One common food all of us are guilty of indulging in from time to time can have devastating long-term health consequences.

When you think of lung cancer, you probably think about smoking and the graphic warnings and pictures on the packets.

Now, researchers have found that the food we eat can also be causing it, even if you’ve never smoked a cigarette in your life.

According to the study, lung cancer is the most common cancer in the world and ‘in 2020 alone there were an estimated 2.2 million new cases and 1.8 million deaths from the disease worldwide’.

An international team tracked the health, diet and food habits of more than 100,000 adults in the United States, with the average participant being 63 years old.

Over the course of 12 years of research, some 1,706 cases of lung cancer were identified.

Scientists examined the food survey questionnaire results of the patients with lung cancer, and wanted to see how many ultra processed foods (UPFs) they had consumed.

Scientists classified UPFs as items including ice cream, hamburgers, hot dogs, pizza, bread, cakes, pastries, breakfast cereals, instant noodles and soups, margarine, confectionery, and soft drinks.

All the fun stuff, then.

The experts discovered that the average participant consumed three servings of ultra processed foods a day, however that varied from 0.5 servings to a whopping six servings a day.

The most popular items on the survey were said to be processed lunch meat, diet or caffeinated soft drinks, and decaf soft drinks.

They found that those participants who consumed the most processed food were reported to be 41 percent more likely to develop lung cancer compared with those who ate the least.

The researchers did take into account whether someone smoked or not, but they did not look at how much they smoked or how many per day.

Professor Sam Hare is a consultant chest radiologist at Royal Free London NHS Trust, and he said: “A quarter of lung cancer cases occur in non-smokers so we do need research exploring whether other factors are associated with lung cancer.”

He added: “We also know immunity is linked to cancer biology so it is a good idea to do research into factors like diet.”

The professor added that it is normal that people change their diet over time, so it is ‘difficult to directly conclude’ that the amount of processed food increase the chance of developing it.

He continued: “That said, given the relative dearth of information on non-smoking related risk factors in lung cancer, it is important that the scientific community conducts more studies like this.

“We need genuine evidence-based advancement in the early diagnosis of lung cancer in non-smokers, but this study isn’t quite able to give us the answers yet.”

The researchers said: “Over the past two decades, the consumption of UPF has significantly increased worldwide, regardless of development or economic status.

“The rise in UPF consumption may have driven global increases in obesity, cardiovascular disease, metabolic disorders, cancer and mortality, as these foods are confirmed risk factors for such conditions.”