Daniel Jacobs was used to dropping his opponents. Then he did the same with Big Macs.
With 25 of his 28 victories coming by way of knockout, Jacobs has grown accustomed to sending other fighters down for the count.
But in the past, even as he was taking care of the opposition, he wasn’t always taking the best care of himself.
“I wasn’t the most healthy eater,” Jacobs says. “I would just eat healthy when I had to train, but when I wasn’t training it was McDonald’s, it was fast food this, fast food that.”
But then in May 2011, Jacobs was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, a potentially terminal form of bone cancer.
“Being a 24-year-old man catching cancer, it was due to the things I was eating, I believe,” he says.
Jacobs beat cancer, and in doing so, became determined not only to change his diet, but potentially help others as well.
He began visiting schools to speak to kids on the value of eating right, teaching them how to make healthy meals that are still fun to eat.
Jacobs says childhood obesity has long been a serious issue in his native Brooklyn, New York.
“That was something major in my community growing up,” he notes. “That’s why I’m so passionate about it.”
This passion has been further stoked by Jacobs’ own personal health scare. If he can make it through that, he believes he can help others do the same.
“Being a cancer survivor, I know all the struggles that it brings,” Jacobs says. “It brings a lot of hardship: physically, mentally and emotionally. I always said to myself that if I had an opportunity to give back, I would do so. Now is my opportunity.”
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