The Taste for Living Cookbook

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The Taste for Living: Mike Milken’s Favorite Recipes for Fighting Cancer (1998)

When your life is on the line, changing your diet can be easy. I know. When I was diagnosed with advanced prostate cancer in 1993 at the age of 46, I went from tuna melts and peanut butter to rice cakes and steamed broccoli overnight.

I didn’t particularly enjoy my bland new diet. But I was determined to do everything in my power to beat cancer. That meant learning about the best of Western and Eastern medicine, making dramatic changes in my lifestyle and beginning to think of what I ate as an integral part of my recovery. I didn’t care for dry baked potatoes or limp piles of steamed vegetables. However, the pleasure of eating was a small sacrifice for the pleasure of living. If a doctor could have given me a pill containing all the nutrients I needed to fight the disease, I would have gladly given up food forever.

But the cravings didn’t stop. While eating a bowl of lettuce with red-wine vinegar, my mind would invariably wander. I started craving chef’s salads topped with Thousand Island dressing. I had incredibly vivid recollections of Caesar salads that my wife, Lori, and I had eaten during our courtship as college students. I missed the joy of eating.

In 1995, after consulting a number of scientists studying the role of diet and cancer, I went on a worldwide search for a chef who could incorpo­rate nutritional research into food that I could actually enjoy.

The search led to Beth Ginsberg, an accomplished chef who specializes in healthy cuisine. Her cooking wasn’t anything like what I had grudgingly come to accept as part of my recovery. Guided by the latest findings of scientists studying the link between diet and cancer, Beth created meals that tasted a lot like dishes I have always loved. Chili. Reuben sandwiches. Strawberry shortcake. It hardly seemed possible: I could eat well while undergoing nutrition therapy. I could have it both ways.

And so can you. The recipes in this book are designed to help you enjoy the pleasure of food while helping your body fight cancer. It is important to note that research on the role of diet in the progression of cancer is not yet conclusive. Researchers believe that wide global variations in the incidence of cancer are in part explained by differences in diet. But scientists are just beginning to understand how molecules in food and vitamins affect our bodies’ cells and energize our bodies to fight cancer.

After five years of interacting with many of the world’s leading scientists studying nutrition, I am increasingly convinced that it’s not just what we eat in the typical American diet that puts us at a high­er risk for cancer. It’s also what we don’t eat that contributes to the high incidence of cancer in the United States: one in two American men and one in three American women
are diagnosed with cancer in their lifetime.

Like many of the estimated 11 mil­lion Americans living with cancer, I decided not to wait for rock-solid sci­entific evidence before changing my diet. Often we see relationships – the link between smoking and lung cancer, for instance – before scientists can document the exact molecular mechanisms that occur. Most im­portant, I recognized that there is no harm, and probably a great deal of good, in beginning to eat low­fat foods rich in nutrients absent from the typical American diet.

I was born on July 4, 1946, during a period of unbridled optimism. Like many members of the Baby Boom generation, I was raised to believe that one person could make a difference and that any problem, no matter how difficult, could be solved if you put your mind to it. My par­ents provided a nurturing-but often quite rigorous-education.

At the dinner table, typically over such high-fat delicacies as fried chicken or brisket of beef, my brother and I had to be prepared to discuss any subject-the speed of light, the countries of the United Nations, social inequalities, balance sheets from my father’s accounting clients, or the batting averages of major-league baseball players, past and present. Having dinner every night made for strong family bonding. But it wasn’t exactly relaxing.

My choice for college was the University of California at Berkeley, for reasons both academic and personal. It was one of the top-rated universities in the country and had an internationally recognized faculty. More important, though, Berkeley represented a chance to see the world. Students came from all over to study, discuss and debate a dazzling variety of ideas. After years of dis­cussing the world at the dinner table, it seemed I could see it all just by walking across campus.

