AIBU to ask my friend to leave after criticising my diet?

Fed is best in this situation and OP needs to be able to eat without judgement.

Thing is, you know she’s right about healthy eating. Surviving cancer is when you absolutely need to look after yourself and that includes eating well.
Processed crap will not assist in your recovery.

The odd meal of chips and pizza isn’t a problem and your friend knows that. She is clearly worried for you and is doing her best to help. Just tell her straight you don’t appreciate her advice right now but don’t push her away.

I wholeheartedly agree.

I chose YANBU. Then I realised I am probably a bit of a hypocrite. I criticise my mother for something she does which is 'unhealthy' all the time as she has quote a few life-limiting conditions. I hate myself after I do it, but I can't help it sometimes because it is very hard to watch someone you care deeply about do something you think might make them worse. I'm saying, your friend may find it hard too in that way. But YANBU for wanting her to leave as she is not respecting your wishes. I'd probably give her one last chance and tell her how it makes you feel and that she needs to stop.

Green and blacks is healthy eating imo.

Explain to me how top athletes end up with cancer or MND or other life limiting illnesses then?

if food is our power why do we see fit and healthy, Olympic athletes, footballers with cancer?
im a great believer of everything in moderation when it comes to food and drink.

when my mil was having chemo any food she ate was a bonus.

YANBU

what a cow

What an absolute self-obsessed arsehole she is.

REAL friends would never be so nasty or insensitive, cancer or not.

Toss her out, and tell her she's banned from your place for life, and you want nothing more to do with her.

I'm so sorry you're having cancer trouble. I hope you get through it somehow.

Can I suggest that anytime that you feel that you are "Bursting with THE answer" you take that as a warning sign to keep quiet unless 1. its a genuine
emergency or 2. its a very frivolous circumstance like someone asking on facebook what the thing is that they found in their shed and you KNOW that you are factually correct.

Very insensitive of her, I'd be pissed off if a friend said this to me in any context. Just because you are going through treatment does not give her a right to make judgemental comments. It probably does come from a place of love and well-meaning concern but the way it makes you feel isn't great and you need cheerleaders right now. Also one pizza and a bar of chocolate is hardly a terrible diet, it's about balance. I think you should be honest about how that has made you feel.

you know what gets right up my underwear? "Lost their battle with cancer" As though they didn't fight hard enough, could have done more...and yes the postive thinking thing. Speaking as someone who lost their husband to cancer I wish that all non clincians would shut the fuck with their stupid unsought advice.

A starving body won't heal, you're doing the right thing by eating what you can when you can. Our bodies are quite clever, yours has recognised you need more energy and fat and made you crave something to give you exactly that.

No one going through cancer treatment needs judgement, you're right to ask her to leave.

Your friend is an ignorant fool. Cancer is incredibly metabolic - that’s why one of the early signs is unexplained wight loss. Eat anything and everything that you can.

Oh love! Please accept this as the very longest of long hugs. You’ve been through so much. You’ve lost so much, and you are 100% correct that you are under weight and absolutely need to see if you can regain a bit for resilience

and ffs… if you can’t eat your body weight in pizza and chips on your birthday, after all you’ve been through, when can you.

with love and prayers for you. Keep fighting!

ps: it was my birthday on Thursday, when was yours? Are we birthday twins? 😂

Thank you, that is very helpful. Yes, I see now you've put it that way, taking out the human side. My reply was too fact based and impersonal. I will learn from this and modify the way I speak in future. I do have a tendency to interrupt because I feel like I am bursting with "the answer" and I can sometimes launch into replies and conversations without considering the possible impact first and get the tone wrong.

There are some clowns on here. Most cancers aren't food related, most cancers take years to develop so that when they are noticed, diet makes no difference - that horse has bolted. And finally if you are rapidly losing huge amounts of tissue and muscle mass and have no appetite, then any calories when you can manage to get them in matter, from ANY source. You don't know until you have walked in OP's shoes.

