This transcript was extracted from the ‘Eating well‘ video.

Okay, everybody, I think we’ll we’ll make a start. so hope you got, a scone and some fruit and tea and coffee and all that good stuff. and if you didn’t manage to get all round, the different information tables, you know, because the food was too good and the tea was too hot, you know, whatever excuse, we in the information and support service, we keep on top of all the different support available to you guys so that you don’t have to remember at all.

It’s a lot. Okay. So there is more support out there, not just what’s here, today. And so if you want to know more, please lift one of our cards over there. We’ll get in touch with you. I know some of you have already been in touch with us, but just take a wee card so you can get in contact with us if you need any more information and support.

Okay, so now we’re moving on to the second half of our event. And so can I please welcome Lindsay to the stage. Our dietitian.

Thank you. hello. My name is Lindsay and I am the dietitian within the Northern Trust. I just came at a good time because I think you Amy seen me walking through the door and then she added on fruit to the break. But anyway, so what we will cover, healthy eating, and then we’re going to look at the eat well plate, which is the basis of healthy eating.

Some common eating problems. And then we’ll talk about the build up diet so that’s if you’ve lost unintentional weight and then some common questions and dispelling myths. So moving on to the eat Well guide. So this is a picture of the Eat Well guide. And it’s in a plate because obviously we eat most meals off a plate. and it’s split up into five food groups.

So it consists of your fruit and veg, your starchy carbohydrates. then it goes into protein, then your dairy products, and then the smallest little chunk is your oils and spreads and fats. And then you can see that like high fat foods and sugar foods are outside the plate because you don’t need them to be part of a of a healthy, balanced diet.

Eating well, maintaining your weight, will help you feel stronger, increase your energy levels, and give you a sense of control because that is something that you can control, in your day to day life. Whereas some things you cant, so it’s important to get some fat in your diet, but not but some foods that are higher in fat, like your crisps and your sugary drinks and things like that are obviously not ideal.

So then moving on to fruit and veg. So this should be about a third of your diet, of your every day consuming, dietary needs as well. So we aim for at least five portions of fruit and veg a day. all different types of colours give different types of nutrients. and then your fresh frozen, tinned and, dried all count towards it, and even if like, you’re making a pasta bake with 3 or 4 different vegetables, they all count in it as well.

So starchy foods should also make up a third of your diet. so that’s like your pastas, your rice, your potatoes, your bread. They all get a bad name because it’s things that we add or we put on top of them, like your butter or your jam. on you’re toast so people, try to, like, cut them out, unnecessarily.

But that is a main source of energy. and they’re also very low in calories per gram versus like fattier foods, like your meats and things as well. so as I said, this should make up a third of our diet. they give us nutrients like fibre, calcium, iron and b-vitamins. and it’s important to go for higher fibre options.

So, like, your whole grain or your whole meal types of things. So like your brown rice brown pasta, brown bread. Then we have our protein section of the plate. So that’s like your beans your pulses your fish, your eggs your meats. And then like lentils and things as well. so they’re a good source of fibre as well.

And we should aim for in terms of fish, we should aim for two portions a week, one of that being oily, so that like your sardines, your salmon, your mackerel. so we should also eat less processed meats, basically because of the cancer risk down the line as well to the bile. So if ways to reduce processed meat consumption, we’ll try and choose plant based protein.

So like your beans and your lentils. we use leaner cuts of meat. So like your chicken or your turkey skinned also gives you less fat as well. and then ask your butcher for lower fat cuts of meat as well. Then we have our dairy and milk alternatives. so that’s like your milk, your cheese, your yogurts, them sorts of things.

So they also have vitamins, minerals, calcium, especially, which keep our bones healthy. lower fat and lower sugar contents. So, lighter diet yogurts, for example, are better just for a sort of healthy, balanced diet. And watching the weight. Then lastly we have our oils and spreads. So we do need fat in the diet because we need fat soluble vitamins.

So they are the vitamins A E and K eating a lot of fat or the wrong type. You can gain weight. So like your wrong type is your saturated fat. So that’s like your baked goods, your butter. and then the saturated fat within the meat as well. So like if you’re having a big steak, there’s a big bit of fat down the side of it that is saturated fat.

Okay, I know it gives flavor, but try not to eat it. and then omega six and three are good fats, so they’re found in your oily fish that we talked about earlier that you should have be having one portion a week off. so again, just moving on from the fat as well. This is good because basically by law, all foods should have the fat on the packaging on the back.

But some people, some supermarkets do put the traffic like labeling on it, which we’ll talk about later. But obviously any foods that are more than 20g of fat per 100g is red would be red, and traffic lights would be really high in fat, and we should really be limiting them. and obviously to if you grill or bake a boil or poach, your foods, that will also reduce the amount of fat consumption and obviously avoiding take aways eating out because obviously they’re fried in lots of nice stuff in the kitchen.

