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Good Eats: Fuel for Better Living Finding Your Just Desserts By Owen C. Franklin
Food takes on many responsibilities; it rewards us at the end of a day, comforts us during times of stress and romances us by candlelight. Perhaps Virginia Woolf explained it best in her book A Room of One’s Own. She wrote, "One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well." But this quote might pluck a nerve or two for people with diabetes. Too often, the strict dietary regiment chained to diabetes pushes fine dining aside to make room for broiled chicken, broiled chicken and broiled chicken. But the diabetic diet doesn’t need to preclude gourmet grub. Many recipes appease your taste buds as well as your doctor. Christine Capece thinks she knows where to find them. Capece is a representative for Diabeticgourmet.com, a website that offers recipes and culinary information for people with diabetes. The site’s extensive recipe archive features such dishes as steamed shrimp and scallops with orange vinaigrette, garlic and sesame cauliflower and Caribbean chicken. These sweet and savory repasts are all ready with the click of a button and can be searched by prep time, meal types, ingredients or keywords.
savvyhealth: How did diabeticgourmet.com get started? Capece: We started in 1995 as "gourmetconnection.com" back in 1995. We had a lot of readers coming to us asking for diabetic recipes. So we started featuring those recipes and they really took off. We saw that there was a great need for these recipes, so in 1996 we launched diabeticgourmet.com. SH: Why do you think there is a need for this kind of website? Capece: For a lot of people with diabetes, a doctor sends them off, they have their insulin and medication and they don’t know what to eat. Most people who come to the site haven’t seen a dietitian and their doctor has told them to eat less sugar and hasn’t explained what they can eat. They can come to our site and see that they don’t have to be stuck with broiled chicken and steamed broccoli every night. SH: What kind of information do you offer on these recipes? Capece: Each recipe lists the meal’s cost, number of servings, prep time and difficulty level. The easy to follow cooking instructions are followed by nutritional information about calories, fat, carbohydrates, sodium and protein. Each recipe also includes the number of exchanges contained in each meal. SH: What are exchanges? Capece: A dietitian will look at someone’s age, weight and exercise program and then make a meal plan for them. They break that plan down into units like carbohydrates and proteins and establish how many of those units the person can have throughout the day. In our recipes, we’ll say something like ‘this recipe has two meats, one carbohydrate and one bread starch’ so a diabetic can look at it and see if it fits with their meal plan. SH: What recipes are the most popular? Capece: People are always looking for desserts and, more specifically, chocolate desserts. We have a great chocolate cake called "The Unbelievable Chocolate Kahlua Cake" and that’s very popular. A lot of people in our community are swapping those recipes. SH: In your community forums there’s a lot of posting about diabetic-friendly restaurants. What makes a restaurant diabetic-friendly? Capece: Options. I think most diabetics are looking for a restaurant where than can have healthy alternatives – places that will broil your fish with no oil or butter versus one that has more stringent ways of cooking. SH: Do you think people with diabetes would be surprised by the number of alternatives they have? Capece: Definitely. Today’s recipe is pepper-encrusted salmon with fruit salsa. People can see that they don’t have to be stuck with the same thing over and over. They can come to our site and combine the information their doctor has given them and make their own decisions. We believe that diabetics do need to be selective, but they don’t have to be restrictive. Owen C. Franklin is a content producer at savvyHEALTH.com.
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