Cooking For Cancer Treatment: Making Food Taste Good When Everything Tastes Awful

Most people who undergo cancer treatment have lasting problems with nutrition. Chemotherapy almost universally causes nausea and vomiting, and the memories of digestive with each chemotherapy session persist even after the drugs wear off.

There are some things you and your family or support team can do before you have cancer treatment to make eating less of a chore, and there are some things you or your family or support team can do after you have cancer treatment to make food more pleasurable. Here are the basics for getting ready for cancer treatment:

• Be sure you have any drugs you need to control nausea and vomiting on hand (ondansetron, for example) before you start treatment. They only work if you take them before you have chemotherapy.
• Plan your menu ahead of time. You want to avoid any kind of food that has a pungent aroma when you are on drugs that can cause nausea and vomiting. No matter how much you love garlic bread or stinky cheese, these are the kinds of foods you just can't have when you are on chemo. You also want to avoid your favorite foods when you are getting cancer treatment because your brain will associate their aroma with the unpleasant experiences of your treatment.
• On the day you have treatment (and for two or three days afterward, if your digestive symptoms persist) don't eat any high-fiber, high-fat, or vinegary foods. Fiber, fat, and vinegar slow down the passage of food through your digestive tract and make it more likely they will come up again by vomiting. This means no chips, dips, butter, fried foods, peanut butter, or whole milk products until you are sure you can keep food down. You also need to avoid sourdough, cinnamon, and sugar-free products sweetened with xylitol, because they also take longer to pass through the stomach.
• On the day you have your treatment, avoid foods with strong odors such as barbecue, broccoli, Brussels sprouts, cabbage and sauerkraut, cauliflower, curry, fish and especially fish sauce, hard cheese, hot peppers, garlic, onions, liver, ketchup, kimchi, Tabasco, and soy sauce. The odor can activate nausea, and you will come to associate the odor with nausea so that you don't enjoy these foods in the future.
• When you eat, eat sitting up, and don't lie down again for at least 30 minutes afterward. This keeps food from backing up from your stomach into your esophagus.

See Also: Alkaline Foods and Cancer

• If you experience nausea, apply ice wrapped in a damp washcloth or a cold pack wrapped in a damp washcloth to the back of your neck.
• Make sure you eat in a well ventilated room, so the odors of food won't linger. This minimizes both nausea and the formation of food memories that link specific foods with nausea.

What To Do When Cancer Treatment Has Reduced Your Sense Of Taste

Even after the risk of nausea and vomiting are over, many cancer patients find that their treatments have robbed them of their sense of taste. You may not be able to make food taste as good as it used to, but there are things you can do to make food taste better so you eat enough to recover from your treatment.

• The more different flavors you have in a single dish, the more you will want to eat it. Be sure you have sweet, salty, sour, and even bitter flavors in your cooking in as many different ways as possible.
• A variety of colors on your plate increases appetite.
• Serving food on round plates rather than square plates increases your appetite, because the plate fills your field of vision.
• Don't try to eat foods that you ate on days you had a bad reaction to chemotherapy. You will have a body memory of nausea, vomiting, or diarrhea associated with the food.
• Dry, crunchy foods aren't a good idea if you have mouth sores or mucositis from radiation because they can irritate the lining of the mouth. Avoid them.
• Moist foods fill you up more than dry foods. Applesauce, for example, will help you feel full longer than apple crisp. If you are having problems with bloating or vomiting, you want to eat dry foods like chips and crackers, but if you are having problems with a rumbling stomach becaue you just can't eat enough, moister foods will stay in your stomach longer. Slowly simmered soups stay in your stomach longer than almost any other food.
• If you don't mouth sores or mucositis (most common after head and neck radiation), take your food with a literal grain of salt. The salt on your food stimulates salivation, which carries the flavors of food all over your tongue, maximizing your sensation of taste.
• If you have a continuing problem with metallic aftertaste, add a little lemon or vinegar to your food. Acid tastes can cancel out metallic and bitter tastes of food.
• Make sure sweet foods come in contact with the tip of your tongue. You actually have receptors for sweet tastes all over your tongue, but they are concentrated on the tip of your tongue, and you enjoy sweet flavors more if you let them rest on the front part of your tongue momentarily before chewing and swallowing.
• Use seaweed, dulse, or kombu to add a savory, umami flavor to soups, broths, and stews when you can't add meat.
• Use ginger in juices, lemonade, fruit dishes, and stirfries to prevent nausea. If you don't use dried, pickled, or candied ginger, be sure to mince it very fine before serving.
• Add turmeric to curries, chili, soups, cauliflower, and potato dishes in tiny amounts for its antioxidant power. The curcumin in turmeric may minimize lingering side effects of chemotherapy and also fight cancer.

See Also: Anti-Cancer Diet: Cancer Fighting Foods and Spices