An Interview with Rebecca Katz: Part One

Rebecca Katz is a chef and nutritionist who specializes in cooking for cancer patients and survivors. She is Executive Chef at the Center for Mind-Body Medicine’s Food As Medicine and CancerGuides Professional Training Programs, and is visiting chef and nutrition educator at Commonweal’s Cancer Help Program. Her latest cookbook, The Cancer-Fighting Kitchen, offers recipes and ingredients that help people thrive during treatment. SevenPonds spoke with Rebecca about her work.

Liz: Tell us a bit about what you do.

Rebecca: I am a cookbook author, chef, and nutritionist, as well as a culinary translator. This is a phrase I coined: basically, someone who can take all this nutritional science and translate it into tasty bites of yum, boil it down to foods you would want to eat.

Liz: How did you become a culinary translator?

Rebecca: I really got into the world of cooking for people who have cancer when my father was diagnosed in 1999. At that point, I was a trained chef, and yet I didn’t have a clue how to cook for someone who was ill. That was my boot camp training. Then the director of Commonweal’s cancer program called me in 2000 when their chef couldn’t make a retreat. As soon as I went and cooked at Commonweal, I found that this idea of nourishing people, whatever stage they were at, was the most important work I could do in the world of food. That’s how I really got involved in the cancer and chronic illness world: helping people find where their nourishment lies. That could be at any stage, thriving, surviving, living another 20 years, or dying.

Liz: Can you describe how food can be linked to health and cancer treatment?

Rebecca: It’s so critical, because during treatment your body is using up a lot of energy, being bombarded with chemo, radiation, medication. Nutritionally you’re really being challenged. The best thing you can do is give your body as much good nutrition as you possibly can. That will mitigate your side effects, improve your treatment outcome, and improve your quality of life. Oftentimes, chemo leaves you with unwanted case changes that can be mitigated by just using a few tools in your pantry. People may say, why do I want to think about food when I feel so yucky? But that’s the very time you want to bring in nutrient-rich food, so your body has a way of healing itself.

In terms of survival, once you’re done with chemo, food can be your greatest arsenal. Nutritional studies now show that many of the whole foods we can eat actually talk to our octogenes, change our gene expression. NFKB (nuclear factor kappa beta) is a protein complex involved in the immune and inflammatory process. Having incorrect regulation of NFKB is thought to play a role in many diseases, including cancer. So NFKB is ordering your cells around, maybe not acting in your greatest good, and healing herbs and spices can come in and put the kibosh on it. Food is really incredibly powerful. At a time when you feel so out of control, to know what you eat can really make a difference: that’s when you have control, power. Sometimes the littlest things can have the biggest impact.

Look for Part Two of our interview with Rebecca next week, when we’ll discuss what foods and recipes are the most nutrient-rich and the best nourishment for people undergoing treatment.