Eating during radiation treatment

The Cincinnati Kid said:

Hello Mattie,

Hello Mattie,

I haven't yet started my radiation but as I was researching upcoming effects I came acrooss this for what its worth. Maybe theres something in this list you haven't yet seen. Good luck.

• Many foods, including meat and poultry, taste better if they are served cold or at room temperature instead of hot.
• Eggs often taste good when the taste for meat is lost.
• Fresh fruits and vegetables, pasta dishes, and milk products are often well tolerated.
• Fruit sorbet, sherbet, and fruit smoothies usually taste good.
• Tart foods with more distinctive tastes may be added to foods to help cover the metallic taste. Try adding orange, lime, or lemon juice or orange marmalade to fruit salad, salsa, sauces for pork or chicken, stir-fried or cooked vegetables, and oil-based salad dressing. Add vinegar, lemon juice, or pickles to creamy dressings for potato, macaroni, tuna, egg, or cole slaw salads. Lemon juice added to chicken broth, broth-based soup, gazpacho, or guacamole enhances the flavor.
• Peel carrots before eating or cooking. This eliminates the bitterness that is quite noticeable to some people and makes them avoid eating carrots altogether. Try the "baby" carrots available in the produce section that are already peeled and cut.
• If you do not have sores in your mouth, try using horseradish or any of the flavored mustards, such as Dijon, honey, sweet and sour, etc., to add flavor to your sandwiches and other foods.
• Fruit juice popsicles often taste good. Make your own popsicles with your favorite juice flavors.
• Rinse your mouth with fruit juice, wine, tea, ginger ale, club soda, or salted water before eating. This will help clear your taste buds.
• You can sometime get rid of the strange taste in your mouth by eating foods that leave their own taste in your mouth, such as fresh fruit or hard candy. Suck on lemon drops or mints or chew gum after eating to get rid of the undesirable tastes that linger.
• Try marinating meat or poultry in fruit juice, wine, vinegar-based salad dressing, or other sauces for more taste.
• Experiment with spices and herbs. Some people find they like spicier foods at this time.
• Experiment with new foods. Try foods or cuisines you may not have tried before.
• If you are not neutropenic, eat out in restaurants that feature buffets. You can try small amounts of a variety of food without having to prepare it yourself.
• Check with your dentist to rule out dental problems causing bad taste. Care for your mouth and teeth to prevent dental caries.

Thank you. I was already familiar with that list and I did already try a number of things from it, but it remained overall difficult. I am currently searching for interesting food aroma to add to my food, but the availability in stores is limited. Apart from that, room temperature is, indeed, the way to go. Anything too warm or cold tasted worse.

ratface said:

its all about calories

welcome to the Board, dosent matter where you live. The biggest killer of cancer patients in general is malnutrition. So it dosen't matter what it taste like, nor that you actually eat it. I had great sucess drinking calories, it was just less painfull. Concentrate on calories in whatever form you can tolerate. I would not put anything in my mouth until you tried a very small portion first and were able to tolerate it. My biggest issue was not wanting to eat as everything tasted like cardboard which made drinking calories more effective, less energy spent on trying to eat the more is left for the battle. I lived on egg drop soup for some time, find what works for you and just keep eating it. 

That's the direction it's taking, right now. More and more drinking, less and less eating. I  don't know if it's a good thing, as I'm always scared to neglect some muscles, but swallowing is fine and I swallow no matter if it's solid or liquid. I actually wish some things tasted a little more like cardboard, although I suppose that the strong taste distortions indicate that my taste buds are not dead. They just feel like they're having a party and someone brought a crate of vodka. One part of them is shouting in unison, one part fell asleep all over the place, a third part is at the edge of getting sick. :-D

BeagleDad said:

TORS

Good information, Mattie.  Did you go through a TORS as well?  I just got done with mine 6 days ago and am looking at low dose rads beginning in Jan.  

Don (beagledad)

No, no TORS. Just conventional surgery with a free flap from my left arm. Positive T4 tumor, no nodes involved but one lymph circuit and a bit of jaw muscle. Negative margins but very narrow in some places.

What dose rads are you getting? I'm getting 60gy by the tumor bed and 54gy by the lower jaw area, all unilaterally, except for a small area behind the throat, where there's some sort of lymph circle.

BeagleDad said:

Rads Dose

I won't know my dosage for a bit.  Have onc appt Thursday.  Just had TORS done 1 week ago for positive HPV tonsil + full lymph node dissection.  Doc claims I will be getting "low dose" and should have "significantly" lessened side effects from rads due to dosage.  
Man, this TORS recoery is a ****.  Still cannot properly swallow.  TORS follow up tomorrow.  