The university’s academic excel­lence did not extend, however, to the local cuisine. While the intellec­tual climate could be quite avant garde, the food was absolutely mainstream. When a gourmet hot dog stand called Top Dog opened near campus in my junior year, it became the High Temple where
we went to worship. Almost every night, my friends and I walked over to savor hot dogs or bratwurst on those fantastic buns. On a good night, I could eat a dozen at one sitting.

My diet wasn’t just hot dogs. I became a star at breakfast eating contests in our fraternity kitchen. The contests were admin­istered by a “chef” who thought of lard as one of the essen­tial food groups. I would routinely put away 10 pancakes,
3 eggs over easy, 12 pieces of bacon, and cereal. I retired undefeated after reading about a college student who drop­ped dead after winning an eating contest. Weight was never a problem: I have an incredibly high metabolism. Even though I stopped for a giant hamburger and a large milk­shake every day on the way home from classes, it wasn’t until the third semester at Berkeley that I permanently broke the 150-pound barrier.

After Berkeley, my wife Lori and I moved to Philadelphia to attend graduate school. I soon developed a taste for some of the finer regional dishes, particularly Philly cheese steaks, and my own concoction of soft pretzels topped with peanut butter.

After graduating from the Wharton School, I began commuting to Wall Street, and a whole new set of eating habits began. On a typical morning, I hurried to catch the 5:30 a.m. bus for my 2-hour trip to New York. As I rushed through the kitchen, I grabbed one or two of my grandmother’s buttery rolls, filled with nuts and raisins and topped with frosting.

By 1971, my life had changed substantially. I was 24, and running the research department at an investment firm. The work was invigorat­ing. It provided opportunities to apply the theories I began developing on trips to visit my father’s clients and later honed at Berkeley and Wharton. Once I reached the office I never left my desk. I ate breakfast and lunch-egg-and ­bacon sandwiches, corned beef sandwiches, Chinese food, pizza-standing at the desk, often with two phones pressed to my ears.

By this time, technology was dramatically changing the way we worked. While the dramatic growth of CNN, MCI, Time Warner and the cable, cellular and health-care indus­tries was still a few years off, innovations in technology were already beginning to have a profound impact not only on the economy, but on every other part of our lives. Intel had just introduced the first microchip, and Texas Instruments had just produced the first desktop electronic calculators.

I also remember reading that the President of the United States had declared war on cancer. In a speech to the American people, he promised a cure within a decade. At the time, I had never known anyone with cancer and had given the disease little thought. My only memory was being a block captain for the Am­erican Cancer Society in elementary school.

By 1976, technology had advanced even further. NASA’s Viking I spacecraft beamed back images of Mars. A team at MIT synthesized a functioning gene. And as our firm became a world leader in research and trading for industrial companies, we established links to offices around the world using computers and telecommunications. That same year the war on cancer reached the promised halfway point. Then, in early June, I learned that my father had been diagnosed with malignant melanoma.

I began traveling with him to cancer centers, looking for treatments that might help. I read about cancer. I talked to scientists. I learned all I could. For the first time I was con­fronting a problem that could not be solved – not by me, nor by any doctor or any scientist I called on. I moved back to California so my children, 5 and 2 ½ at the time, would have the chance to know their grandfather.

The relocation of my entire department to California had an unanticipated impact: I discovered a new world of food. I remember the first morning we arrived at 4:30 a.m. to prepare for the opening of the East Coast markets. By 7:30 a.m., the team of researchers, sales personnel and traders was starving but happy in the anticipation of our typical New York snack of greasy fast food and doughnuts. When the caterer wheeled in a trolley of brown wicker baskets brim­ming with vegetarian sandwiches on whole wheat bread, little cups of yogurt and bags of chopped veggies, he was almost devoured. He was lucky to get out alive.

