Dietary Strategies for Pancreatic Cancer: Food Choices and Weight Management Tips
Pancreatic cancer patients often face challenges in maintaining or gaining weight due to various symptoms such as nausea, vomiting, and pain. However, a combination of nutritional and medical strategies can help counter malnutrition and improve treatment outcomes.
One approach for individuals seeking weight gain involves prioritizing protein intake (25-30 grams per meal) and easily digestible fats. Eating small, frequent meals (5-6 per day) helps reduce digestive burden while ensuring sufficient calorie intake. Collaborating with a registered dietitian can personalize nutritional strategies to accommodate individual treatment and symptom variability.
Protein-rich foods such as lean meats, poultry, fish, eggs, dairy products, legumes, nuts, and soy help maintain muscle mass and repair tissues. Easily digestible fats from sources like avocado, nuts, and cooking oils provide energy without overwhelming digestion. Complex carbohydrates like whole grains, potatoes, rice, pasta, and legumes offer sustained energy. Fruits and vegetables rich in vitamins and antioxidants support overall health.
Pancreatic enzyme replacement therapy (PERT) plays a crucial role in managing exocrine pancreatic insufficiency (EPI), a common complication of pancreatic cancer where the pancreas does not produce enough digestive enzymes. PERT supplements these enzymes, improving digestion and nutrient absorption, particularly of fats and proteins, thereby reducing symptoms like malabsorption, steatorrhea (fatty stools), bloating, and abdominal pain. This therapy helps prevent malnutrition, vitamin deficiencies, and further weight loss, improving patients' quality of life.
In addition to these strategies, high calorie snacks such as peanut butter, nuts, and granola can help people with pancreatic cancer stop losing weight. Adding high calorie foods to meals is also beneficial. Cancer Research UK suggests adding ground meats, lentils, beans, pasta to soups, blending bananas into protein shakes, making oatmeal and instant soups with whole milk or soy milk, blending tofu into soups and sauces, and dipping steamed vegetables in hummus or guacamole to add calories and protein to a soft diet.
It is essential to continue managing symptoms such as nausea, pain, and other symptoms that make it difficult to eat with the help of a healthcare professional. Depression and anxiety, common among people coping with serious health conditions like cancer, can also affect a person's appetite. Anyone who is experiencing weight loss or symptoms of malnutrition should speak with a healthcare professional such as a registered dietitian.
In summary, high-calorie, nutrient-dense foods, small, frequent meals, PERT, and nutrition collaboration with a registered dietitian are important to support weight gain, counter malnutrition, and improve treatment outcomes in pancreatic cancer patients with or without EPI.
