Cancer Prevention through Diet
By Anna Gewecke, MS RD LDN
When you have a friend or family member who is battling
cancer, it can make you wonder “how can I keep this from happening to me?”
There are different types of risk factors for cancer. Some you can affect, and
some you are stuck with. Age, sex, and family history are risk factors that you
can’t change. However, there are many things you can change, and these will not
only lower your risk for cancer, but also for heart disease, diabetes and
overweight.
First, eat right! There are many specific
recommendations that go into this, but they boil down to eating more plant
foods (whole grains, fruits, vegetables, legumes and nuts), and eating less
meat , processed, high fat, high salt, and high sugar foods.
Specifically,
Strive to eat 7-9 servings of fruits and vegetables each
day. This sounds like a lot, but when you consider how many meals and snacks
you eat, along with portion sizes, it will seem much more manageable. A serving
of veggies is a half a cup of cooked or raw veggies, or a cup of leafy
lettuces- that’s not very big! It’s the same for a serving of fruit- half a
cup, or one small piece. If you can have a piece of fruit with breakfast, and
for a midmorning snack, then you can eat two servings (one cup) of veggies with
lunch and supper and a dessert of fruit, then you’re at 7 servings already!
Whenever you can choose produce with a lot of color-
like orange carrots or sweet potatoes, dark green spinach or broccoli, red
tomatoes or watermelon, yellow pineapple or peppers, you are making your meal
both pretty, and extra healthy. Fruits and veggies are “color coded” to let you
know what kind of nutrients that they contain. So the more natural color you
get at a meal, the greater the variety of nutrients, and the stronger they are
at fighting off cancer.
Foods that you should include regularly include
• Beans
• Berries
• Cruciferous
veggies (broccoli, cauliflower, cabbage, Brussels sprouts, kale)
• Dark
green leafy vegetables
• Flaxseed
• Garlic
• Grapes
and grape juice
• Green
tea
• Whole
soy foods (tofu, tempeh, soy milk, miso, edamame)
• Tomatoes
• Whole
grains
After you have served yourself vegetables for a meal,
fill most of the rest of your plate with a whole grain such as whole wheat
bread, brown rice, or whole wheat pasta. These foods have many vitamins,
minerals, fiber and other nutrients that both strengthen your immune system to
fight cancer, and remove cholesterol from your body to fight heart disease.
These carbohydrate-rich foods give you the energy that you need to be about
your business, and the fiber in whole grains makes them last longer so that you
don’t feel exhausted 30 minutes after eating.
When you choose all these plant foods, and fill up on
them, you’ll have less room for the foods that can promote cancer. High sugar
and calorie dense foods like snack cakes, sugary sodas, French fries, chips and
other “junk foods” don’t provide many nutrients, but can contribute to weight
gain. Other foods to limit include smoked or cured meats (like bacon, sausage,
bologna, ham and many sandwich meats), and salty foods.
Eat lean protein with your meals to keep your body
healthy. These include legumes such as pinto beans, white beans and black-eyed
peas, nuts, lean fresh meats like beef or pork tenderloin, skinless chicken or
turkey, fish, low fat cheeses, eggs, and milk. Choose red meats, beef, pork and
lamb less often- limit them to less than 18 ounces a week. You can have a 3
ounce serving of one of these up to six days a week, and stay within this
recommendation. If you can have a meatless meal once or twice a week, you’ll be
getting more of the healthy plant foods- beans and vegetables- and have an easy
way to limit your red meat consumption.
In order to prevent cancer, it is also important to get
exercise. The American College of Sports Medicine recommends that we all get at
least 30 minutes of moderate exercise every day. These activities include
walking, dancing, bicycling, ice and roller skating, horseback riding,
canoeing, yoga, volleyball, golfing, softball, baseball, badminton, doubles
tennis, downhill skiing, mowing the lawn, general and garden maintenance.
That’s quite a list, and most of us like at least one activity on it. What is
the best exercise? The one that you’ll do regularly because you enjoy it.
Both eating well and getting enough exercise will help
you do the last thing that helps you to prevent cancer: maintain a healthy body
weight. Studies have shown that risk for many cancers including breast and
colon cancer is lower in people who are leaner. If you are currently
overweight, even losing just 10% of your current weight will help you to have a
lower risk for cancer, heart disease and diabetes.
If you would like more information about cancer
prevention, and healthy recipes, look at the website for the American Institute
for Cancer Research – www.aicr.org.
Resources:
American
Institute for Cancer Research www.aicr.org
American College of Sports Medicine www.acsm.org
WebMD
http://www.webmd.com/diet/features/lose-weight-gain-tons-of-benefits
