Male news anchor: So to come, could eating be a healthy way to fight cancer? We’re going to talk with the great people from the Cancer Treatment Centers of America about the best cancer fighting food. There’s a look at some of them in our kitchen right now.
LeAnne Taylor: Welcome back. In the fight against cancer many people are looking for ways to lower their risks. One way to help is to include more cancer fighting foods into your diet. Kalli Castille is the director of nutrition at Cancer Treatment Centers of America and she has brought with her some suggestions of what we should all be buying when we go to the grocery store. Good Morning.
Kalli Castille: Good morning.
LeAnne Taylor: How does diet play into the fight against cancer?
Kalli Castille: Diet is so important, about thirty percent of all cancers could be prevented with diet alone so it’s extremely important. Once you have cancer nutrition and diet can help reduce side effects caused by traditional treatmen,t like radiation and chemotherapy, can also enhance your immune system so that you can fight the cancer better.
LeAnne Taylor: You brought some samples here…
Kalli Castille: Yes.
LeAnne Taylor: Just went grocery shopping yesterday
Kalli Castille: Yesterday, yes.
LeAnne Taylor: These are things that we can find in the grocery store
Kalli Castille: Absolutely.
LeAnne Taylor: Give us an idea of what we should be purchasing.
Kalli Castille: Yeah, absolutely. For fighting cancer fresh fruits and vegetables, the more variety the better. In general the brighter, the bolder, the deeper the color of that fruit or vegetable the more vitamins and minerals it’s going to have in it.
LeAnne Taylor: You brought raspberries, and blueberries, pineapple...
Kalli Castille: Absolutely. Blackberries, tomatoes, nice peppers, onion family great for fighting cancer lots of phytochemicals, antioxidants in them
.
LeAnne Taylor: OK.
Kalli Castille: Absolutely.
LeAnne Taylor: What else?
Kalli Castille: Here I’ve got, you want about 2/3rds of your protein to come from a plant-based source
LeAnne Taylor: OK.
Kalli Castille: And that’s going to come from your legumes like your brown beans, black beans, kidney beans, your nuts and seeds as well as some whole grain pastas have a great source of protein in them as well.
LeAnne Taylor: Excellent. As you prepare menus for patients who are
fighting various forms of cancer, what thought process do you all go through?
Kalli Castille: We look at it at the Cancer Treatment Center; we’re going to look at them in a very individualized basis. We’re going to look at you, what type of cancer you have, symptoms you might already be having some symptoms like nausea, loss of appetite, and we’re going to make an individual plan specific to that, as well as your lab work.
LeAnne Taylor: Let’s take for, me example, as a breast cancer survivor, what types of foods and fruits and vegetables, what should I be considering as I move on past the five year mark?
Kalli Castille: Absolutely. That’s a great point. The more fruits and vegetables the better, you know you want to strive for five to nine servings a day. A variety of fruits and vegetables and whole grains are key, a variety of greens, your breads, your cereals, your pastas, getting that in there and your lean protein sources.
LeAnne Taylor: What do I want to avoid? Because I know you know right after I had heard the diagnosis people said, “Don’t eat chocolate, don’t drink soft drinks.” You hear all these, I wouldn’t call them wives tales but things that may help one person don’t necessarily help all people…
Kalli Castille: Absolutely.
LeAnne Taylor: So it’s really all in moderation but what are some of the things that we need to avoid?
Kalli Castille: Absolutely. You want to avoid those empty calories; those are things that do not have much nutritional value, not much vitamins and minerals. Things like the high sugary foods, the high salt foods. Ideally, when your going to the grocery store you want to shop on that perimeter of the grocery store where the fresh fruits and vegetable are, fresh grains, the fresh dairy all of those things and all those prepackaged processed foods you want to limit in your diet.
LeAnne Taylor: Very good, I love it. Great ideas. If you’d like to read more about what’s going on at Cancer Treatment Centers let me give you their web site it’s cancercenter.com and they even have some areas in there for nutrition you can take a peak there. And just a quick reminder the race for the cure is coming up September 19th at the CityPlex towers and we invite you to come out and be a part of the race. You can go to our website NewsOn6.com either form your own team of you can join mine. We have until September 1st to get out teams together and individuals can register right up until race morning. Great to see you.
Kalli Castille: Thank you.
LeAnne Taylor: Thank you for coming in. I’m kind of hungry all of a sudden, isn’t that funny how that works. Nice to see you. 7:41 we’ll take a break, stay with us.