I knew the article would cover food and not distinguish doof from food from its title: “Why Are So Many Young Adults Getting Cancer? New Columbia research looks at ultra-processed foods, sedentary lifestyles, and other possible explanations.”

Sure enough, it didn’t. Imagine people didn’t distinguish heroin from poppy, if they thought shooting heroin was like eating a poppy-seed bagel. They’d miss that heroin affects the body and behavior a lot different than poppy seeds. In this post, I’ll quote a few paragraphs, then translate them to distinguish doof from food.

For context, here are the first two paragraphs, which don’t mention food or doof:

When Beatrice Dionigi was in medical school fifteen years ago, she was taught that colon cancer — long known as a “silent killer” for its ability to advance undetected — was a disease of old age, striking people in their fifties and beyond. But since embarking on her career as a colon and rectal surgeon, she has found herself operating on patients far younger than she expected.

“I’m now routinely seeing people in their thirties and forties, many of whom have advanced disease,” says Dionigi, an associate professor of surgery at Columbia University Irving Medical Center (CUIMC). “Every year, the patients are younger and younger.”

Distinguishing Doof from Food

Notice below how different and clear things sound when we distinguish doof from food.

Example 1

The original text [I’ll make bold what I’ll switch]: “A forthcoming study led by CUIMC gastroenterologist Joel T. Gabre, Dionigi, and medical oncologist Yoanna S. Pumpalova builds on previous research linking ultra-processed foods to colon cancer, providing the first molecular evidence that diet may play a pivotal role in early-onset cases. Gabre’s team finds indications that certain fatty acids found in processed foods — including seed oils derived from soybean, corn, and sunflower — can disrupt the gut microbiome and ignite chronic inflammation, damaging DNA and triggering malignant changes.”

The new text [what I switched in bold]: “A forthcoming study led by CUIMC gastroenterologist Joel T. Gabre, Dionigi, and medical oncologist Yoanna S. Pumpalova builds on previous research linking doof to colon cancer, providing the first molecular evidence that addiction may play a pivotal role in early-onset cases. Gabre’s team finds indications that certain fatty acids found in doof — including the most addictive extracts — can disrupt the gut microbiome and ignite chronic inflammation, damaging DNA and triggering malignant changes.”

Example 2

Original text: “Gabre cautions that additional research, including experiments in mouse models, will be needed to confirm his findings. Still, he believes that his data support a hypothesis that has been gaining traction of late in public-health circles: that the epidemic of early-onset colon cancers is the consequence of a fundamental shift in human nutrition. “Beginning in the 1960s and ’70s, people in the US and other industrialized nations started eating radically different diets, full of fast foods and ultra-processed ingredients,” he says. “We may now be seeing what happens when entire generations grow up consuming these foods.””

New text: “Gabre cautions that additional research, including experiments in mouse models, will be needed to confirm his findings. Still, he believes that his data support a hypothesis that has been gaining traction of late in public-health circles: that the epidemic of early-onset colon cancers is the consequence of a fundamental shift in human addiction. “Beginning in the 1960s and ’70s, people in the US and other industrialized nations started substituting doof for food, full of ingredients designed to addict,” he says. “We may now be seeing what happens when entire generations grow up consuming these addictive products.””

Example 3

Original text: “This leads Gabre to think that harmful dietary patterns in early childhood may inflict lasting damage, even in individuals who later adopt healthier habits. “It suggests that we need to do more long-term studies on the impacts of childhood nutrition,” he says, “and that we ought to think twice about what we feed our kids.””

New text: “This leads Gabre to think that harmful addiction patterns in early childhood may inflict lasting damage, even in individuals who later adopt healthier habits. “It suggests that we need to do more long-term studies on the impacts of addicting children,” he says, “and that we ought to think twice about what we addict our kids to.””

Doof isn’t food any more than heroin is poppy or crack is coca leaf

These problems become simpler when we stop confusing doof for food: Doof isn’t food any more than heroin is poppy or crack is coca leaf.

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