By 1993, personal computers were in 31 million American homes. Fifty-eight million households were wired for cable. And 15 million Americans had become regular users of the Internet. As I attended an update on the Milken Family Foundation’s cancer program, it struck me that the country had never made the moral or financial commitment necessary to bring the full promise of technology to bear on cancer. It had been 22 years since the President’s declaration of war and another nine million Americans had died of cancer. I had lost my father, mother-in-law, stepfather, five other relatives and way too many friends.

That January, I had my first complete physical in two years. It was just a few weeks after one of my closest friends, Steve Ross, the chairman of Time Warner, had died of prostate cancer. Thinking of Steve, I asked my doctor to run a simple PSA test, one of the ways prostate cancer can be detected. He said I was too young to be tested.

“Humor me,” I said.

And so I learned, m February 1993, that I had advanced prostate cancer. After consulting with re­searchers at a scientific conference in Houston and undergoing several weeks of additional tests, I discov­ered that my life expectancy was 12 to 18 months.

Because of my family history of cancer and our foundation’s involve:.. ment in cancer research over the previous 17 years, I thought I understood cancer. I was aston­ished to learn that one in every five men will get prostate cancer. Prostate cancer appeared to be a “stealth” disease. It was not a major topic at scientific meetings, nor a priority on the national research agenda. I faced a crisis of uncertainty. No treatment option worked all the time. No medical expert could determine what would work best.

So many of my family and friends had lost their battles against cancer. What could I do that my relatives and friends had not? What could I do that would be different?

My father and Steve Ross had not taken time off to wage war on their disease. My dad worried about his clients and their problems and was slow to seek a diagnosis. He had not wanted to take time away from his work. He might still be alive today if he had sought medical help earlier. Steve was focused on his overriding vision, to build Time Warner into the most important entertainment com­ any in the world. He didn’t want his health to distract him. I decided to shift my energy and concentration into changing my lifestyle and diet and taking charge of my own illness. A month after my diagnosis, I established CaP CURE, the Association for the Cure of Cancer of the Prostate. With the support of thousands of people, it has become the largest private fun­der of prostate cancer research.

Since childhood, I had viewed life as a constant quest for knowledge. I set out to learn about Eastern medicine and ways to energize the world’s greatest creation: the human body. It seemed clear that my health had suffered from all those years of eating fatty foods, all the meals eaten in haste and on the go, and more recently the stress from my legal problems.

My search for answers led to a meditation center in west­ern Massachusetts that was based on the Ayurveda tradition of India. There Lori and I learned more about Eastern medi­cine, herbal cures and relaxation. We invited a doctor trained in both Western and Ayurveda medicine to move into our house for a few months. Early in the morning and late at night, we worked on breathing techniques, herbal therapy, meditation and yoga.

I learned how massage can activate the body’s t-cells, which fight cancer, and how aromatherapy can energize the immune system. I rented a house at the beach and went for long walks. The smell of the seashore, and the water, brought back child­hood memories of walks with my father at Lake Arrowhead in California.

Another benefit of the beach, I learned, was sunlight. Studies supported by CaP CURE show that sunlight and vitamin D help reduce the growth of prostate can­cer. The studies also found a higher inci­dence of hormone-related cancers in northern Europe and the northern U.S. than in the southern parts of those conti­nents. I thought back on all those long days in my windowless Wall Street office, and all those winter days I set off for work in darkness and returned in darkness. I had seen no more daylight than a hibernating bear.

After years of fielding a thousand calls a day, I turned off the phones in part of my house. And I changed how I ate. One Ayurveda teaching was “Better to eat a stone sitting down than a meal standing up.” Similarly, rabbinical law cautions against eating while standing. For someone who had eaten 2,000 to 3,000 meals standing at his desk, this was another chilling thought.

I decided to drastically reduce the fat in my diet, to 9 grams a day. I stopped eating meat, desserts and most dairy products. But that wasn’t good enough. I found that even a single serving of “light” peanut butter exceeded my daily fat allowance. While I felt virtuous eating a mixed salad, I dis­covered that even a small amount of my favorite dressings put me way over the top. Even margarine that is 100 percent fat could legally be labeled “nonfat,” so long as it contained less than one-half of 1 gram of fat per serving.

