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Eating the enemy out

Ishi Khosla

In its continuing endeavour to fight cancer, Prashanti, a unit of the Indian Cancer Society, arranged a workshop in New Delhi on diet and nutrition of cancer patients. The workshop held recently was headed by Ishi Khosla, former chief nutritionis t at Escorts Heart Institute. In an interactive session, Khosla emphasised on the importance of balanced diet for a cancer patient. “Forty percent of cancer cases in men and 60 percent in women are due to unhygienic food. Conspicuous change in the eating habits of people with time has led to a lot of health related problems. People prefer fast food, and lack of physical exercise makes the situation worse. We eat adulterated diet due to which the quantity of protective elements in our food is decreasing,” she said.

The nutritionist added, “We need to understand the diet in both preventive and curative aspects. Organic, simple and less spicy food is always healthier than oily and fried food which attracts our tongue. Strong will is also required because bringing instant change in food habits is not very easy.” She specially emphasised the consumption of pro-biotic ingredients like curd which makes our immune system stronger. Apart from this Khosla asked patients to regularly eat garlic, soya bean, flagseed, nuts and fruits because these contain special elements which help fight cancer.

“We often organise these kinds of workshops which help the cancer patients in their treatment and also build confidence in them,” said Sharmila Nath, Office Incharge of Prashanti and a breast cancer survivor. All the patients did look confident after attending the session and mentioned that they would try to incorporate whatever they had learned into their routine.

“We are really happy that we are able to arrange these workshops for cancer patients because it gives them a ray of hope that cancer is curable if detected in time and they still have long way to go,” concluded Renuka Prasad, Joint Secretary, Indian Cancer Society.

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