A few months back, I was asked the classic question “if you had super powers, what would they be?” I didn’t have to think for a split second to know the answer: to have the ability to eat whatever I like and never get fat. There, simple and blatantly honest. Nonsense like flying, invisibility, time-travel, etc. didn’t even come close to the sheer joy of eating vast quantities of delicious food a la Pantagruel and never having to face the consequences. Today, if someone asked the same question, my answer would be very similar, but with one addition: that the food I ate were magically anticancer. You see, over the holidays I read this book, and now my life has completely changed.
The book explains how the food that we eat can make our body a playground for cancer cells or the most desolate place for them. Therefore it is a guide as to what food we should eat to combat the development of cancer and what food we must eliminate from our diet altogether. Fascinating and a real eye-opener. If reading this book weren’t enough, on New Year’s Eve, I was sick with a horrible cold and on the sofa just like Marguerite in The Lady of the Camellias – I do get rather melodramatic when I’m ill… Anyway, I watched a documentary which also opened my eyes regarding food: Food Inc.
It was there and then that I decided my new year’s resolution would be to COMPLETELY change my diet to make it more anticancer and healthier. Step one, make my own food as often as possible. So last week I made my first casserole of butter beans, carrots, celery, onion and a touch of pimenton (Spanish paprika, so delicious).
Step two: tell EVERYONE I know about this new book and nutritional lifestyle. Step three: endure with Stoic resilience the constant temptations I got from my food-obsessed family back in Spain. Not only were pretty much ALL the conversations I had with them about food and how delicious everything was, but I was also bombarded with photographs of delicious yet forbidden dishes, such as the one below, “morros de cerdo” or pork scratchings:
It’s important to note that the Anticancer book says that the Mediterranean diet is very healthy indeed, and it’s the one I have been following pretty much all of my life. However, yours truly has been a bit of a pig these last few months and needs to get rid of her “winter fat suit”. So I am staying as far away from fatty food as possible for a while… sigh…
(*) The calendar above is the 2012 version of last year’s calendar. Not as pretty, but I wanted to use some leftover recycled paper I had around the house.
Araceli Robledo 