenated oils. They are used to preserve processed foods and when they come in contact with your cells, they physically change the cell membrane and can eventually lead to cancer.
4. We all know smoking and tobacco leads to cancer, but just after that in the most dangerous and prevalent cancer causing consumable is…. alcohol. It is the second leading cause of cancer, leading to mouth, esophagus, liver, colon, breast and rectum cancers.
5. Dairy products – when consumed in excess, give you so much calcium that it deprives the body of Vitamin D. This can lead to prostate cancer in men, as well as several other diseases.
6. Sugar – One of the biggest culprits of the modern health crisis. Sugar is basically cancer food and has been shown to speed up the rate of cancer cell replication and cause tumors to grow in size.
7. Processed meats – this includes mostly things like hot dogs, bacon, sausage, deli meats and so on. The preservatives, additives, flavorings and chemical processes involved in making these meats what they are have been linked to a wide variety of cancers, most notably colorectal cancer.
8. White bread – This one might be a surprise to some. The industrial process used to make white bread requires potassium bromate, which can lead to colon cancer.
9. Microwave popcorn – How strangely specific! It is indeed. Microwave popcorn (or most of it) contains a compound called Diacetyl that causes lung cancer much more aggressively than cigarette smoke.

The article goes on to describe how lifestyle choices like obesity, a sedentary lifestyle, unrestricted stress, poor hygiene and smoking all contribute to cancer in their own way.

It is an incredibly refreshing look at the many causes of cancer that we don’t so often hear about.

Why is that anyway?

It’s mostly money. Cigarette companies fought long and hard to keep the health dangers of their products under wraps. They finally caved under overwhelming public and governmental pressure, but only had to make various superficial concessions–like warning labels and only being able to advertise in print.

Today, sugar companies, soda companies, massive food industry conglomerates and alcohol companies do the same thing: utilize PR tactics, armies of lawyers, lobbying firms and political connections to keep talk of their products health risks to a minimum.

In fact, one of the great conspiracies of the 20th Century (and there were many) was the successful effort by the sugar industry to blame fats for making people fat… instead of sugar.

You must educate yourself in today’s world, and you must do so with the utmost discernment. That’s why it’s such a big deal to find an more mainstream article with this sort of information. You’ve just got to relish in it.