But cutting down on fat was not enough.

Research supported by CaP CURE showed that soy protein could be a critical missing ingredient. I learned that Ameri­cans have a five times higher incidence of prostate cancer than people living in Asia and eating a traditional Asian diet. These diets are typically rich in soy protein, which contains a nutrient called genistein. This chemi­cal has been found in laboratories to interfere with the growth of prostate cancer cells and to inhibit angiogenesis, the new blood vessel growth required for tumor cells to spread throughout the body.

Genistein appears to help fight all hormonal cancers, including breast cancer. Soy had never been a staple of my diet, but now I substituted tofu or tempeh for meat, and I began mixing soy protein isolate powder with water or fruit juice.

But until I found Beth Ginsberg, eating was more of a burden than a pleasure. Beth made it her mission to incorporate the latest scientific knowledge in her adaptations of old, favorite recipes. Soon I was enjoying foods and flavors I had written off as long-lost memories. She turned my medicinal soy protein drinks into fruit smooth­ies that reminded me of the delicious Swiss orange-chip ice cream I would get at Swensen’s Ice Cream in Berkeley.

I could hardly guess that the drink was full of soy protein and other potential cancer­fighters like lemon and orange zest (the oils found in the skin contain limonene and geranioL which have been shown to curtail tumor growth).

Even the hot dogs I had devoured as a college student made a comeback. Instead of red meat and who knows what else, these hot dogs are made of tofu. Beth even created a casserole using these hot dogs along with my beloved Philadelphia soft pretzels.

Beth reviewed scientific studies while formulating her recipes. When research supported by CaP CURE found that beans and lentils help lower levels of hormones that indicate prostate cancer risk, Beth found delicious ways to introduce these foods into my diet. When scientists reported that a chemical called lycopene found in cooked tomatoes seems to produce a reduced risk of prostate cancer, Beth added toma­to paste to many recipes. After research on garlic and other allium vegetables indicated that they inhibit growth in a number of tumor cell lines, Beth increased the use of garlic as a seasoning. And finally, when scientists discovered that curcumin, which is found in cumin and is the yellow pigment found in turmeric, inhibits the develop­ment of certain cancers, Beth increased its use in chili and employed it for coloring in a sauce in her version of Eggs Benedict.

One day I decided to really put my new diet and Beth to the test. I invited some colleagues to lunch. They were as far removed from the vegetarian crowd as you could get, and I wanted to see how they would react to one of my typical meals. Beth served Reuben sandwich­es, and afterwards I asked my guests what they thought they’d eaten. No one guessed that the cheese and Russian dressing were soy-based and the meat was actually tempeh. They all thought the sandwiches were delicious. I knew that if diehard carnivores like these were
convinced, we were on to something good.

I was highly motivated to change my diet because I believed it could mean the difference between life and death. But I wondered: How do we teach our children to make changes now?

One answer might lie with science. Both skeptics and young people, I feel certain, will increasingly become convinced of the value of nutrition as science unlocks the secrets of the human body. I am confident that biology and chemistry will drive the scientific breakthroughs of the 21st century, just as the 20th century was shaped by physics and remarkable advances in engineering, mechanization, data storage and telecommunications.

As previous generations envisioned the future through the science fiction of Jules Verne, and my generation glimpsed it through “Star Trek,” the children of today are just begin­ning to imagine no less remarkable innovations in biology. I am sure the day will come when our grandchildren will be as flabbergasted at how naive we are about the relationship between food and the human body as we are by our own grandparents’ unease with such modern contraptions as the laptop computer and the cell phone.

While there is no magic formula or secret cure, I know that good health requires healthy eating. Thanks to scientists all over the world and to Beth Ginsberg, I have learned to make practical use of the latest nutritional research without giving up the joy of eating.

