Preventing Cancer Through Nutrition Tips

Posted on April 23, 2008

Preventing Cancer Through Nutrition Tips

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Add More Anti-Cancer Foods As Snacks
If you want to ensure that you get those five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables each day, plan to make them part of your healthy snacks. Here’s how:

-Keep dried fruit in your car or in your desk at work to eat instead of pretzels or chips.

-Choose a muffin with blueberries or raisins rather than chocolate chips

-Try a fruit smoothie or vegetable juice for a mid-afternoon pickup.

Remember that fruits and veggies with the brightest colors usually have the most nutrients, so choose the most colorful foods if you have a choice. Blueberries, oranges, slices of bright red and green bell peppers, or baby carrots all pack a powerful nutritional punch at a relatively low caloric cost.

When shopping or planning your menu for meal deliveries, try to make bright-colored vegetables and fruits a part of each meal or snack.
Aspartame Consumption Not Linked To Cancer
Current evidence from long-term scientific studies have not shown any link between eating foods sweetened with aspartame (sometimes called NutraSweet on food labels) and an increased risk of cancer.

Aspartame is a low-calorie artificial sweetener that is used in most diet sodas and many other low-fat or fat-free foods. It is much sweeter than sugar, but it doesn’t add calories.

If you are trying to lose weight, you may find artificial sweeteners a helpful way to control calories, but be sure to include fresh fruits, vegetables and whole grains in your diet; don’t rely only on artificially sweetened foods for good health.

Caveat: Aspartame contains an amino acid called phenoalanine. People who have phenylketonuria, a rare disorder associated with the body’s inability to process an amino acid called phenylalanine, should avoid foods with aspartame.
Keep Alcohol Consumption Moderate
Alcohol seems to be a double-edged sword; alcohol consumption has been associated with improved heart health, but it has also been associated with an increased risk of colon, breast and liver cancers. And if you both drink and smoke, you significantly increase your risk for head and neck cancers.

What to do with this information? Practice moderation. If you choose to drink alcohol, limit your consumption to two drinks per day if you’re a man and one drink per day if you’re a woman. Most health experts define one drink as 12 ounces of beer, 5 ounces of wine or 1.5 ounces (about a shot glass’s worth) of spirits.
Low-fat Diet May Cut Breast Cancer Risk, But Don’t Drop Dairy
Results from a 15-year clinical study of approximately 49,000 women suggest that women who make an effort to eat a low-fat diet may reduce their risk for breast cancer.

Even if you’re not a woman or not otherwise at increased risk for breast cancer, a low-fat diet can help you lose weight and improve your heart health.

But many women cut down or eliminate healthy dairy foods in an effort to trim the fat from their diets, which can put them at increased risk of osteoporosis.

