When it comes to preventing and fighting cancer, anti-inflammatory foods and recipes are important.
When it comes to fighting cancer, preventing cancer, and restoring your body to renewed health, rebuilding and keeping your immune system healthy with anti-inflammatory foods is one of the most important tools in your tool chest.
Adding nourishing foods full of healthy antioxidants is likely one of the easiest things you can do for yourself, if not the best. An anti-inflammatory diet rich in fruits and vegetables is key to keeping your body strong. Our sidebar on page 165 lists some of the most important cancer-fighting foods.
There’s often a supposition that for a dish to be healthy and good for you it will be boring or lack flavour. But nothing is further from the truth. When developing a healthy cancer-fighting recipe, as we’ve shown here with our selection, we use three benchmarks:
- visual sex appeal
- tantalizing aroma
- taste
If it’s pleasing to the eye and nose, it will definitely make bells ring on the palate.
In our collection of recipes we’ve incorporated as many top ingredients on the cancer-fighting list as possible. And we enhanced their flavours with various herbs and spices to bring it up a notch. Some of the recommended spices can be adjusted depending on your sensitivities—for example, when the taste buds have taken a beating in treatment.
Recipes
- Sweet and Spicy Quinoa, Cabbage, and Apple
- Vegetarian Paella
- Poached Wild Salmon with Avocado Chive Cream and Sugar Snaps
- Turkey Meatballs with Tomato Confit
- Creamy Thai “Jewel Yam” Soup with Pistachio Pesto
Powerful foods from A to Z
Scientific research recommends a number of key ingredients in your diet to help maintain a disease-free body. We’ve used a few in our cancer-fighting recipes. All of these foods have anti-inflammatory benefits, while many have an additional anticancer punch.
| Food | Cancer-fighting properties |
| almonds (brown-skinned) | fibre, vitamin E |
| apples (skin especially) | polyphenols, fibre, vitamin C |
| avocado | oleic acid and omega 3s, carotenoids, phytosterols, flavonoids |
| beans and lentils | phytochemicals, fibre |
| berries (blueberries, raspberries, blackberries, strawberries) | ellagic acid (richest in strawberries and raspberries), anthocyanosides (richest in blueberries) |
| chocolate (at least 70 percent dark) | catechins (significantly higher than in tea) |
| cruciferous vegetables (cabbage, collards, kale, cauliflower, broccoli, bok choy) | carotenoids; vitamins C, E, and K; folate; fibre; glucosinolates |
| dark green leafy vegetables (romaine and leaf lettuce, spinach, chard, beet greens, kale) | carotenoids; vitamins A, C, E, and K; saponins; flavonoids; folate; fibre |
| flaxseeds | lignans, omega 3 fatty acids, isoflavones |
| garlic (including onions, scallions, leeks, and chives) | allicin, arginine, oligosaccharides, flavonoids, selenium |
| grapes | resveratrol, proanthocyanidins |
| green tea | catechins (black tea has catechins in lower concentrations) |
| salmon | omega-3 fatty acids, selenium |
| soy beans and soy products (edamame beans, tofu, tempeh) | isoflavones |
| tomatoes | lycopene (more available in tomato products such as tomato paste) |
| turmeric | curcumin |
