Eating After Cancer: Can rebuilding relationships with food help cancer patients with their recovery?
The Food Programme
BBC
4.4 • 977 Ratings
🗓️ 29 March 2020
⏱️ 30 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
One of the unexpected side-effects of dealing with cancer can be how it impacts relationships with food and eating.
The various treatments can take away both appetite, and the ability to eat and enjoy food - which has a knock-on effect on the patient's health, social life and wider wellbeing...
Sheila Dillon knows this better than most: eight years ago, she was diagnosed with a type of blood cancer called multiple myeloma, and has experienced firsthand what it's like to lose the ability to enjoy a good meal, because of illness.
This is an issue that hasn’t always been given due attention, by medics or patients – but a shift is underway: there’s growing recognition that people with cancer not only need nutritious food, but also that the pleasure of eating can actually aid their wellbeing and recovery.
Under self-isolation in the coronavirus outbreak because of her 'immuno-compromised’ status from being on maintenance chemo, Sheila delves into the stories of people recovering from or living with cancer, who have been forced to readdress their relationship with what and how they eat; as well as the researchers and cooks pioneering new, food-based solutions.
Presented by Sheila Dillon and produced in Bristol by Lucy Taylor.
Transcript
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| 0:56.4 | My first motivation for this work was actually I was sitting in a kayak with an oncologist and he said, you know, sometimes I just feel so |
| 1:05.5 | depressed about the work that I do because I've saved somebody's life only to ruin it. |
| 1:11.0 | They know that these sorts of after effects can be long lasting and really devastating. |
| 1:15.0 | Food is the identity of so many people. |
| 1:18.0 | Everything that we do is surrounded by food. |
| 1:20.0 | And if you suddenly you can't eat that, not because you're not interested, but because you can't physically connect to food properly, then it becomes a really depressing time. |
| 1:29.0 | Around two-thirds of people who've had cancer are likely to experience a changed sense of taste or a diminished relationship with food to have lost a little of the joy of food. |
| 1:42.0 | Generally, clinicians and researchers have been very shy to talk about pleasure, |
| 1:46.0 | but with this new neurological work that's been going on, |
| 1:50.0 | we actually are able to really say quite conclusively that pleasure matters to health |
... |
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