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Michele Stack
Written By: Written By Julia Brabant - August, 2025Dietitian Michele Stack Partners With Care Kitchen to Provide Nutritional Support Amid Pancreatic Cancer
Nutrition often takes a backseat when it comes to cancer care, with treatments, surgeries and medications often dominating schedules, priorities and conversations with doctors. Yet, for those with pancreatic cancer, how they fuel themselves can influence not only how they feel, but how they heal. That’s why Michele Stack, a clinical registered dietitian at Milwaukee, Wisconsin’s Froedtert Cancer Center, decided to team up with Gia Fazio and the Seena Magowitz Foundation on the foundation’s new “Care Kitchen” culinary series, which seeks to help make nutrition an increasingly important aspect of cancer treatment, care and recovery.
We focus on optimizing nutrition and building strength, which involves getting enough calories and protein to maintain weight and muscle mass. This can lead to better outcomes after surgery and an easier time getting through treatment.
Led by Gia Fazio, who has a Ph.D. in biochemistry, two decades of experience in agricultural biotechnology and intensive training from the Culinary Institute of America, Care Kitchen will help people with pancreatic cancer build strength and immunity and better manage treatment side effects. Michele will serve as a nutritional sounding board and medical resource for the effort, ensuring that the recipes and cooking presentations given address the unique needs of people with pancreatic cancer.
Michele recognizes that many people with the condition face similar hardships when it comes to keeping up strength, weight and muscle mass. Pancreatic cancer treatments can also cause side effects like nausea, diarrhea, appetite loss and diabetes, making it hard for patients to eat at a time they likely need sustenance the most.
To counter this, Michele helps people with pancreatic cancer who follow the standard of care in place at Froedtert – which typically involves undergoing chemotherapy, radiation and surgery, accomplish key nutrition goals. First, she helps them focus on food and drink choices that strengthen their bodies. Second, she helps them use nutrition as a tool to manage and control symptoms so it’s easier to tolerate treatment.
It’s a perspective developed through years of education and experience and one she’ll share through her work with Care Kitchen. Michele first adopted this mindset while earning a Master’s degree in Dietetics, or the study of how food and nutrition affect health, at Milwaukee’s Mount Mary University. She then signed on as an inpatient dietitian at Froedtert Hospital, also in Milwaukee, where she worked with people facing all forms of cancer before transitioning to an outpatient role working primarily with pancreatic cancer patients.
While Michele’s work now focuses on pancreatic cancer, she notes that this demographic also has differing nutritional needs based on where they are in the treatment or recovery processes. For example, someone with loss of appetite and unintended weight loss may prioritize building up strength, whereas other patients may need to focus more on ways to manage nausea and indigestion. Those who’ve already had surgery may still be working through lingering side effects or may be implementing nutrition strategies to promote prevention of cancer recurrence.
“We focus on optimizing nutrition and building strength, which involves getting enough calories and protein to maintain weight and muscle mass,” Michele said, of how she helps patients prepare for cancer-related surgeries. “This can lead to better outcomes after surgery and an easier time getting through treatment.”
Michele also encourages those experiencing side effects common during cancer treatments, like nausea, taste changes and diarrhea, to work with a dietitian and team that can help them figure out what to eat to alleviate these issues.
While Care Kitchen will launch virtually at first, Gia Fazio and the foundation plan to expand upon it and eventually produce a digital or printed recipe book to support patients at various stages of a cancer journey. And with Michele providing knowledgeable support, the Care Kitchen team will gain valuable clinical insight into the specific needs of cooking for people with pancreatic cancer, helping ensure that every recipe and demonstration presented reflects the realities people face at every stage of treatment and recovery.