What infuriated me was being told by a friend that positive thinking would help me beat cancer, because it worked for her partner. A partner who actually had died. She said he would have died sooner otherwise. Bollocks, but impossible to prove as most of these things are.
By her theory anyone who died obviously hadn’t wanted hard enough to stay alive which was pretty offensive. Plus research - by real scientists, not pseudo ones - shows that positive thinking will improve quality of life in cancer patients, but it doesn’t extend life.
Diet wise I was advised by oncology nurses that you need to be careful what you eat during chemo as many of the things normally eaten can potentially cause problems when your immune system is being hammered by the drugs to kill the cancer. I was told it was safest to follow a pregnancy type diet.
Ignore your friend.

On the children's cancer ward my son was on, the chef would regularly give the children ice cream and milkshakes to soothe sore mouths and encourage calorie intake.

I’d hand her her arse but I wouldn’t ask her to leave unless I wanted to end the friendship.

But this assumes that the cancer patient is ignorant and has absolutely no knowledge of what would be good for her or not. That’s like saying it’s ok to tell an overweight person once that they are overweight then just leaving it. They know. They don’t need anything “from a position of care”.

Yeah I don’t think OP needs advice on what to eat to avoid cancer seeing as she already has it.

When my mum was going through chemo she had loads of ice cream as she had mouth ulcers and it was one of the only things she could stomach. She was an incredibly healthy eater otherwise, barely ate meat, everything home-cooked. But during treatment she just needed calories.

👏👏👏

Yep. Huge difference between eating during active treatment and then eating afterwards.

Yes on a population level, diets high in UPFs will increase cancer rates. No for an individual who already has cancer eating a pizza and some chocolate is not going to do anything harmful to them at all. Eating when faced with lost appetite, changed tastebuds, managing to get some pleasure from food, sharing food experiences with supportive friends and family - all of this is far more beneficial than forcing down a carrot or some ground up apricot kernels or whatever other bollocks the OP's "friend" was suggesting.

This is exactly it, and what I meant when I said upthread about food nazis never differentiating between the occasional bit of 'unhealthy' food and stuffing your face with it all the time. Here we have a woman in the immediate aftermath of cancer treatment, who hasn't been able to eat much at all of late, whose own doctor has said just eat anything to get the calories in, and who has told us about one day where she ate a pizza and some chocolate. And yet her friend still saw fit to have a pop and we still have the 'Well actually...' brigade on here telling us what they've heard on Radio 4 about cancer and diet in general like it's somehow relevant. Does my head in.

Actually those studies refer to a small number of specific cancers in a small number of specific scenarios, and note that in other situations far from having a good or no effect, it can make things worse.

Those studies are important, and work is ongoing in this area, but they are in their infancy and until the research is concluded across all cancers and situations, following that blanket advice in all situations is very dangerous.

My friend made all sorts of changes to her diet during her cancer treatment for stage IV breast cancer, including cutting out cheese and sugar and alcohol, she was really strict with it, she had also lost a lot of weight due to treatment. Shortly before she died suddenly (she was living very well) she let loose a bit more at her birthday party and I'm so glad we had that. I wish she'd got to enjoy more delicious cheeses and exquisite chocolates and ice cold wines.

So YANBU, you've listened to your body and it's totally OK to enjoy a pizza. You're not eating greasy processed food every meal. Your friend is right that diet can help make a difference to your health and recovery but she's wrong AF to suggest you're not allowed to enjoy a pizza and chips ever again.

If you're eating processed food every day and every meal, yes, your friend is a good friend for bringing it up. However, if you're otherwise following all the advice and you've just chosen pizza and chips for a weekend treat, the friend has missed the mark.

One meal won't make a huge difference as long as you're eating a balanced and nutritious diet in the long run. It is important to fuel yourself and listen to the research. But when some treatments can make you feel nauseous or ruin your appetite or taste buds, eating for pleasure is an absolute treat, especially when you've had your world rocked by a diagnosis. I really hope you enjoyed your pizza and chips and posh chocolates.

Listen to your doctor, not your judgemental friend. Also let the friend know that she hurt you and you'll be distancing yourself from her for a while to look after your emotional wellbeing at this difficult time.