Holistic Nutrition and Cancer Practitioner Johanna Harlen’s Cooking for Cancer: A Book with Purpose, whose sales are partly to be donated to the National Cancer Institute, is a welcome addition to the pantheon of cancer nutrition guides already out there. More than a simple cookbook, in addition to providing a largely processed food and sugar-free 30-day alkaline eating plan, along with 90 self-tested recipes for all meals of the day, insights are given into the microbiome and its importance in the maintenance of overall health. Dedicated to her mother, who had to undergo a mastectomy due to breast cancer, the work describes, largely in layperson’s terms, the nature and causes of cancer and tumors.

I especially appreciated the personal tone of Harlen’s Cooking for Cancer: A Book with Purpose, as it indicated so clearly her family’s involvement with the disease. She herself is a cancer survivor, having had to endure Moh’s surgery. The guide’s color illustrations and charts help to make the text accessible, including 11 pages enumerating alkaline and acid food by degree. As a nutritionist, Harlen is in an ideal position to discuss the relationship between diet and cancer, explaining why the latter loves sugar and the importance of eating whole foods. Her holistic approach to the issue embraces a positive approach to treatment complications and support relating to radiation and chemotherapy. I found this an extremely helpful and reassuring book for any person who is newly exposed to the presence of cancer in their family or among their friends.

In life, there are highs and lows. In today's hustle and bustle society, there are so many things going on. New diseases are evolving, old diseases are coming back stronger, like measles, and people are still trying to figure out ways to stay healthy. In Cooking for Cancer: A Book With Purpose by Johanna Harlen, the reader is educated on various aspects of cancer from its effects on the body to how you can holistically live and eat to stay healthy. This book offers a disclaimer that while this is the journey of the author, it is always wise to consult your doctor regarding your health and the available choices. Johanna further displays how harmful acidic foods are for the body, especially in large quantities, from onion, beef, and beer to processed foods. To help heal your body and cells, the book offers a thirty-day alkaline diet plan to create a balanced pH. You only have one body so it is important how you treat it.

For me, Cooking for Cancer: A Book With Purpose by Johanna Harlen is ideal because I'm always seeking holistic choices for living from meditation, yoga, and Pilates and supplements to eating properly. I realized at a young age that everything affects our bodies both inside and out. No one is immune to disease or illness but its effects, impact and how long it remains are essential with how we take care of ourselves initially. Johanna offers so much in this book about cancer. As Johanna states: "Smoking causes an extreme acidic reaction in the body. All forms of tobacco increase the risk of cancer, especially in the lungs and larynx." So it's important to know and understand that everything that we eat, drink and our environment creates a blow to the body, both good and bad. This book offers so much from charts and a glossary to reference materials to help you make your own educated decision. Thanks to Johanna, this book provides everything that you'll need for your own journey.

Cooking for Cancer: A Book With Purpose by Johanna Harlen is an informative guide and cookbook for those who have or are close to a person fighting cancer, as well as those who wish to do all they can to create the best possible, most well-rounded preventative cancer regime. Fuelled by personal experience with her own mother and a fellow parishioner in her Bible study group, Harlen dove into educating herself on the intricacies of cancer, how it affects the body, how it grows and metastasizes, and how holistic programs can create a balance in the entire treatment plan. As cancer cannot survive in an alkaline environment, Harlen focuses on maximizing feeding alkaline into the body, quite literally, with a 30-day alkaline diet plan. She then provides a whole host of recipes in order to best achieve this.

Cancer, in all of its forms, has touched the lives of many. For me, it is deeply personal with a 100% affliction rate on my maternal side going back three generations. It has ravaged my family and my own body; a ticking time bomb that we have all known would go off at some point. Johanna Harlen provides the result of exhaustive research, both scientific and holistic, and there is nothing stated within the pages of this book that doesn't make perfect sense. The recipes are practical, simple to make, and delicious. My personal favorite is the Guacamole Deviled Eggs, which we gobbled down as a family and will make an excellent addition at our next BBQ. Cooking for Cancer is an easy book to recommend as a complement to guides one reads about cancer, as well as those looking for an alkaline-driven diet or just a delicious, everyday cookbook.

Cancer is a complicated disease that affects a vast number of people, either directly or indirectly. In a very simple description, cancer is a living cell that invades the human body. There are various treatments: some work for some cancers, others have minimal or no effect on the growing invasion of cancer cells. While traditional medicine supports the process of chemotherapy and radiation, there are other, more naturopathic approaches. Again, some of these work, some don’t. Whether one chooses the traditional approach or the naturopathic approach, the key to this battle is nutrition and understanding what’s good for the body as well as what is good to fight cancer.

A trained Holistic Nutrition Practitioner, Johanna Harlen wrote her book, Cooking for Cancer: A Book With Purpose, to make cancer patients and their loved ones and caregivers aware of the disease and aware of the many treatments available. Particularly, as a nutritionist, the author paid close attention to discussing diet and foods. It’s one thing to kill the cancer cells with chemicals, but it’s also very important to feed the healthy cells with good, wholesome food. And, not surprisingly, but also not so well known, there are foods that are good for the human body and not-so-good for cancer cells and vice versa. And, it’s important to maintain good gut health with a balanced intestinal flora. So, this book that began as a cookbook developed into a very informative guide about cancer, treatments, and diet. There is also a section of recipes to tempt the palate with clear instructions on preparation. A very useful book.