The side effects of chemo and radiation leave many of us with little appetite. If  it isn’t nausea or mouth sores that keep us from eating well,  it is often that we lose interest in food because we are unable to smell or taste what we are trying to eat. If we have to cook for ourselves, being exhausted from treatment leads to grabbing anything easy and handy rather than preparing something nutritious. The fortified drinks we get in the chemo room or radiation area just don’t count as eating. They may give us the nutrients we need, but they are no substitute for eating a meal we can enjoy.

The following post is courtesy of Navigating Cancer, www.navigatingcancer.com introducing a new partner to their site who is offering information and recipes to help cancer patients with eating well by improving their diets.

Cooking with Cancer is a non-profit organization started by Dr. Luis Pineda, an oncologist with over 26 years of experience. Dr. Pineda attended culinary school in 2003 to improve the nutrition and diet of cancer patients. Cooking with Cancer now has a group on Navigating Cancer and each week adds a new recipe to their library on site. Each recipe is prepared specifically with cancer patients in mind. Recipes feature  foods and preparation methods that  help minimize the negative reactions certain foods can have with specific side effects from chemo and radiation treatment.

Gina Seibert from Cooking with Cancer shares more about the organization and their mission, saying,”Our mission is to help those with cancer to enjoy a better quality of life through eating well with good food. Our goal is to create awareness of a patients’ poor quality-of-life due to neglected nutrition from lack of enjoyment in eating.  This problem has continued to be neglected, accepted and even expected.

We support the right of everyone, regardless of their state in sickness or health, to enjoy an enhanced quality-of-life and nutrition through good food, eating well and good cooking. We believe that patients undergoing treatment deserve to enjoy the pleasure of food and nutrition.

This is the foundation that Cooking With Cancer, INC. is built on.  We are a non-profit charitable organization that dedicates its resources and energy to the research and development of new recipes for cancer patients. We provide education not only for patients with cancer but also their family and friends.

Each recipe we develop is intended to enhance taste for patients, calculated to heal the mouth and provide maximum nutrition.  Recipes are meant to treat certain side effects, such as nausea, vomiting, diarrhea, abdominal pain, fluid retention, etc. We will post new recipes on www.navigatingcancer.com on a regular basis.”

Congratulations to Navigating Cancer for adding this much needed feature to their site. Thank you Dr. Pineda for giving patients in treatment the tools for eating!