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It’s Diabetes Blog Week! Thanks to Karen from Bitter~Sweet Diabetes for coming up with and coordinating this exciting annual event. It’s a great chance to discover other diabetes bloggers from around the world. Here’s my fifth entry for the week!
I have been looking forward to this #DBlogWeek post all week because, well, food is my thing. I still believe that growing up in a family where food is considered important and dealt with in a positive, healthy way is why I have such a balanced, appreciative attitude towards the food I eat and the food I prepare for my family and friends. And I hope that this is being instilled into the mind and heart of the kidlet of the house.
I love to cook for people and our new home is the perfect entertaining space. We have a huge kitchen with heaps of prep space and a view over the garden. There is an old Aga stove which, when we get around to having a chimney sweep clean it out, will be used for all sorts of things including making bread and pizza.
On Saturday night, we had some friends over for dinner. Although I love cooking, I can be a lazy cook. I make no apologies for that, nor is it a negative trait. I made a chicken, chorizo, lemon, garlic thing that took a whole three minutes to throw together. The oven did the rest. (In a baking tray – chicken pieces, chopped chorizo, sliced lemon, bashed garlic, a bit of chicken stock in the bottom of the tray, sprinkle the top with paprika, sea salt and black pepper and shove in a 180 degree (Celsius) oven until the chicken is all golden on top and the smoky chorizo has infused it all; about 30 – 45 minutes.) I made a couple of yummy vegie-based sides and a salad using quinoa and that was it. Dessert was a crumble because it’s crumble weather.
Crunchy apples easily become soft, cinnamon-y and comforting (especial with crumble topping!)
A story of crumble…
While we’re talking crumble, I always make double or triple the quantity of topping to keep on hand in the fridge. That way, it’s always easy to throw together a simple, yet scrumptious dessert. Stewing apples or pears takes no effort and if you want to be super-lazy, open a tin of peaches or apricots or whatever floats your boat, drain some of the juice and sprinkle the crumble-topping-already-in-the-fridge over the top. Twenty minutes in the oven and you’re done. (Basic crumble recipe – rub together a cup plain flour and about 100 grams of butter; add a couple of tablespoons of brown sugar, a cup of oats, and then whatever else you have that you think will work. Add cinnamon for apple crumble, dark chocolate for pear crumble, coconut when you have rhubarb, almonds for stone fruits. Walnuts always work in crumble. Always!) According to my husband and the kidlet, crumble must come with ice-cream; I prefer King Island double (or triple) cream. Plain Greek yoghurt works well too.
Baking biscuits and cakes is one of the most therapeutic and calming things I know how to do. Yesterday, I decided to try something new and found a recipe for Nutella drop biscuits which were just a buttermilk scone recipe with Nutella swirled through. Great concept; super easy, made the house smell like a bakery and tasted great. Plus, they can be frozen and then thawed, heated and served with some salted butter for a speedy afternoon tea.
Last night’s dinner.
Vegetables are a big deal in our house. I love veggies and at this time of year, my favourite way to eat them is in a thick chicken stock-based soup with added barley. Again, this is a lazy cook thing because not only is it a great way of using up almost-past-eating vegies, a huge vat will do a couple of meals. (It freezes really well too.) I usually serve with some toasted crusty sourdough. Last night, however, I used up some leftover risotto and made crunchy rice croquettes to go on the side.
This morning near work at Stove Top.
We eat out quite a bit. For me, the plethora of workday meetings are often more palatable if there is a coffee, a pleasant café and, possibly, a little cake (Or fairy cake!) involved. Weekends involve catching up with friends at local cafés and regular catch ups with the girls are another excuse to go to Marios.
Food is a thing of joy. It is a thing of love and it is a thing of celebration. It should taste wonderful, it should be evocative and it should not be full of angst, but I know that is not the case for a lot of people. I really do believe a big part of that is the current focus on ridiculous diets and eating plans and rules instead of enjoyment, moderation and joy.
At the moment, it’s a rare day when the oven is not on, baking or stewing or roasting something in its warmth, intensifying flavours and delivering, at the end of the cooking process, a wonderful hearty dish. It’s probably my favourite thing about this time of year and there is nothing better than settling in for the cold night on the couch, fire lit, with a delicious, hearty bowl of something.
I am so pleased that diabetes hasn’t stripped me of my love of food, because many people do think that those of us living with diabetes have a strict, flavourless, boring, repetitive diet. It doesn’t need to be that way.
I’d add eating after cooking!
Friday tune – Fats Waller with ‘All that meat and no potatoes.’
‘You bake a lot for someone with diabetes.’ These words came out of the mouth of someone not all that bright who may read this blog, but has clearly not taken on board anything I’ve ever written.
It wasn’t the first time that I have had people express surprise at my love of baking and baked goods considering that I have diabetes. I’ve even had other people with diabetes say they were told baking was an absolute no-no for the pancreatically-challenged when they were diagnosed and, as such, have never baked anything in their lives.
