[Sca-cooks] Ethnic was American Diet was Anchovette

[Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius]

On Jul 15, 2005, at 8:40 AM, Elaine Koogler wrote:

> Phil Troy / G. Tacitus Adamantius wrote:
>
>
>>
>> FWIW, my own experience with chemotherapy patients is that there  
>> may  well be some decrease in taste sensitivity. My father-in-law  
>> used to  cook with ridiculous amounts of salt near the end,  
>> claiming he  couldn't taste anything without it. I wonder if  
>> there's some  connection with your late grandfather.
>>
>
> What you need to remember is that the effects chemo have depend on  
> the kind of chemo being administered.  I've been on two different  
> kinds...one administered by a continuous feed pump as a result of  
> colon cancer...which had virtually no side effects at all, and  
> chemo that was administered via shots the first two weeks of each  
> month for six months.  This last was for breast cancer, and caused  
> me to gain weight (which of course I needed), lose half of my hair  
> and, toward the end, get VERY tired.  Admittedly, in both cases, I  
> was very lucky...in this later course, I should have lost all of my  
> hair and had bouts of nausea each day.  I don't recall my taste in  
> food changing however.  The biggest change of that nature came when  
> I quit smoking 20-some years ago!
> The good news regarding chemo is that research is ongoing to devise  
> methods of treating cancer that attack only the cancer cells rather  
> than our whole body.  Some pretty spectacular things are being  
> worked on...and there should be better ways of treating this  
> disease in the short term!

Hard to argue with any of that. I don't have direct, personal  
experience with this, only the memory of my father-in-law's  
occasional forays into the kitchen and his use of what I'd charitably  
call aggressive seasoning, with an emphasis on salt, a sudden craving  
for commercial Chinese food laced with MSG (I suspect this is  
relatively rare among Chinese men in their 80's). But then, as you  
say, there are lots of different forms of chemo, and I'm sure the  
effects vary.

It just sort of clicked in my head when anchovies and chemo were  
mentioned in the same breath, as a possibility.

Adamantius




"S'ils n'ont pas de pain, vous fait-on dire, qu'ils  mangent de la  
brioche!" / "If there's no bread to be had, one has to say, let them  
eat cake!"
     -- attributed to an unnamed noblewoman by Jean-Jacques Rousseau,  
"Confessions", 1782

"Why don't they get new jobs if they're unhappy -- or go on Prozac?"
     -- Susan Sheybani, assistant to Bush campaign spokesman Terry  
Holt, 07/29/04