This is the first in a series of questions I plan to answer, all surrounding how better to enjoy food despite cancer and the cancer treatment process. I welcome feedback or suggestions, so please leave a comment if you have anything to share.
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The taste of foods often changes for people undergoing chemotherapy. This doesn’t happen to everyone receiving chemotherapy as part of cancer treatment, but it certainly happens to a lot. I’ve seen it happen as early as the first dose of chemotherapy, and it’s become my practice to warn people about this side effect. Foods that you used to love may now taste awful, and slightly sweetened foods may now taste sickeningly sweet. Food may taste metallic or bland and like cardboard. Not only can this side effect can lead to decreased appetite, weight loss, and malnutrition, but alterations in taste can dramatically decrease our ability to simply enjoy eating food, something that is critical to our quality of life as humans.
We aren’t sure why this side effect happens, but there is medical literature to suggest that changes in both the sense of smell and the sense of taste occur with various chemotherapy drugs. The sense of smell is heavily tied into our sense of taste, so an alteration in either can really mess things up. If you’ve ever had a bad cold and couldn’t taste your food properly, you have some idea of what this is like.
The unfortunate thing is that there is nothing that can prevent this taste alteration or solve the problem once it’s started. But, there are strategies that can be tried to get around it. Most importantly is to experiment with different foods. It may be that foods that you used to enjoy are now unpalatable. If that’s the case, branch out of your comfort zone and try foods with a different flavor profile. Experimentation is critical to finding foods that work and that you can still enjoy.
Many find that very spicy foods or dishes with a lot of heat in them are best during this time. Try foods from another culture – Asian foods or Indian foods, for example. Add extra spices to boost flavor. Marinate chicken, pork, or beef to increase the flavor in the protein. If food has a metallic taste, use plastic or bamboo utensils.
The most important rule is to just keep trying. You’ll find something that will work.
Here are a few suggested recipes to try:
Yawn. This is pretty much all out there in the “What to eat when dealing cancer” booklets and websites. I think you need to get up close and personal. Talk about individuals, not the literature.
On one drug, I could chop onions with impunity. On my current chemo, I can barely eat or stand the smell of onions or garlic cooking. Yeah, keep trying.
Stephanie,
Thanks for sharing your opinion and your thoughts. If you have a specific suggestion, I’d love for you to share with me. How do you suggest getting up close and personal? If you have any of your own suggestions for dealing with this side effect, please share with us here. The comments section is the perfect place for that!
Get up close and personal by talking with your patients. Ask what they do in real life. Go to lectures on nutrition and eating that are focused on cancer patients – and listen to the discussions afterwards where they tell the expert what really goes on.
I’m trying to understand what you want to accomplish with this blog. But some days, my patience is not so great.
I have several friends going through chemo right now…and one I had lunch with last week ordered a cup of chili and a cup of candied apples for lunch. …totally not her usual appetite! We just laughed… It’s good to keep the humor.
Angie – Maintaining a sense of humor is so important!. Best of luck to your friends going through this.
Stephanie,
Perhaps you are angry and frustrated and have no patience, but you are taking out your venom on someone that spends her time helping people. Maybe a good strategy would be to share concrete things you have learned through your experience. Maybe you also could feel better by using positive energy rather than sarcasm and negativity. I am sorry you are ill but really that does ‘t give you permission to be snotty to someone that is trying to help. By the way, you want to spew to me you can write to me directly and leave it off this blog which is for people looking for help.
janis@earthlink.net
Oh Janis and others who care to judge me.
I spend much time advocating, educating, and counseling cancer patients and am richly rewarded by positive reinforcement for the time and energy I spend, believe it or not. Yes, some days I am angry and frustrated and lack patience – I am human and not perfect. This is not my blog; I get that. I appreciate that merrygourmet is attempting to do something positive on top of a busy work and life schedule, but if I am not allowed to criticize, then blog discourse is the worse for it. I told her upfront that I would be looking over her shoulder as a critic and editor – if she is not interested in what I have to say, all she has to do is say so. But I can tell you I speak from a great depth of experience.
I did provide a real world example. I offered two concrete suggestions to make the content more relevant and personal.
Janis – all the rose colored lens in the world won’t change how bad cancer sucks. Most days, I am grateful to still be alive, but if I happen to write on a day when my system is full of chemo blues, maybe I am hoping someone will have something nice to say that can pull me away from that abyss. It can be a dark and scary place. I have a pretty wonderful support system and they can’t do much for me on those days either. Try it, you won’t like it.
Stephanie,
Thank you for volunteering to serve as critic and editor. I’d rather not have you serve as either, actually. It’s clear that you will find fault in things that I saw, and that’s perfectly okay. I’d just rather you not be rude about it. The snarky comments – the whole “yawn” thing, for example – are just unnecessary. If this were my home, I wouldn’t tolerate it, and I wouldn’t invite you back as a guest. Suggesting that someone “try” cancer is also a pretty nasty thing to say.
Feel free to move on to a blog that you’re more interested in reading and can get more out of.
And, I’m sorry about your cancer. Best wishes to you.
– mjm
MJM, I’m so sorry Stephanie wrote with such anger and criticism about your blog. Keep on keepin’ on! You are helping so many people. I worked at the Am Cancer Society for five years so I talked to many patients who just couldn’t find anything positive in *anything* I had to say or suggest. You can’t please everyone all of the time, but you’re not supposed to. You’re pleasing many and for that, I thank you.
Thank you so much for this, Mindy.
Merrygourmet – one thing you haven’t mentioned with regard to food is some chemos cause a change in the mouth where the texture of food can be difficult. I suffered it badly with my last chemo. Surprisingly one meal I could eat was a big Mac, fries and coke (no ice). We would drive straight to the drive thru lane on the way home from chemo. Another was lamb kebab also with coke (no ice). Both were a mix of the spiced meat, cool salad, wet mayo or yogurt sauce and the bubbles of the coke.
Barbara – thanks for mentioning the texture issue. You’re completely right!
I was a care-giver for my grandmother 12 years ago when she went through chemo and radiation. I’ll never forget pulling out all of my tricks in the kitchen to find something platable to her. Her taste buds were so affected on top of everything else she was going through and I was worried that she’d give up altogether – all she could handle were canned beans. Until one night I baked a homemade apple pie and she nearly ate the whole thing. And then repeated that just about every night for three weeks until she switched to french fries and vanilla shakes.
Thanks for bringing back that memory, it was a really happy moment during a difficult time.