So salt then, as part of a healthy, balanced diet, we need to eat less salt as well. So that’s trying we’re only allowed one teaspoon of salt. Well, ideally we should only be having one teaspoon of salt every day. Now that is included in the the food the salt that’s already contained within the foods. so obviously the biggest one is if you gradually stop, adding salt to your fats, that will decrease the amount that you’re consuming anyway.

And any anything higher than 1.5g of salt per 100g is would be red. Okay. so some foods obviously already contain high levels of salt, like processed foods. So that’s like your sausages, your tinned foods, you’re ready meals. You’re convenience foods. try and avoid the lower salt alternatives like low salt, for example, because it is quite high in potassium which gives it the flavour.

And that’s not very good for your heart, for example. and do remember to compare salt content of the food. So you can just do that by looking at the traffic light labels. we need to try and be having about 6 to 8 cups or glasses of fluid within the day. Now your teas and coffees do count.

Your soup also counts. milkshakes. count any sort of fluid that you’re taking in counts and ideally water or no added salt diluting juice, for example, are the best. Or milk? Lower fat milk. Obviously your semi-skimmed or your 1% is best. then we have our food labels. So as you can see, this is just a wee example. I’m sure you’ve seen them on everything.

It’s quite popular now. These days everybody’s putting them on. which is handy, because at a glance and you can just see if it’s good and if it’s red and you try and try and avoid or stay away from the red ones, the amber ones, you can have sort of infrequently and then green obviously would be ideal.

So they take into account the sugars, the fats, the saturated fat, the energy and the salt. And this is in addition, as I said, to the mandatory nutrition information on the back of the food label. so it as an addition, you can if you want any more information, then just flip it over. Okay. And we do have, booklets with, traffic light, that traffic light labelling, that describes it all in the booklets over to the, to the left.

So alcohol, it is a form of empty calories. So the more you drink, sometimes you can gain weight and you can you’re maybe eating super duper healthy, but you’re drinking quite a lot of beer or wine or and then you can’t understand where the weight gains coming from. So it could be the alcohol. So it’s empty calories.

They don’t provide anything apart from calories. so the NHS guidelines do say that you should limit alcohol to 14 units per week. spread the units across three days or more in the week and aim for alcohol free days within the week. So one unit is a is a measure of like vodka or Bacardi or a spirit.

A small glass of wine is one unit and half a pint of ordinary strength beer. Lager or cider is one unit. So you’re probably thinking, you’ve definitely exceeded the units potentially at the weekend. then we aim to try and keep a healthy weight. Okay, so if overweight, losing weight can help. and some types of cancer can lead to weight gain.

Healthy weight reduces your risk of developing cancer down the line, and may also reduce the risk of cancers coming back. losing weight is a gradual process. It’s not going to happen overnight, and it’s done by just gradually cutting things out or watching your diet over a long period of time because you want the weight loss to be sustainable.

You want to get it off, but keep it off. You don’t want to. If you’re doing a quick fix, it will usually just come back on again quickly as well. so there is a food, and activity planner in, one of the Macmillan booklets in healthy eating and cancer. So we have a couple of copies, so you can write things down sometimes whenever you write things down, you do notice that you’re maybe eating wee bit more than you thought.

You maybe were you didn’t remember about that snack a couple of hours ago, you know, sometimes helps to sort of put in perspective what you’re actually eating, and then monitor your portion sizes. and it’s keeping to routine just sort of some tips I suppose are up there. So it’s just trying to keep active monitoring your portion sizes. think about your drinks.

So the calories in your drink, if you having a couple of tins of Coke, for example, a day that’s more calories that you could switch to water. There’s an easy fix. so now we’re going to talk a wee bit about eating problems and just common ones. there’s a couple listed here, but there is obviously other ones, but they are all detailed within the Macmillan booklets that we have with us today.

So if you’re having a poor appetite little and often is the key. So it’s smaller snacks throughout the day. So it’s trying to eat every about 2 to 3 hours or so and it’s keeping snacks handy. So if you’re out shopping or you’re out in the car or something like that, it’s just keeping like a wee bag of nuts, dried fruit or like cheese and crackers or something.

Take something with you wherever you go. And so you do have that wee bit of energy boost while you’re away and try to make food look as attractive as possible. because if you’re not feeling it, then there’s nothing worse than just not liking the look of it. For example, sometimes whenever people cook different, whenever different people cook their meals, they can get a bit better.

They can eat a bit better just because they haven’t cooked it so the smell. And they’re not tired from standing cooking, all day either. And it’s important to increase energy and protein, because we want to be building muscle mass as well, as keeping that energy up rather than just fat mass. That’s where the protein comes in.

