Met with dietician today: Some answers to questions the group asked

I met today with a dietitian who specializes in cancer survivorship nutrition. Here’s how that went:

We met for about an hour, just a telephone visit. I had a couple of specific questions, and was happy to hear him provide immediate, detailed responses tailored to prostate cancer - you know how sometimes you’ll talk to an “expert” and you’ll be able to work out pretty quickly that they’re a generalist giving you a general answer with a lot of extra words to pad their response out so they sound like they know more than they do? That wasn’t this guy, he gave very precise answers to my questions. That made me feel confident in talking with him.

Onto the food:

I asked about eggs, because there are a lot of controversy around eggs and prostate cancer.

The dietician talked about the pros and cons about eggs in relation to prostate cancer, then stated the position of the nutritional department at the cancer center is that eggs don’t need to be severely limited, just moderated - no more than two a day. Since I rarely have more than four eggs a week these days, I’m good, but now I feel ok in increasing that a little, maybe up to six eggs a week.

I also asked if there were any foods that were recommended to never consume. I said, “What’s the cigarette of the food world?”

“Two things,” he replied, “Alcohol and deli meats/cured meats. I’m all about moderation in all things, but for those two things, if you don’t have to consume them, then don’t.”

That means hotdogs, bologna, bacon, sausage, salami, even so-called healthy sliced meats, like chicken or turkey from the deli, are an avoid-at-all-costs if possible.

I was surprised by the chicken and turkey stuff, but he said those are processed in such a way to prepare them for deli sales, that it makes them unsuitable for a cancer survivorship diet. That also includes nitrate/nitrite-free stuff and chicken sausages.

Thankfully, he did ok making some of that stuff at home, including roast beef, which would still count against the recommended red meat amounts, but would be better for me than buying the pre-sliced stuff.

That one hurts a little because deli meats and cured meats made up a very large part of my diet. I had some form of that every day, and many times multiple times a day, and have done so since I was old enough to eat solid food (maybe that’s why I developed cancer 😉). I ate obscene amounts of lunchmeats, bacon, and sausages.

So that was the worst of it. With the alcohol, he just said if I don’t feel like I have to drink, then don’t, but recognized that there’s a social component to it that’s hard to fight. I mentioned that I didn’t drink a lot beforehand, and I’m not drinking at all right now, and he simply recommended not starting back again if I could help it.

He then went through the usual things of this much red meat, that much protein, eat a plant-forward diet, eat the rainbow, blah blah blah, but did specifically point out that tomatoes appear to be very effective in curtailing prostate cancer recurrence, so eat tomatoes, fresh, canned, or cooked, as much as possible.

Then he had me tell him typical meals that we eat, three of each of breakfast, lunch, and supper, as well as snacks and desserts, and he graded me very highly on my choices overall, with little tweaks here and there. He said I was eating better than 95% of the people he meets with, and he commended me on my general food/meal knowledge…we even swapped a couple of recipe ideas.

Last thing he left me with was that he was sending me a bunch of dietary info through my patient portal, and that I had access to nutrition services through the care center for the rest of my “very long life,” and “…one more thing: holidays and vacations, throw all that out the window and eat and drink what you want. Life’s too short not to have a little fun.”

All in all, a good meeting, I thought.