Don (Beagledad)

Yes, I too had complete lymph node dissection of the neck area. Doc also said I was getting a low dose of rad, which was still the 60 I mentioned earlier. But I'm quite happy with the low amount of side effects until now. Only thing that really plagues me is taste change and that's really problematic. I just tried a banana shake and it tasted like toilet water. That's how bad it is. So I'm sticking to the calorie drinks that my doctor prescribed me, right now. They don't taste good either, but at least they're fast to gulp down.

I'm throwing away >75% of the food I purchase, at the moment, which is very frustrating. But I know I won't eat it, unless the taste at least tolerable. I hardly expect anything to taste good. Only things that do at the moment are my morning coffee and lemon drops. As much as I love both (and am thankful to, at least, being able to enjoy coffee), that's no solution to my nutrition problems.

Worst of all: the taste distortion doesn't even stay stable. It seems to change every day, so that I can't plan on what to eat during the coming days.

wbcgaruss said:

I Welcome You

Here on the forum and wish you the best. You are going through something most of us deal with-lousy, no, or bad taste when eating. it is hard to eat when food is like this. The suggestions you have so far are good so just get the easiest thing with the highest calories down as fast as possible for now. Your taste will come back but may not be what it was but it might be you never know till it happens. I just have a recipe idea I found on the net awhile back you might try. Two ladies werte sharing it as weight gain and easy to eat. Posted below-Just need a beater to maker it not a blender or anything else-Hang in there-Take Care-God Bless-Russ

Deb,

So sorry I’ve taken so long to get that receipe for your dad! I checked with our nurses and here it is:

1 box (3.4oz) of instant pudding
3/4 cup half & half cream
1/2 cup of water
1 cup of carnation evaporated milk (use canned not powdered etc.)

Mix together in a bowl then mix with a mixer for one minute until it begins to thicken. This receipe makes 4 servings. We use it to help individual’s we serve who are under weight to assist in gaining weight. As you can see…it is very rich and full of calories etc. Let us know how your dad is doing!

Karen

 

Hello wbcgaruss and thanks for your input. This recipe brings me halfway back to what I read from Bruce Dickinson from Iron Maiden who had HNC in 2015 and who says he lived on custard for a while. I think I'm going to go and focus on pudding/custard-like solutions. Perhaps go to Holland, which is not far from where I live, and buy that pudding specialty in bottles, which is called Vla, and has high amounts of calories. Perhaps I could live on that for a while.

One of the very few other foods I found tolerable, and by tolerable I mean that it doesn't taste completely horrible, are baked beans with a fried egg. I can even add a bit of Worcestershire Sauce, which, already, is quite daring, given its very particular taste.

motorcycleguy said:

Mattie,

The taste thing is more challenging than people who have not experienced could believe.

I still remember a piece of Key Lime pie I ate, early in my treatment - that tasted SO good, I had to have another!

After treatment, eggs started tasting good to me ... and then chili. Now - there are several things that taste good...

Hang in there - it's tough while you're in the middle of it, but it get's much better!

I hope you are having as nice a holiday with family and friends as possible. If nothing else, Cancer treatment reminds us of the importance of spending special time with loved ones!

mg

Hey motorcycleguy. Thanks for your good wishes. It really means something, right now.

Not much happening with friends and family at the moment, due to Covid, but that's okay. I can manage that. What I miss most is going to music events, right now.

I discovered just yesterday that I could tolerate crudities. Tried some Vietnamese summer rolls, which is basically salad in a wrap, and they tasted fine. It was the first time I actually experienced a good taste, in weeks. I'm not much of a salad guy, so that'll be a challenge but I'll press on in that direction and see what other crudities and salad I can tolerate. Perhaps Turkish starters, which are mainly vegetable purées could work.

As a rule of thumb, right now, anything that has been processed, either by cooking or adding different condiments and spices, tastes from weird to bad.

motorcycleguy said:

Mat,

Keep trying new things, until you find what works. Eggs over easy was the only thing I could eat for a while. I was on a construction job in Canada, and making trips home to finish chemo (I rushed it too much....). The waitesses at the restaurant asked me if I wanted "the usual'" 6 OE eggs, both in the morning and at Dinner ... for about 3 months!

Then, I slowly added oatmeal .. and a few weeks later, I could eat chicken wings again.

I found a frozen breakfast burrito I love. I buy out the little local store of them, whenever I see them in the frozen food section! LOL

mg

Exactly what I'd do if I found anything I could not only tolerate but actually enjoy. I keep searching.