Recipe for eating well with cancer

A recipe book, endorsed by cancer doctors and dieticians, offers a healthy and more palatable-looking alternative to the “blitzed in a blender” mush patients often have to contend with when illness makes eating difficult.

More importantly, Eating well with swallowing difficulties in cancer is designed to try and halt weight loss in cancer patients, as losing weight can reduce ability to tolerate chemotherapy, making its side-effects more toxic.

In fact, scientific studies have shown that those who lose more than 10% of their pre-illness weight “die much faster than patients who maintain their weight”, according to Aoife Ryan, dietician and lecturer in nutritional science at UCC.