March is National Nutrition Month, a month focusing on the importance of making informed food choices and developing sound eating and physical activity habits.
We know that diet affects cancer both directly and indirectly. This food selection guide will help you choose specific foods and food groups that help alter your internal biochemistry from cancer-promoting to cancer-inhibiting, based on your core nutritional needs.
Need: Cancer-Fighting Phytochemicals
Recommendation: Eat a rainbow of vegetables, emphasizing brightly colored ones (pigments contain cancer-fighting phytochemicals), leafy greens, and cruciferous vegetables such as broccoli, onions, and garlic. Choose locally grown and organic whenever possible. Try to get a mix of root vegetables, leafy green vegetables, and sea vegetables. Fruits should be limited to no more than two or three servings per day.
Need: Energy-Sustaining Foods
Recommendation: Consume plenty of whole grains, the richest source of complex carbohydrates and fiber, which provide a slow, sustained supply of fuel for your daily activities while reducing fuel for your cancer. Select unrefined and minimally processed foods. Eat small amounts throughout the day to reduce hunger and food cravings or if you are experiencing blood sugar swings; three meals with two or three snacks are ideal.
TIP: To reduce cravings for sweets and junk foods, try consuming whole grains at every meal. Build your meal around whole grains such as brown rice, oats, barley, millet, quinoa, buckwheat, whole-wheat bread, and whole-wheat pasta.
Need: Cancer-Fighting Proteins
Recommendation: Consume plenty of legumes (lentils, chickpeas, beans), soy foods, fish, and occasional omega-3 eggs. These choices have cancer-fighting properties, contain many of the nutrients found in meat, and are an excellent source of the complex carbohydrates and soluble fiber that help regulate and control blood sugar.
TIP: To satisfy meat cravings, try grilling, barbecuing, or baking salmon, halibut, tuna, or haddock steaks. Try seitan or tofu hot dogs, veggie burgers, vegetarian bacon, and vegetarian cold cuts.
Need: Reduce Dairy Products
Recommendation: Replace milk with rice, soy, oat, or nut beverages. For cheese, substitute cheeses made with soy, rice, hazelnuts, or almonds. Try soy or rice ice creams flavored with fruit or rice syrup.
Need: Healthy Sweets
Recommendation: Use fruit and small amounts of unrefined, healthful sweeteners to satisfy cravings for sweets. Choose foods made with rice syrup, barley malt, agave, kiwi sweetener, stevia, FruitSource, or maple syrup.
Need: Essential Fats
Recommendation: Limit total fat intake and shift to foods high in omega-3s and omega-9s such as deep-sea fish, olives, avocados, nuts, and flax and other seeds. Eliminate trans fats.
Need: Adequate Intake of Healthy Fluids
Recommendation: Drink water and three to five cups daily of green tea, plus other fluids and herb teas. Green tea is even better for rehydrating than water. It contains many antioxidants and anti-cancer phytochemicals, and the caffeine levels of tea are not high enough to hinder rehydration.
For more information on the Block Center for Integrative Cancer Treatment, visit BlockMD.com.