When people eat well, cook for themselves, their friends, and family, everything about their life slows down. It’s like living in a small town. There’s more communication together. It’s like in those Frank Lloyd Wright homes: The kitchen is right in the middle. That’s where everyone wants to be anyway.
—Michael Broffman, Director, Pine Street Clinic
If you’re reading this book, chances are you or someone you love is in a crisis. Hopefully that won’t be the case for long. More people are beating cancer. Others, though not cancer free, are living longer with a better quality of life than they would have experienced a generation ago. That’s great news. It also opens a doorway. I’ve found with my clients that going through a health crisis, while difficult, can have a galvanizing effect. They begin looking at ways to bring more joy into their lives. In other words, they want to learn how to nourish themselves.
Now, I’m not telling you whether you should quit your job and take off on a round-the-world trip or hike up the Himalayas (though both sound pretty good to me!). However, I do have some ideas that will help you reframe the way you approach food from here on out. I call it “sustainable nourishment.” As the name suggests, the idea has several components. My friend, Michael Broffman, treats many people with cancer. Here in Marin County, California, we have one of the nation’s highest breast cancer rates. Many patients come to Michael having been put on restricted diets by their physicians. Sometimes they’ve picked up information about what they should and should not be eating from their friends, television, or the Internet. The final effect is that they become extremely wary of food or, if they previously had food issues, those phobias now come to the fore. One of my clients, Aliyah, summed up this mind set. “I became scared of food,” she says. “I was so scared of eating anything bad for me that it was easier not to eat.”
Most people can maintain a restricted diet for a short time, especially when they’re first diagnosed. Over time, though, this can cause them to lose their connection to food. Whether you’re healthy or sick, food is literally your connection to life. Sustainable nourishment is about making those connections within whatever framework is best for your health. It’s also about realizing that there are often better-tasting and healthier alternatives to many of the foods you’ve grown accustomed to.
Linking healthy food with fabulous taste isn’t an accident; it’s a necessity. Even if the components of a food may be healthy, if it doesn’t appeal to our taste buds, we’re not likely to eat it. If we don’t eat, we can’t maintain our health.
So let’s agree: Any food that’s to be considered part of “sustainable nourishment” must titillate our taste buds. That’s where the lessons learned in chapter 1 can help. But that’s just a starting point. Although science is far from deciding whether certain foods cure cancer, evidence increasingly suggests that what we eat may help prevent cancer from initially occurring. Our first line of defense in battling illness is our immune system, and several food sources may boost its efficiency. These include antioxidants in vegetables and fruits, omega-3 fatty acids in some cold-water fish, and phytochemicals in plants. Such protection should be reason enough for anyone to gravitate toward these nourishing foods, especially those whose immune systems may have been affected by cancer treatments.
So now we have a fairly good working definition of sustainable nourishment. It involves food that both tastes great and contains the ingredients our body needs to sustain good health. So that rules out a steady cuisine of Twinkies (sorry). But I hope you realize by now that if you’ve looked at the recipes in this book, it doesn’t rule out much else. My hope is that as you work your way through the book, new culinary possibilities will begin to percolate in your head. I’m looking for that epiphany, that “aha!” moment when you realize that healthy eating expands your options instead of restricting them. This is part of sustainable nourishment as well. Eating—and here I’m talking about sitting down to a nice meal, as opposed to doing the fast-food fandango—has positive psychological effects that translate into physiological results. Amazing things occur as one eats a satisfying, nourishing meal. Your heart rate and blood pressure decrease. Levels of cortisol, the hormone that surges when we’re stressed, suddenly drop. Immunoglobulin levels, an indicator of the health of the immune system, begin to rise (that’s good!). In fact, the satiation response is similar to what happens when people meditate.
In short, this kind of eating lowers the stressors that wear us out over time. That’s why I think a huge part of sustainable nourishment also includes choosing and preparing one’s own food. Many people I work with describe the mental zone they get into during cooking as being similar to the focused yet relaxed state achieved during meditation or yoga. Now that would be a fun comparison study to take part in!
