POSTED: Thursday, January 24, 2013, 12:31 PM

"One day they are gonna do a study that shows chicken causes cancer and pizza is good for you." -Slim, Spring 1999

"Chicken is poison." -Dr. Matt; ER at Broward General who made my initial cancer diagnosis, Summer 2012

Two quotes, taken 13+ years apart and in completely different contexts, and yet they seem eerily similar, no? The second was given to me by the admitting ER doctor at Broward General; he did a fellowship in age management and anti-aging medicine, and is a big believer in diet being the catalyst for our health. We have mutual friends, bring our kids to the same beach/pool club, and are roughly the same age. He and I have stayed in touch, and he is a big supporter and source of information as our family examined the effects of what we eat on our bodies.

The first one? That was what my one roommate Eric, aka "Slim", claimed every Friday night. First year out of college, four of us crammed into a three bedroom apartment in Hoboken, NJ, and every Friday night was Happy Hour at The 409 Caf," our humble abode. After work and working out, Avi, Dan, and I would usually make some sort of chicken dish with pasta or rice and a veggie. Meanwhile, Eric swung by Filippo's Pizza for the early dinner special - two slices and a can of soda for $3 (there was really no better deal in North Jersey). By the time friends stopped by for evening cocktails, the three "healthy" guys were rushing to finish cooking/eating our dishes, while Eric sat on the sofa enjoying all the grease and carbonation twelve quarters could provide. FYI - Eric's comment was always in jest to poke fun at our obsession with what we deemed as healthy. He's a nuclear engineer, but not Nostradamus. And he is in fairly decent health after his wife helped put him on the straight and narrow, exchanging the pizza-and-happy-hour staple for family dinners long ago.

So are they right? Can chicken - long touted as the healthy alternative protein to red meat and THE staple of the gym crowd's diet - actually be causing health issues instead of solving them? Jen and I have gotten a LOT of diet and nutrition advice since this all began, some from former cancer survivors, some from doctors, some from nutritionists, and others from well-intentioned Moms who changed diet habits in their homes for their children's health. It is an onslaught of information, one no person can process easily - especially if they are trying to figure out what the hell just happened to their life when getting a cancer diagnosis. To make things more confusing, one source almost always contradicts some other advice, and there is an endless variety of "good" things to attempt to integrate into meals.

My first trip to Whole Foods armed with a cancer-fighting shopping list made me dizzy; we were there for 90 minutes and barely got out of the produce section. I learned that day that just reading about antioxidants doesn't equate to making healthy meals for a family of four; this was/is going to be a long journey of education and comprehension, to separate fact from fad-diet fiction and real health from "pick and choose" nutrition.

You know, the friend who says "I had cauliflower and broccoli for dinner with a lentil couscous side last night," but declines to mention the cheese sauce the veggies were in, or the butter liberally applied to the couscous. That selective nutrition was evident in the Sharpe household's pantry and freezer, and on our Sunday afternoon lunch tab. How the heck were we supposed to give up chicken and pasta and even milk, when it was tough to simply follow universal nutrition basics? Especially when the new "eating right" involved hours of understanding WHAT to buy, more hours of shopping and cleaning foods, and then preparing fresh meals, snacks, and smoothies. The sheer volume of time investment (not to mention cost) became unsustainable.

So we are breaking our diet down into manageable changes. Three main themes appeared in many of what was shared with us:

I am the last person you would ever think would fall under the "vegan" stereotype - eating sprouts and hummus and extoling the virtues of beets, while criticizing the meat-processing industry for their horrific treatment of animals that was never me. I LOVE the Sunday night Italian feast, with meatballs, sausage, braciole, gravy, and good old semolina pasta out of a box; even in my healthiest days, rice and chicken were daily staples, and yogurt was the go-to "good snack." After watching a documentary called "Forks Over Knives" and reading a bit about The China Study, many ideas of what I had always thought of as "nutritious" went out the door. Unprocessed whole and raw foods were favorable to my canned chicken, canned mushrooms, and Classico Four Cheese over angel hair concoction.

Follow this link:
Patient #1: The cancer diet