The Taste for Living WORLD Cookbook (1999)

JUST the thought of a double cheeseburger with special sauce and fried onion rings at Bob’s Big Boy started my mouth watering. Bob’s was a Los Angeles landmark during my youth and I was one of its most loyal customers. This shouldn’t surprise readers of the first Taste for Living Cookbook (CaP CURE, 1998) who may recall my description of a life happily spent devouring high-fat food, my abrupt conversion to healthy (but boring!) fare after a diagnosis of advanced prostate cancer, and the revelation that it was safe to return to many of my old favorite foods thanks to the work of prominent nutrition researchers and chef Beth Ginsberg.

This second book – a global tour of recipes for fighting cancer and heart disease – adheres to the principles of the first volume. First and foremost, the food must taste great. The ingredi­ents must be readily available, low in fat and easy to prepare. Foods associated with a lower incidence of cancer, like soy protein, are in­corporated wherever possible. But there are some differences. In addition to recipes, we’ve organized the book so you can easily create menus for everything from casual lunches to elegant buffets. We’ve given recognition to the fact that many of the same ingredients that fight cancer are also part of a heart-healthy diet. And, of course, we’ve expanded our scope to the entire world.

The inspiration for The Taste for Living World Cookbook came from three sources. The overwhelmingly positive re­sponses to the first cookbook told me that we had identified an appealing concept: don’t change the foods you love; just change the ingredients. Letter after letter told how this sim­ple concept had changed not just habits, but lives. For exam­ple, Mrs. Toby Loewy from Rockville, Maryland, wrote: “I’ve tried a lot of the recipes and my husband loves them. Not only am I able to help him lose weight, but I’m protect­ing him from prostate problems. He’s happy and proud of my cooking, your recipes, and his increasing slimness. You are probably saving lives in more ways than one. Thank you for publishing your book!”

Deborah Roach, from San Francisco, California, sent an e-mail to say: “The recipes are delicious and reproducible in the everyday kitchen. Looking forward to volume two.”

The Dreiwitz family, from Hackensack, New Jersey, wrote: “The recipes are fantastic. Does Beth Ginsberg have any other healthy recipes to share with the public?”

She certainly does, and they’re in this book! A second inspiration was the memory of happy family excursions with my wife, Lori, and our three children. All five of us grew up in Los Angeles, a true microcosm of the world. Visits to southern California restaurants featuring the foods of Asia, Latin America, Europe, Africa and the Middle East are as “authentic” an experience as you’ll find in the U.S.

Even in less-cosmopolitan areas than Los Angeles, how­ever, America’s changing ethnic mixture has produced an explosion of interest in the cuisines of different nations. Smaller cities that considered it exotic to have a single Chinese restaurant a generation ago now boast eateries from every continent. Supermarkets that used to relegate “for­eign” foods to a tiny specialty section now overflow with everything from chipotle salsa to kimchee to garam masala. And everywhere, cooking lessons are the hottest ticket on the adult-education roster.

Also, like an increasing num­ber of Americans, my family and I have had the good fortune to visit other countries. Despite our varied interests -one of our children loves ancient architecture, another is the family photographer, a third visits the ballet whenever pos­sible, Lori heads for the oldest bookstore and I seek out inter­esting gardens -we’ve all shared a passion for sampling the local cuisine. In some cases, such as the wonderful scones we enjoyed in England’s Lake Country, a version appears in this cookbook. But not always. We left out a dish we encoun­tered near the Great Wall of China -grilled scorpion!

The third inspiration for this book came from the lunches and dinners Beth prepared when I entertained business guests. While she frequently served recipes from The Taste for Living, volume one, she would sometimes surprise us with a more exotic interna­ tional meal. After enjoying several of these new dishes, I suggested that she pull them together into what has become The Taste for Living World Cookbook.