It wouldn’t surprise me if cooking provides physiological benefits. Whether or not that’s ever been proven, one thing I know is that the cancer survivors I’ve met who get involved with sustainable nourishment from seed to table improve their quality of life. Why? It’s all about control. Cancer rips control from one’s grasp, as life decisions and perhaps life’s course are turned over to strangers. Even after the initial chaos passes, one doesn’t hit the ground running but rather struggles on unsteady feet. In this context, engaging in sustainable nourishment is like taking part in a daily improvisational play that builds confidence. You can awake each morning and answer a question that too few of us ask: “What can I do for myself today that will be good for me?” In the course of just a few hours, a nourishing meal goes from inspiration to reality as one shops, preps, and cooks, not just for themselves, but for those they love as well. This experience, though it sounds hippie-ish to say so, can truly be transformative.
The key is finding the time and energy. My suggestion: If you can, find people to help. Friends and family are a good place to start, but remember that people who pitch in when times are tough don’t necessarily want to make a culinary shift. Yes, they’ll eat what you make them, and the delicious food may pique their interest, but I still suggest finding a cooking partner or two in the community. Such cooking buddies are probably as motivated as you are to shop, cook, and even clean. If possible, find someone who is an experienced cook. Their knowledge will accelerate your own development in the kitchen.
As for finding time, again I have a few suggestions. Many people like having a massive cook-a-thon on weekends, especially on Sunday. Once they get the routine down, my clients say they can cook, freeze, and refrigerate enough food to give them nutritious meals for the rest of the week. One day on, six days off? Sounds good to me. My friend says it also gave his two children a sense of responsibility for their own nutrition and health; they chose what they wanted to eat (healthy food, of course), cooked it, and put it in individually sized containers to be eaten later in the week.
I’m also a realist. Not everyone wants to completely change how they eat. I’m reminded of one of my grandmother’s favorite sayings: “Everything in moderation … including moderation.” Taking part in sustainable nourishment doesn’t have to be an all-consuming affair. I’d rather someone enjoy getting together once a month with a cooking partner and making a great meal from scratch than to have them feel as if—oy!—they’re on a burdensome diet. Remember, this is supposed to be fun! Make it a challenge—something that you want to do for yourself. Think of it as a personal contract where you get to choose the terms for nourishing yourself. Sometimes that contract need say nothing more than “Today, I’m going to eat to fit my needs.”
For my client Andrea, that means thinking about her day’s activities and eating accordingly. If she’s going for a hike, she’ll add a little extra protein for energy. If not, she’ll eat light. Andrea also thinks of what’s in her gas tank with regards to eating fresh and organic foods. She takes a pragmatic approach. “I only have a certain amount of energy. That’s true even for healthy people,” she says. “I can choose to use that energy fighting off toxins [in foods], or I can choose to use my energy to go kayaking. It always seems to be a much better proposition to eat well and be out in the world.”
Learning about organic foods is also part of sustainable nourishment, but it’s much more fun to learn about the subject from the ground up. The best classroom I know is the farmers’ market. It’s such a blast to go there. The farmers are delightful—talk about your salt-of-the-earth types! They love talking about what they grow and how they grow it. They’re always chatting about what’s at the height of season, and what’s ready to be picked and brought to market in the next few weeks. If you really want to make their day, give them a recipe of something you’ve done with their food. Even if there’s nothing in particular you want to buy, the food is so vibrant and the smells are so delightful that a trip down to the market is a guaranteed pick-me-up.
I’d also encourage subscribing to a few food magazines to stimulate your nourishment consciousness. Some contain many recipes, while others specialize in culinary reportage. And as your knowledge about and experience with sustainable nourishment expands, don’t be surprised if you feel a desire to nourish others. You might even want to host a dinner party. This may come as quite a shock to those who’ve never initiated such social interactions, but I say go for it. Think of it as a tremendous opportunity to share a gift of life. That’s what I call sustenance.