Don’t eliminate dairy from your diet as a way to cut down on fat. In fact, healthy, low-fat dairy foods are essential for good health because they are excellent sources of calcium. Instead, choose skim milk, nonfat yogurt, and low-fat or reduced fat cheese and ice cream and you’ll cut the fat without depriving yourself of calcium. If you are accustomed to drinking whole milk, start by switching to 2 percent or low-fat milk. Once you get used to the slightly different taste and texture of low-fat milk, try skim milk.
Plan Healthy Whole Grain Meals To Cut Cancer Risk When you plan healthy meals, cancer prevention through good nutrition will be a beneficial side effect. The American Cancer Society recommends whole grains as part of a cancer prevention diet, so try to substitute processed grains with whole-grain foods. Top whole-grain pasta with tomato sauce, a little parmesan cheese, and some oregano, and you have a quick, easy and healthy meal. Do you favor Mexican food? You can find whole wheat tortillas to enhance the health factor of a wrap or a fajita. Don’t like to cook? Many companies that provide home delivery meals, such as ChefsDiet.com, include whole grain food options in their menus.
Recipe Makeovers For Cancer PreventionWhether you are cooking for yourself or using a meal delivery service, you can increase the fiber and cut down on the fat and calories in your diet as a step towards cancer prevention. Start by choosing low-fat versions of dairy products, such as milk and cheese. Substitute with skim or low fat milk instead of whole milk and don’t overindulge, even on healthy but high-fat foods, such as avocados or nuts. You don’t have to abandon your favorite meals; just tweak the recipes a little. Some tips for recipe makeovers: -Substitute low-fat cottage cheese for half the amount of ricotta cheese when making lasagna, and use whole wheat lasagna noodles. -Buy plain yogurt without added sugar or flavoring. Add your own fruits, nuts or honey for extra flavor that you control. -Substitute whole-wheat flour for half (or more) of the amount of flour in baking.
Spice Up Meals To Cut Down On Cancer Risk
Reducing the amount of salt in your diet and replacing it with other types of seasonings and spices can improve your health. Cutting back on the salt may reduce your risk of developing heart disease later in life, and certain spices, including cinnamon and oregano, contain powerful antioxidants, which may reduce your risk of developing cancer. Try garlic or lemon on your broccoli and cinnamon on beets or sweet potatoes. When you put your favorite tomato sauce on your pasta, add some oregano, chives or dill.

If you order home delivery meals, companies such as Chefs Diet employ professional chefs to design meals with seasonings and spices that are not only healthy, but flavorful, too.

For example, one dinner option from the Chefs Diet menu is lemon basil salmon with couscous and asparagus. The lemon and basil cut down on the need for salt and bring out the flavor of the salmon, which is not only tasty, but it’s high in healthy omega 3 fatty acids.

Chefs Diet Gourmet Meal Delivery

Stock Your Kitchen With Staples For A Healthy DietStock your kitchen with healthy staples and you’ll have many options for meals that can contribute to cancer prevention through good nutrition. Keep healthy oils, such as olive oil and canola oil, on hand, along with red wine vinegar or balsamic vinegar, and you have the base for a low-fat salad dressing. Whole wheat pastas and brown or long-grain rice or rice mixes are a great accompaniment to steamed or sautèed vegetables or a simple stir-fry dish. Remember that frozen vegetables are just as healthy as fresh veggies, so keep a few bags of mixed vegetables in the freezer to toss into a casserole or mix in with whole grain rice or whole wheat pasta as needed.
Strive For Five (Servings Of Fruits And Veggies) Daily To Prevent Cancer
Eat at least five servings of fruits and vegetables daily and you may reduce your risk of developing certain types of cancers.

Sound intimidating? Don’t worry. A serving is surprisingly small, so it’s easy to add more fruits and veggies to your meals or snacks.

For example, one serving equals one medium-sized piece of fruit, half a cup of sliced fruit or a scant quarter cup of dried fruit.

Similarly, just one cup of leafy vegetables or one-half cup of cooked or raw vegetables equals one serving. Given the large portions we’ve become used to when dining out, that’s really not a lot of food. A medium apple or orange is about the size of a tennis ball, and many fruits sold in grocery stores are larger than that. And it only takes about four good-sized leaves of leafy greens to make up one cup of salad.
Tea And Cancer
Laboratory studies show that the antioxidants found in tea (called catechins) inhibit the growth of certain cancer cells.

Findings from human studies to evaluate the effectiveness of regular tea consumption on preventing cancer have been contradictory, although a promising study from
China that included more than 18,000 adult men found that those who drank tea regularly were half as likely to develop stomach or esophageal cancers as those who drank little or no tea. But a similar study in the
Netherlands followed more than 50,000 adult men and 60,000 adult women and found no significant association between regular consumption of tea and a reduced risk of cancer.

Bottom line: If you drink tea, that’s great, but remember that no single food will protect you against cancer. The best cancer prevention strategy is a healthy diet and lifestyle that includes regular, moderate physical activity.40-30-30 Diet Delivery