I do bake a lot – regardless of my diabetes state! I bake several times a week. On days when I don’t bake, I read cookbooks and plan what I’ll bake next. I bake when I am happy, sad, anxious, excited, content, angry. And I bake a lot when I am stressed because I find it to be calming, peaceful and satisfying.
My neighbours know when I am feeling particularly stressed because those periods involve baking EVERY SINGLE day which equals home-deliveries around 7pm of whatever is still warm out of the oven. I think the neighbours sneakily like it when I am stressed.
I love baking because it is reliable, predictable and practical. Mix the right quantities of the right ingredients for the right amount of time at the right temperature and you will, inevitably, end up with something beautiful and delicious. And as you get better and know how certain ingredients work with other ingredients, you can mix things up and be creative.
In other news – I need an apron.
Plus, baking gives me an excuse to make a mess.
Baking is reliable. Except for the rare complete balls-up, the results are exactly what you expect. The end product almost always looks more or less like the picture. If you start out making a cake, you will end up with a cake at the end of the process.
Baking is the exact opposite of diabetes! Diabetes is unpredictable and unreliable and most of the time, you have no idea how you ended up with whatever it is you ended up with. (Case in point: lunch of poached chicken salad containing zero carbs and a dressing of nothing more than olive oil and lemon juice, pre-prandial BGL – 7.8mmol/l; 2 hour post-prandial BGL – 18.9mmol/l.)
The unpredictability of baking only ever comes to the fore when bolusing for whatever it is that I’ve baked. Sometimes I get it right. Other times I don’t. It can be a little hit and miss. Correction boluses were invented for this exact thing! If you don’t like baking, that’s fine. But don’t let diabetes be the reason you don’t bake.
It’s ANZAC day this Saturday and I did a trial run the other day of my tried and true ANZAC biscuit recipe that I scribbled out in my recipe notebook a number of years ago. This is a fail-safe recipe and takes no more than ten minutes to throw together and then only a short time to bake. For those of you who don’t know what an ANZAC biscuit is, have a go! They are absolutely delicious and because they have oats in them, you can fool yourself into thinking they are a health food. Each biscuit (cookie) for those in the US has about 12 grams of carbs.
Earlier this week, The Conversation ran a great article about the value of GPs providing nutrition education and information.
It’s a discussion worth having. For many people, their main HCP contact is a GP, so in the broader scheme of things, having GPs able to provide general health and wellbeing information (which includes nutrition information) is a sound idea.
Whilst most people I know with type 1 diabetes have a network of diabetes healthcare professionals – often including a dietitian – this isn’t the case for everyone. And for many people with type 2 diabetes their GP is the only HCP they see about their diabetes.
This discussion, however, is far broader than people with diabetes. Information about how to eat well and make food choices to enhance our health is a great idea and would be great if it were available to all.
But for this to work, we need to have confidence that our HCPs are equipped with up-to-date and sound information. As well as being across evidence-based nutrition guidelines, they need to be able to respond to queries about fad diets and ‘teatoxes’. (It’s a thing. Really.)
I can still remember the first dietitian I saw. It was within days of my diabetes diagnosis and it wasn’t a good experience at all. In fact, I walked out and vowed never to see another dietitian because, in the hour-long consultation, all I could envision was angst and stress about food thanks to diabetes. I didn’t want that at all. I certainly didn’t want the healthy way I looked at food to be compromised by someone who was extolling the idea of ‘bad foods’ and ‘good foods’, and expecting me to live with a diet that included the same things every single day.
So I never went back and spent the first three years with diabetes muddling along as best I could, adapting what I needed to and trying to keep enjoying food the way I always had.
When I started to consider using a pump, I decided to find another dietitian – one more in line with my attitudes to food. I didn’t have an understanding of carb counting (that wasn’t explained to me because it wasn’t the nutrition ‘in-thing’ in April 1998). Once again, I was disappointed to discover that the restrictive and dictatorial advice she was delivering wasn’t in line with my food philosophy which, I thought then (and still do now) to be quite sensible.
These two experiences have somewhat clouded my opinion of dietitians, despite having met with some amazingly balanced and well-informed dietitians since – including one I saw a few times who was just brilliant and never made me feel guilty because I like Nutella, but really am not a fan of lentils.
Nutrition advice needs to be about a lot more than what the best choices look like for breakfast foods.
There needs to be some acknowledgement of people’s relationship to food – how we view food in our overall life; where it fits in our family; if we enjoy preparing and knowing about food or if we just care about food as fuel; if we have any issues with certain foods. Plus there needs to be the ability to address the different levels of knowledge people have (and want to have) when it comes to food. Not everyone wants to prepare food from scratch, make fresh pasta each week or mill their own flour. And that’s perfectly okay.
And there needs to be openness about the choices – a willingness to understand that some people may want to try something slightly (or very!) outside the guidelines. For example, the low carb movement at the moment is of great interest to a lot of people with insulin-requiring diabetes. I have heard some people say that when they have raised this as a discussion point with their HCP, the topic has been dismissed as irresponsible, not in line with the recommended guidelines and not something people with diabetes should be considering.
