Processed Food and Lung Cancer: A 40% Risk Increase That Goes Beyond Smoking
People eating the most ultra-processed food face roughly 40% higher lung cancer risk compared to those eating the least. That finding comes from a large US clinical trial and held for both non-small cell and small cell lung cancer, the two major types. Smoking is still the overwhelming driver of lung cancer, but the accumulating evidence suggests your grocery cart matters too. The research is all observational, meaning it can't prove cause and effect on its own. But the signal keeps showing up across different populations, different study designs, and different ways of measuring diet. And for processed meat specifically, genetic analysis is starting to support a causal connection.