Joy Heimgartner is a dietitian who has helped hundreds of patients stay nourished through cancer treatment. She knows changes in appetite and taste can make it challenging to eat well.
Discover why getting enough food and fluids matters most, no matter the source — even if it means eating dessert for breakfast.
We asked a Mayo Clinic expert: What nutrition advice do you give patients during cancer treatment?
Joy Heimgartner, Dietitian, Clinical Nutrition: I think if it were up to a lot of us, probably myself included, if I was going through a harsh treatment, I might just say, "I'll eat better when I feel better."
Unfortunately with cancer treatment, you can't do that. You have to eat when you don't feel like eating. It's just part of your treatment plan, and just like taking your medications, you have to nourish your body.
Especially if it's a patient that I know, and I know that they enjoy eating. That's a sad moment for me when they tell me they don't want to eat, because I understand that's a part of something we've been doing since the day we were born. Our goal is to get them back to having more days of being to eat for pleasure, eat with friends, enjoy their food. But for right now that might mean we're eating because it's part of the treatment plan.
Usually it's about OK, "What is working for you?" Taste changes during cancer treatment are very common. One of the things we find as dietitians is that root beer tastes the same to a lot of patients throughout all of their taste changes. And so I'm not against making a patient a root beer float even if it's their breakfast for that day. Because that gets them some fluids, some calories, and gets them off to a better start of the day, so they have more energy to consume some other nutrition.
It's not necessarily what foods, it's really more the logistics of what's working, how do we get that in more often to get you what you need.
Joy Heimgartner is a dietitian who has helped hundreds of patients stay nourished through cancer treatment.
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