The Living Kitchen – by Tamara Green and Sarah Grossman

For the most part, this is a very respectable book of recipes; plants-forward though not entirely plant-based (which from a cancer perspective is fine; poultry and fish are cancer-neutral, and fermented dairy may even be protective).

They do focus on including a lot of phytonutrient-rich foods (mostly: colorful plants), which indeed have a lot of anticancer potency between them.

It was an interesting choice to include some beef, since red meat is well-established as a carcinogen. The authors advise that it should be grass-fed, and this is a definite health improvement over the alternative, but still not great.

In a similar vein they recommend “sustainably farmed fish”. Not a known carcinogen, by the way (though watch out for antibiotics which are very high in farmed fish), but do you see the problem? Paying attention to sustainability is great; truly laudable. However, it won’t actually make any difference to the health impact on the consumer. Farmed fish is full of antibiotics, whether deemed sustainable or not.

The front cover shows a soup; the recipes in the book are a wide variety of different dishes, of which soups are just one category. There is a juices section, which not only was probably superfluous, but also is not amazing for the metabolism (and thus, not great in the context of cancer). On a more positive note though, the “mains” section is divided into “omnivore mains” and “vegetarian mains”, with equal attention given to both (20 pages each), so the recipes list isn’t entirely padded with juices and sauces and things (though yes, that also).

Bottom line: from an anticancer perspective, this one’s a bit of a mixed bag, but mostly good ones.

Click here to check out The Living Kitchen, and add to your culinary repertoire!