Lucie Morris-Marr, a healthy, active journalist and mother of two, was at the height of her career when life came to a halt in 2019.

“I was flying high,” she said. “And then all of it got cancelled. I felt like my identity had been cancelled.” Diagnosed with stage-four bowel cancer, the disease had already spread to her liver after being misdiagnosed for months.

Despite regular exercise and a high-fiber diet, she began to question what went wrong. “I drank very little alcohol… always ate fruit, salad, and vegetables,” she recalled. But her journalist instincts kicked in, and her research led her to one common factor: processed meat.

“All that kept coming up was processed meats and the link with bowel cancer,” Lucie said. Casual favorites like pepperoni pizza, sausages, and bacon sandwiches—harmless in moderation, she once thought—suddenly looked dangerous.