Fact Check-Evidence shows sun exposure, not diet, causes skin cancers
Source: Reuters, July 2022
Social media posts claiming that sun exposure does not cause skin cancer, but poor diet does, contradict the large body of evidence showing that ultraviolet (UV) radiation from the sun does have a direct carcinogenic effect on cells in the skin and is a leading cause of skin cancers.
Posts on multiple platforms by the same individual claim that poor diet, not the sun, causes melanoma and non-melanoma skin cancers. On Instagram, that person writes, “The sun doesn’t give you skin cancer, the foods you consume & what you put on your skin does” (here).
On Facebook, in a post shared and quoted by others (here) and (here), the same person writes, “The uncomfortable truth for the medical industry is that sun does not cause cancer” (here). The post is headlined, “Don’t blame the sun for what seed oils, nutrient deficiencies and sunscreen have done.”