I can only drink porridge and soup during chemotherapy. What should I do if I am worried about malnutrition?

"Ms. Zhang was diagnosed with breast cancer six months ago. She received chemotherapy after surgery. The first and second rounds of treatment were effective, but as the number of chemotherapy sessions increased, the gastrointestinal reactions after chemotherapy began to intensify, and she suffered from frequent anorexia and vomiting. Ms. Zhang's mother prepared porridge, rice paste, lotus root powder and soup for her every day. Even though Ms. Zhang's appetite had recovered, her mother insisted on only letting her drink porridge and soup, believing that these foods were light and easy to digest, and most suitable for patients. However, Ms. Zhang's husband felt that these foods were relatively low in calories, protein and micronutrients, and was worried that they could not meet the nutritional needs of Ms. Zhang's body. However, he was also worried that his wife would not be able to digest other foods. He did not want to increase his wife's pain and did not know what to do."

For cancer patients, chemotherapy is a protracted battle. While drugs attack tumor cells, they also damage their own cells and tissues. Therefore, patients need to have sufficient physical strength and nutritional support to survive round after round of treatment and persevere until the final victory. However, about half of the patients will experience digestive problems such as decreased appetite and gastrointestinal discomfort during chemotherapy, just like Ms. Zhang. Some even want to give up treatment because of severe reactions.

Therefore, for patients who do not eat much during chemotherapy, it is particularly important to maximize the nutritional content of every bite of food. Only by finding ways to help patients take in as much nutrition as possible can we support the body to withstand treatment and speed up recovery!

In China, people generally think that porridge is easy to digest and swallow. Therefore, rice porridge and millet porridge are often prepared for patients. However, if the only ingredient for cooking porridge is rice, not only is the calorie and protein insufficient, but the nutritional composition is also very simple. It cannot meet the basic nutritional needs of patients, nor can it support the long-term treatment of patients. The same is true for soups. We often regard soups that have been boiled for a long time as the essence. Chicken soup, fish soup, and pork rib soup are the "tonic" products we most often prepare for patients.

But in fact, soup has very little nutrition. It is mostly water, with a small amount of fat and minerals, almost no protein, and no vitamins that help recovery. Drinking soup alone often just fills your stomach, but does not provide enough nutrition.

But if we add more ingredients to the porridge, and eat the meat and vegetables in the soup while drinking the soup, the nutrition will catch up immediately. For example, the nutrition of vegetable and meat porridge, seafood porridge, and eight-treasure porridge is much better than that of rice porridge alone. The combination of rice and beans in eight-treasure porridge can also optimize the plant protein in the two ingredients and increase the utilization rate of protein in the body; the vegetables, meat and fish added to vegetable and meat porridge and seafood porridge not only increase the diversity of ingredients, but also enrich the nutritional value and provide more protein needed for physical recovery.

If the patient wants to eat salty food, minced meat, meat floss, fish, yam, cooked and chopped boiled eggs, chopped dried tofu, etc. can be added to the porridge. If the patient likes to eat sweet food, milk powder, soy milk powder, coconut flakes, chopped nuts, mashed bananas, date paste, wolfberry, raisins and special medical formula nutritional powder can be added to the porridge.

If you are worried that patients will have trouble digesting porridge with added ingredients, or cannot bite meat or eat vegetables when drinking soup, you can use a "magic tool" to simply deal with it. Just put the porridge with added ingredients or soup with meat and vegetables into a blender and blend it to make a nutritious paste or milkshake. The "concentrated essence" of rich nutrients from various foods is then ready.

According to the patient's personal preferences, different ingredients can be matched every day. Not only can the patient drink nutritious porridge and soup, but it will also increase appetite. If you are worried about insufficient protein intake, you can also add 2 spoons of whey protein powder to the nutritional paste or milkshake, which can increase about 50 calories and 12 grams of protein. If the patient has difficulty defecating, you can add a spoon of sesame oil to the nutritional paste and a spoon of honey to the milkshake to increase the taste and soften the stool.

For patients undergoing cancer chemotherapy, how to eat enough calories and protein is the first priority, and nutritional support must also be constantly adjusted according to changes in the patient's digestive tract function.

When we are at a loss, we might as well seek professional advice from nutritionists or medical staff to help cancer patients who are suffering from chemotherapy.

Note: There is no copyright issue for the pictures in this article

Author: Chu Yi, Shanghai University of Medicine and Health Sciences

About the Author

Chu Yi

She is a full-time teacher at the Practice Teaching Center of Shanghai Health Medical College, a Chinese technical guidance expert for the 45th World Skills Competition, a member of the expert group of the China "Standardized Patient" (SP) Practice Teaching Steering Committee, and a member of the CSPC (Youth Expert Committee) of the Health Science and Technology Working Committee of the China International Science and Technology Promotion Association. She has been engaged in teaching courses such as "Geriatric Nursing", "Internal and Surgical Nursing" and "Community Nursing" for a long time.

Funded by Shanghai Science and Technology Commission's Science Popularization Project

(Project No.: 20DZ2311100)