It's not just capitalism. I'm from east Germany and you wouldn't believe how much crap was buried, fumed into the air or pumped into the water in the name of peace and socialism.

Don't forget, Chernobyl happened because of a cost saving measure.

BTW, you forgot alcohol, tobacco, vapes, stress and enforced sedentary lifestyle in your cancer list.

Lead and Teflon have gone down since the 90s. I'd say it's mostly plastic. Up and into most all of the 80's everyone drank tap water and sodas/other drinks were all canned or glass bottles.

Then around 1990 everyone started putting their drink in plastic. Then 15 years later for some dumbass reason, people started to buy and drink all their water out of plastic as well.

Old people come into contact with all that stuff too, not just young people.

edit:

Cancer deaths are consistently declining in the US. American Cancer Society's 2023 report

Despite the pandemic, and in contrast with other leading causes of death, the cancer death rate continued to decline from 2019 to 2020 (by 1.5%), contributing to a 33% overall reduction since 1991 and an estimated 3.8 million deaths averted.

if that were the case, you'd expect more cancer in older people as well, not just young people.

edit:

Cancer deaths are consistently declining in the US. American Cancer Society's 2023 report

Despite the pandemic, and in contrast with other leading causes of death, the cancer death rate continued to decline from 2019 to 2020 (by 1.5%), contributing to a 33% overall reduction since 1991 and an estimated 3.8 million deaths averted.

Yes, in particular the non-stick forever chemicals known as PFAS (aka Teflon and its precursors). The same chemistry that makes these plastics so non-stick also makes them resilient to being broken down chemically in our bodies. And the more the government tries to regulate them away, the more the industry plays whack-a-mole with modifications to the formula. It’s the designer drug problem writ large!

thankfully someone actually read the article (which is pretty bad in terms of accurately representing its citations). One of the other articles cited in OP says:

Research published in BMJ Oncology found there had been 3.26 million cases in 2019 - 79% more than in 1990. But experts cautioned against reading too much into the findings. The research did not take into account a 40% rise in the total population, while factors such as better reporting may also have played a role. The team, of experts from around the world, including the US, China and the UK, agreed no firm conclusions could be drawn.

Deaths (as opposed to "incidents") is a more accurate metric to track since it's more reliable in terms of detection (obviously) and reporting:

Cancer killed more than a million under-50s in 2019, a rise of over 25% - but with the 40% population rise, this could actually indicate a falling death rate.

Friend of a friend's husband died of colon cancer in 2016, he wasnt even 40 either.

Easily: leftovers. Literally just cook on sunday. Takes like 1.5-2hrs. Make 10-12 servings. Dinner for 2 for 5-6 days. Eat it all week.

I have done this every week for my entire adult life and have never spent more than like 2hrs per week cooking unless I wanted to make something particularly difficult for fun.

Also, you can make big batches of stuff to freeze or can. Canning is easy: get a pressure cooker, buy some big mason jars - they're cheap and reusable, look up the pressure and time requirements (especially if the dish contains meat), and boom. Shelf stable food you can store in the pantry and eat whenever.

Meal prep ideas:

Spend like 3hrs making 10 dozen pierogies (potato & cheese and pork & mushroom & sauerkraut are my favorites), freeze half & boil/pan fry whenever. Eat the rest for the week with some sauerkraut or cucumber dill salad (umborksalat) as a side. Costs maybe 30 bucks for everything and makes food for 2 weeks (6 pierogies per serving). Make more if you want - it doesn't take much extra time.

Chinese style dumplings are the same as pierogies but with square wrappers and more ingredients. Buy wonton wrappers. Make filling with ground pork, garlic, green onion, msg, ginger, salt, pepper, soy sauce, vinegar. Add napa cabbage if you want to stretch the filling. Fill wonton wrappers. Make however many you want. Takes a few hours if you're gonna make a shitload, but it is easy - pop on a movie and make hundreds if you want. Freeze and boil whenever. Or make potstickers by heating oil in a pan, putting in fresh or frozen dumplings, cooking for a bit before adding some water before immediately covering with a lid. Cook a bit and they should release from the pan - scrape them up with a spatula if they don't.

Get a very large pot. Make a full pot of gumbo, red beans and sausage for red beans & rice, or split pea soup. You can make gallons of these very cheaply in the same time it'd take to make a smaller quantity. Freeze or can most of it. Cook rice for the week for gumbo or red beans and rice (20mins on the stove, 2mins of prep). Serve over rice (don't serve split pea soup over rice unless you're a psychopath). Done.

Make west african peanut soup. Made of sweet potatoes, peanut butter, chicken if you want, collard greens, tomatoes. Fucking delicious. Very filling and calorie dense. Like 25 bucks for a week of delicious soup. I make like 2kg when I do this. Could double batch and freeze/can half as well.

Jambalaya/jollof rice/other similar rice dishes. Make 10-12 servings for the week or double it and freeze half.

Lasagna or other pasta bake dishes. Make one dish for the week. Make another to freeze and pop in the oven to cook whenever. Serve with a quick salad.

Enchiladas. Same as pasta dishes (can freeze and cook later). Cook meat/other filling. Heat up a bunch of corn torrillas. Fill with filling. Put into a rectangular casserole dish with some enchilada sauce. Top with enchilada sauce and some cheese. Boom. 12 enchiladas - enough for a week. Especially if you make some cilantro-lime or 'spanish' rice to go with it (rice, boullion, onion, tomato paste, diced tomato, garlic, little oil, water) - throw it all in a pot, simmer 20mins, refrigerate, eat all week as a side dish. Maybe use canned refried beans as a side too.

Tacos. Shred up a rotisserie chicken. Pan fry with onions, garlic, peppers if you want (chipotles in adobo are my favorite. You could use salsa instead or jalapenos or whatever). Boom. Freeze or refrigerate. Heat up and put in tortillas whenever with some fresh cilantro/onion/hot sauce. Make rice as with enchiladas. Can serve with beans, too.

Yeah — I maybe cook 1-2 meals a week, and that usually involves some prepackaged ingredient that saves me time. The rest is quick like oatmeal, toast, etc, or I’m just ordering takeout. I don’t have the energy to cook a lot, nor do I want to spend my free time doing it after work.

My wife and I have a system that works for us. I do the food shopping and clean up, and she does the cooking (the woman is a sauceress).

Shopping happens on saturday (sometimes pre-cooking prep too), cooking on sunday. We cook two meals and have it throughout the week. Sometimes we'll freeze some of what we cook using souper cubes (for soups, stews, and chili).

You can do it! You just have to get into the routine of it.

That’s wild. Wonder why child was extra radioactive

Stay safe and use heavy lead dildos or the self glowing Marie Curie radium dildos instead.

We probably aren't shitting them out fast enough.