If you or someone you love has just found out that you’ve got cancer, you’re probably feeling pretty helpless. I certainly was when my dad found out he had prostate cancer. As soon as he got the news he was on the internet, researching anything and everything that could possibly help to tip the balance of the battle against the disease in his favour. Obviously there were the usual things – exploring surgery, radiotherapy, chemotherapy, and he did what needed to be done in this regard. But he also read a lot of scientific research which showed that eating certain foods and avoiding others could help to prevent cancer developing in the first place, or could make the body less hospitable for it, hopefully helping to slow its growth or prevent it recurring.
So he started on a strict diet – avoiding or, where possible, completely eliminating things like red meat, refined grains, potatoes and refined sugar from his diet and being careful to get a decent amount of exercise in each day. Interestingly the diet he was following largely resembled the healthy eating pyramid put out by the Harvard School of Public Health, as I discovered during my own research some time later.
So far he’s still winning his battle against the rotten little bunch of cells which have caused him so much trouble. But he continues the diet – and it’s given him a new lease on life – he’s lost weight, gained energy, and says he feels better than he has in a long time.
However, he does complain that food isn’t so exciting any more. And when I’ve tried cooking for him, finding a recipe which doesn’t use red meat, refined grains, refined sugar or potatoes but was easy to make and tasted delicious proved to be a bit of an ask – and when I was searching the internet for ideas, this seemed to be a common problem for the loved ones of other cancer sufferers as well. So I decided to start this "Food for Life" series – so that those of us who feel helpless in the face of our own or our loved ones’ illness can feel a little less helpless by preparing food for them which looks and tastes good, and which, based on current knowledge, may help tip the scales in favour of the ones we love so much.
You’ll find here a collection of recipes which avoid or don’t use the things from the top of the Harvard School of Public Health revised health pyramid. Our current knowledge about nutrition says that eating a diet like this is good for you, whether you’ve got cancer or not. And if you do - hopefully these recipes will make it harder for it to keep growing or to come back.