Life Kitchen: helping people living with cancer taste flavour again

Here’s how Ryan Riley is using food and cooking classes to change lives of people living with cancer across the country.

When 25-year-old Ryan’s mum Krista passed away from cancer five years ago, he couldn’t have imagined that the most depressing time in his life will lead to helping and changing lives of others. Throughout his mum’s two-year battle with cancer, Ryan experienced first-hand how chemotherapy was affecting her taste and ability to enjoy food so, in a bid to honour her memory, Ryan founded Life Kitchen – ovvering free cooking classes helping people living with cancer enjoy flavourful food again.

How did Life Kitchen start?

I just sent out a tweet one night, explaining the concept I had in mind and it went viral. Nigella Lawson was backing me and next thing I knew I was on Radio 4. Fast-forward just under a year and we debuted in February of this year at River Cottage. They reached out to me and it was the perfect opportunity to launch Life Kitchen. People can choose the lifestyle they lead, they can pick where to take advice from, whether it’s the NHS or specific charities but no one is addressing the issue of taste that’s robbed from you during chemotherapy.

Life Kitchen

How did Sue Perkins get involved?

She reached out to me so I went round to her house and we sat at the kitchen table and talked about her experience (Sue’s farther Bert passed away last year after a 20-year long on-and-off battle with cancer) so she really understood where I was coming from. Now she’s the patron of Life Kitchen and she’s extremely involved – we’ve sat at that kitchen table many times since, talking over ideas of what we could do and how to do it.

Where do you think your passion for food comes from?

I can’t really say I know. I wasn’t a good cook until my best friend Kimberley and I started a street food van. After my mum passed away, I moved to London, trying to rebuild my life during a very traumatic time and it was kind of a drunken idea. We just emailed the Camden Market saying that we feel like opening a stall and they came back to us and said: “Do it!” I mostly taught myself and I learnt a lot in the test kitchens of magazines where you have to learn very quickly. I’m quite proud of myself that I’ve been able to teach myself to such a standard in a short space of time.

Life Kitchen

What kind of dishes do people learn to cook in the classes?

What we do is all focused on flavour and taste. We don’t do anything too unfamiliar because people can’t really change a lifetime of eating habits. We start with a classic dish, a carbonara that we’ve tweaked in order to get the maximum flavour. We give the sauce a really deep smokey base with sweet intensity. A touch of chilli adds an extra sensation and we add some peas for freshness and bite because texture is also really important. And then we finish it with mint. That might sound a bit strange but mint helps stimulate the trigeminal nerve located between your eyes, nose and mouth. It’s stimulated when you have horseradish, mustard and toothpaste as well. So in this dish we’re not only creating deeper, richer flavours, we’re also helping to stimulate that nerve to bring out extra sensation.

Our caramelised mushrooms with gremolata and lentils is all about umami – the fifth taste. What’s great about umami is that intense savouriness and meatiness you get from mushrooms and soy sauce. Every dish is really just about building a layer upon layer of flavour.

A new dish we’ve started doing recently is a pineapple taco, using the pineapple as the taco shell. Dry mouth is also often a side effect of cancer treatment and there’s an enzyme in the pineapple that helps saliva production, making the process of eating a lot more pleasurable.

What are the key things people can take away from the classes?

Cooking is dying out in this country a bit, we’ve moved on to processed food and ready meals and eating out a lot. We’ve got to refocus on cooking more and we want people to learn new recipes and new techniques. If a person didn’t enjoy cooking before their treatment, there’s even less chance for them to enjoy food while their living with cancer so we want to help them gain the cookery skills they need to bring out as much flavour as possible.

And the social aspect is also key. We’re taking them away from hospitals and putting them in a lovely cookery school in a situation that’s free and enjoyable. Just the mental aspect of being with other people on a great day out learning something new is very important. It’s one day for them when it’s not all about cancer, it’s about great tasting food and having fun.

Life Kitchen

What makes you proud about Life Kitchen?

Just the sheer response. We’ve had hundreds and hundreds of applications for every class. There was a 75-year-old man called Mike in the Newcastle class recently and he came up to me and said this was the first time he’s been able to taste anything in three months. Life Kitchen is supported by people of all ages and walks of life and it’s amazing to see that what I’m doing seems to be having an impact.

Our culture today is so much about eating out and enjoying food and we’re treating food as something much more than just sustenance. And if you can’t enjoy food, it’s not only horrible because you’re going through that experience of having cancer but it’s also the social aspect that’s taken away from you.

How do you see the future of Life Kitchen?

Cancer isn’t selective and everyone has been affected by cancer one way or another. We need to raise more money and we need to do some world-leading research to understand these issues more. I want Life Kitchen to be the central hub to deliver that research and recipes. I’m in search of a space right now so we can open the first Life Kitchen Cookery School and Research and Development Centre. I’d just love for Life Kitchen to keep going.

If you’d like to donate to help Life Kitchen raise the funds to continue doing research and offering free cooking classes, visit Life Kitchen’s GoFundMe page.