Any diet tips during cancer treatment?

Heavy on meats (for protein) & vegetables (for protein & minerals), avoid or at the minimum reduce sugars, cancer cells love to feed on sugars, think of the contrast for a PET SCAN (it's sugar based to light up those cancer cells)

What sounds good one day may not sound good the next day.
Have a variety of foods on hand. Eat what appeals to you, staying within guidelines if you need to follow dis-ease specific food plans.
Small meals several times a day.
Ginger

I didn't have chemo, but I did have a two-week post-surgical ileus, and it took me months to be able to eat normally again. Even though I was immobile (paralysed) in a hospital bed, I lost 40 lb.

The fact that hospital food was so unappetising didn't help. I turned a corner when I got the magic card on the wall behind my bed, authorising me to transfer from the bed to the wheelchair myself. I started wheeling to the patient lounge to make my own whole-wheat PB toast and good, loose-leaf tea, and I immediately started putting weight back on and gaining appetite and strength.

Over 4 years later (and walking, again), that's still my go-to breakfast

Once a week I go to the cancer center and I drive by a Taco 🌮 Bell. Vegetarian, so that is good. I just crave Taco Bell. I do skip the processed cheese. Today I have a craving for spinach pie and greek salad 🥗

The bean burritos (minus the red sauce) at Taco Bell almost always were very well tolerated for me. Tortilla chips.
Other helpful stuff using food- Chimes brand ginger chews for nausea, caffeine-free ginger tea for nausea, jolly ranchers candy or other super-sour candy to deal with metallic taste in the mouth; mandarin oranges, dried pears, sliced apples and drinking lots of fluid for constipation. Well tolerated in general - small, frequent snacks of lightly salted mixed nuts, cheese & crackers, Payday candy bars, high protein Nature Valley granola bars, plain potato chips, baked potato, mashed potatoes with added butter or margarine, vegetables & fruits both cooked & fresh.
For some reason, regular and lactose-free supplemental nutrition shakes taken by mouth weren’t tolerated well at all by me. Even the tube-feeding formula caused diarrhea.

Just ordered my spinach pie and salad 🥗. Oh and one of my favorite healthy snacks is Sargento white cheddar cheese, cashews, and raisin medley. Also enjoy the Nature Valley protein peanut butter dark chocolate. 10. Grams of protein. PS don't really like healthy food but I'm willing to try some if it tastes good 👍😊!

after my first infusion I stopped for a double Turkish coffee & blueberry scone

I'm loving this thread. When my friend was getting chemo, I was able to entice him with fresh mint tea and Peek Frean Assorted Crème cookies (I pulled up a mint plant and sent it home with him in a pot).

Like Laurie suggested in the opening post, there's always *something.* 🙂

Pho, with chemoradiation to the head and neck, food is tasteless but Pho still had some flavour.

I worked with the dietitian from the Mayo clinic. She told me I needed lots of extra calories, 2500 per day, and extra protein, 120 grams per day. The best advice she gave me to meet these requirements was not to eat anything that didn't contribute towards the calories or the protein requirements. She reminded me that the treatment was a relatively short period of time, not to worry about balance diets, healthy eating etc. So for me, I took that advice to heart, eating whatever I could swallow and during treatment, I only lost 8 pounds.