Then we have, nausea and sickness. So if you’re nauseated, if some medications or treatment may make you feel nauseous or you’re just maybe on different antibiotics or something like that, they can all cause nausea. so it’s trying to eat dry food, plain food. foods without strong smells or strong taste. Also help, avoid long periods without food so try and keep it in regular so every 2 to 3 hours.

As I said, some people find ginger helps with nausea and peppermint tea as well can also help reduce nausea. Suppose it’s a personal preference. You can try it and, see fatigue, so you can get quite fatigued, quite tired with regards to treatment. So convenience foods may be useful, so obviously having a look at the traffic light labels on that just to make sure that they’re not red ideally.

And then help with shopping or cooking. batch cooking and freeze on a good day, maybe if you’re feeling it, make a big pot of stew or something batch cook it and stick it in the freezer so that some days whenever you’re not feeling so good and you’re feeling a bit tired, then you can just lift it out and microwave it and then quick simple meals and just smaller, more regular meals, making sure that there’s a starchy carbohydrate base too, like pasta, bread, rice, that sort of thing.

Then we have taste changes, for the next one. So try and eat blander foods. or alternatively, you could go for, for really sort of lots of herbs, lots of garlic, lots of spices we try and avoid adding salt ideally because remember you’ve only got that one teaspoon in the day and you’re flavoring it with a lot of salt.

You probably need quite a lot if you’ve got no taste. so try other seasons or marinating it in things. and also trying to add flavor to your cooking, unless obviously your mouth is very painful as well. Cold. Taste. Cold foods may taste better than hot foods. Maybe stronger tasting in in your taste buds. and if a metallic taste in your mouth, try using plastic or wooden cutlery because the metal, the metallic taste on metal will worsen it.

Last eaten problem of all, we have sore mouth, so making sure that you’re brushing your teeth regularly or rinsing out your mouth with a mouthwash. try to eat soft, moist foods, with plenty of sauces and gravy so that you’re. You’re not doing too much chewing. have nourishing drinks. Like your milk. Like anything, anything milky based will be nourishing or like a smoothie, for example.

And cut your fit into smaller pieces. and then you don’t have to chew for as long. Then we have, diet and kidney functions. so some of those with myeloma may have decreased kidney function, therefore may need individualized dietary restrictions. But these could include no added salt, a lower potassium or a lower phosphate diet. But these are all assessed individually.

So contact your specialist nurse your doctor, your dietitian. Okay. With regards to that one, then we have, the building up diet. So this is just for people who’ve maybe lost some weight unintentionally. through side effects. there are lots of reasons. so it could be because of. They may have no appetite. They may. feel full quickly, have early satiety.

They may find some foods, make them feel sick. It could be they have taste changes. So some things taste differently something that they’re eating their whole lives. tastes not very nice. some cancers may make up, may make your body use up a bit more energy as well. they can also produce chemicals to make your body work more quickly

So therefore, you’re burning off more energy. So you may be losing more than you’re putting in, and that’s therefore causing you to lose weight. So if you do lose weight, it is important to talk to your dietitian, your specialist nursery or your doctor. and then we can hopefully try and sort you out. But we usually do it with like small frequent meals and then add in energy and add in protein.

And then if that’s still not working, and then we would have a look at dietary supplements or nutritional supplements. some common myths. So some people think that everybody needs dietary supplements. that’s like a multi-vitamin or mineral or something like that. So if you’re having a healthy balanced diet, basically you don’t need. You wouldn’t need them. Okay.

I wouldn’t really recommend them if you’re having your five, at least five portions of fruit and veg a day and you’re having that your dietary intakes in line with eat well, then you shouldn’t need them. superfoods? there’s no technical definition of the word limited scientific evidence. and it doesn’t really apply to real diets.

So just eat, as I said, a variety of nutrients. Nutritious meals based upon the eat well plate. does sugar feed cancer? no. But, the sugar in your diet doesn’t directly increase the risk of cancer or encourage it to grow. Every cell needs energy in your body. So if you restrict your sugar, you’re restricting every cell within your body.

All of these myths, plenty more are also within that healthy eating and cancer booklet that we have with us today. So you can go over and grab a copy. So in summary, it is important to eat a healthy balanced diet and ensure that you have enough energy and protein to maintain your weight or your healthy weight.

Try and keep active as much as possible. We want to keep that the muscle mass up because that can help fight infections and everything else down the line helps your breathing and helps your mobility. it is important for you to enjoy your food because it is very social. Food is something that you do every day. but it’s important to focus on your food as it is.

As I said, a controllable element within your life. And for specific or tailored dietary advice, please do seek a dietetic referral from your  doctor or your GP or your specialist nurse. Thank you.