Cancer Prevention Diet

A few of you have asked how the meeting with dietitian went.

She has a 50-year old male client: thin, runs several times a week, eats healthy, just diagnosed with diabetes. He never saw it coming–statistically, he wasn’t at risk.

And now a vegetarian has cancer. Spooky.

Here’s what the American Institute for Cancer Research considers their cancer prevention food plan. (I can’t bear to the word “diet” because “diet” is just “die” with a cross at the head of the grave.)

• Choose a predominately plant-based diet.
• Eat 5 or more servings a day of a variety of vegetables and fruit plus seven servings of grains (mostly whole), beans and roots.
• Choose minimally processed foods. Limit processed food.
• Limit fatty foods, especially those of animal origin.
• Use modest amounts of vegetable oils.
• Limit alcohol (one drink a day).
• Do not eat charred meats. Consume grilled meat over direct flames only occasionally. Apparently grilling vegetables doesn't have the same negative effects. Yet, another reason to be vegetarian.
  
• This of course goes with daily exercise and maintaining a healthy weight.

My dietitian also came up with the following advice for fighting cancer:

• Frozen berry smoothies with soymilk. For extra yumminess, add 1 T of wheat germ. They actually have the nerve to call this a “dessert shake.” I’m experimenting with the right combination.
• One brazil nut a day. (ONLY 1; two is too many.)
• Up to 3 cups of organic, brewed green tea. (Black tea would be ok also.)
• Lots of orange and cruciferous vegetables. This will be a lot easier come June through October, when I start receiving my weekly CSA (Community-Supported Agriculture) box of organic veggies (whichever are harvested that week) from Red Fire Farm.
• Yogurt. Ick! I’m trying to find a soy or organic version I can tolerate.

Now, this wasn’t the dietitian’s suggestion but my spouse has made it possible for one organic dark chocolate truffle a day. Do you know how hard it is to eat only one?

My sister in Texas is considering taking on this eating plan as an act of solidarity.
I’ve ordered A Dietitian’s Cancer Story: Information and Inspiration for Recovery and Healing from a 3-Time Cancer Survivor by Diana Dyer. More research! Wheee!

Perhaps you were unaware that April is Cancer Awareness Month. Go out and celebrate with a delicious blueberry-soy-wheat germ “dessert shake!”