These recipes may help prevent cancer, limit heart disease and promote general health, which many of us need to take seriously. But cooking can be fun and healthy eating should be an enhancement of life, not a deprivation. The fact that following our guidelines may help you feel better is a bonus. These foods are intended to contribute to the taste for liv­ing -and the zest for life.

I have to laugh when I think about my old eating habits. I wasn’t exactly what you would call discriminating. As a stu­derit at the University of California at Berkeley, I used to pass a doughnut shop on my way to classes. The hot doughnuts -freshly pulled from their bath of frying grease -were irresistible, especially with glazed frosting. I’d often order a baker’s dozen, finishing off all 13 before din­ner.

Even though I wasn’t dis­criminating in my eating habits, I’ve always been a hopeless romantic; I decided to propose to Lori on Valentine’s Day, 1968. After buying a ring, I couldn’t afford to take her anyplace fancy. My plan was to pop the question at Giovanni’s Italian restaurant, a beloved campus hangout. In fact, I had only enough change to buy us a medium pizza. Normally, given my voracious appetite, this would serve as a mere appetizer. As luck would have it, though, the customer at the next table had ordered an extra-large pizza with everything, and left half uneaten when he paid his bill. As soon as he departed, I leaned over, trying my best to appear casual, and consumed the rest of his pizza before any waiters could snatch it away. Fortunately, Lori overlooked this temporary grazing at the next table and said yes to my proposal! We were married that summer and moved on to graduate school in Philadelphia, where I developed a taste for Philly cheese steaks.

Soon after I finished business school, President Nixon declared war on cancer. The goal was to produce a cure within the decade, just as President Kennedy’s earlier plan to put a man on the moon had been achieved in less than 10 years. We all thought it would work. After all, in our parents’ generation, President Roosevelt’s war on polio had produced the Salk vaccine. I knew something about polio because my father had contracted it as a child and I was among the first of the baby boomers to receive the new vaccine. What a simple concept : get a shot and wipe out a disease. Surely we could do the same with cancer.

That naive assumption made it an even greater shock when my father was told he had malignant melanoma in 1976. At the peak of my business career, having achieved all of my career goals by age 30, I was devastated and frustrated at my inability to help. I took my father to every leading cancer center in the country and consulted with the best doctors, all to no avail. He never recovered. The one positive result from this odyssey was that it showed how the cancer research process works and how young scientists are tempted to abandon research for more lucrative clinical practices. And so, in the late 1970s, I began a program of research grants that helped keep bright young scientists in the laboratory. A few years later, my brother and I formalized our philanthropic efforts by establishing the Milken Family Foundation. It has been gratifying to see researchers we supported go on to achieve great success and recognition. For example, Dennis J. Slamon, M.D., Ph.D., an eminent oncologist at UCLA, was the driving force behind the development of Herceptin, one of the only effective treatments for a particular type of breast cancer.

Others, like Bert Vogelstein, M.D., Professor of Oncology and Cancer Biology at Johns Hopkins University, and Owen Witte, M.D., Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics at UCLA and a member of the National Academy of Sciences, are cited often by their peers, not only for their leading-edge research contributions, but also for mentoring other physician scientists.

After nearly two decades of involvement in support of cancer research, I thought I knew quite a bit about cancer and the probability of becoming one of its victims. Still, it was a shock when I received my diagnosis in 1993. My first thought was, “Will I live to see my grandchildren?” The blunt prognosis was, “Probably not. You have 12 to 18 months to live.” Six years later, I don’t know for sure which treatments helped; but I know that my altered diet certainly didn’t hurt. And now, thanks to the nutritional research of CaP CURE-supported scientists and Beth Ginsberg’s recipes, eating is a joy, rather than “bad-tasting medicine.”

Click here to read Mike’s introductions to “The Taste for Living: Mike Milken’s Favorite Recipes for Fighting Cancer” (1998), and “The Taste for Living WORLD Cookbook” (1999)