And yet, many people with diabetes do manage to eat a lower-than-recommended carb diet and are far happier with the results they see – whether those results be numbers on a meter or how they feel.
With the huge array of food and nutrition and health advice available to people now – frequently by people less than qualified to be providing it – having a respected healthcare professional help cut through definitely, in theory, sounds like a valuable plan.
But because of the very nature of discussions about food, whoever is charged with providing information and assistance – whether that be a GP or a dietitian, or any other HCP – needs to check their judgement at the door, be well informed, sensitive, and open to ensuring that the person they are working with is comfortable with the discussion and feels open to choice.
I remember the first time I ever heard Cassandra Wilson. I was blown away by her beautiful voice and have loved her ever since. She has a gorgeous new album – a tribute to Billie Holiday – which we’ve been listening to this week. But today’s Friday song is from the first album of hers that I listened to, New Moon Daughter. This is Solomon Sang.
It used to be hard to find a café open on Good Friday. Not any more. Last Friday, we had breakfast at Marios in Brunswick Street, enjoying excellent coffee and awesome food. It set the scene for the weekend which was basically four days of cooking, baking and eating.
We had two family Easter celebrations – a picnic at a country airfield on Saturday and brunch at our place on Sunday morning. And then a wedding celebration on Sunday evening.
The four day weekend was finished off with a home made chocolate self-saucing pudding (because I need to somehow – ANY WAY POSSIBLE – use up the kilos and kilos and kilos of Lindt Easter Bunnies in our house).
I can’t think of a more perfect way to celebrate – family and food. And a rabbit that visits in the middle of the night leaving chocolate. What’s not to love?!
After breakfast on Friday morning, we popped next door to the bookstore, and as I wandered down the store, browsing the shelves, I saw this:
‘You should buy this,’ said one of my family because they (wrongly) think they are amusing.
No. No I shouldn’t.
In between all my weekend carb loading (not sure for what) I spent some down time reading and learnt all about orthorexia nervosa – yet another reason why self-styled health gurus and the rubbish they sprout is dangerous.
People with orthorexia nervosa are so consumed (no pun intended) by the thoughts of the quality of the food they are eating, they start to refine and restrict their diets. In the endeavour to only eat foods considered ‘pure and healthy’, people with orthorexia nervosa may become malnourished because of the strictly limited food they will eat.
The minefield of ‘wellness experts’ gets bigger and more treacherous every day. Whether it is clean eating, raw food, Paleo, quitting sugar or any diet that needlessly insists on restriction of foods or food groups, we need to see this industry for what it is: dangerous and incredibly harmful.
Orthorexia nervosa is not currently a recognised eating disorder, however there is a push to have it classified in the DSM-V, the classification and diagnostic tool used by mental health workers to diagnose mental illness.
Maybe a recognised eating disorder will be what it takes to finally realise and accept the danger and hazard posed by these charlatans.
You know how I’m always saying that I feel very fortunate to have an online community that is so wonderful? And how the DOC gives me so much? And that I get support, love and reassurance? And all that stuff about how I feel connected and part of a global community? I’m always banging on about how I have information about real life with diabetes available and I learn so, so much. All the time. And how lucky I’ve been to meet people from every corner of the world and hear about their experiences.
It’s all true. All of it. And then, it gets taken up a notch with this.
I get sent parcels in the post:
All the way from the other side of the world:
Inside, a handwritten note:
And scrunchy pink wrapping:
Underneath was the most wonderful surprise:
Most, most wonderful!
And then…
Dinner was served.
A huge thank you to the beautiful and wonderful Annie who I met because my effed pancreas and her gorgeous daughter’s pancreas are both good for nothing slobs. If I have to live with diabetes, knowing people like this make it a hell of a lot better.
The wonderful Annie (who will possibly want to shoot me and make me return my wonderful gift for posting this photo of her).
I’m home today with a bug. Bored out of my brain, I’ve spent too much time scrolling mindlessly through Facebook. This is never a good idea when I have time on my hands.
Usually when using Facebook, I don’t click through on things that are either stupid, or about the colour of a dress. (#TotallyTeamBlueAndBlack) I have learnt that looking at anything that is going to trigger eye rolls and anger in me is better left alone.
But today, with wasting time being about as much as I can manage, I saw something flash up on one of the pages that I follow that I ordinarily would not have clicked on. Ordinarily, I would have muttered under my breath about lunatic posts and moved on.
The post was extolling the evils of coffee. Now, caffeine is my drug of choice. I can’t live without it. Wait, that should probably read insulin. INSULIN is my drug of choice and I can’t live without it.
But coffee is my heart starter; it’s lure is what gets me out the door in the morning. The first sip of coffee each day is a jolt that kick starts me into a functioning, coherent human being. Or, at least the illusion of one.
So, I don’t take kindly to anyone telling me that it is the root of all evil.
This is where the ‘time on my hands’ thing went wrong. I clicked through to the source of this information and found myself in the middle of a site dedicated to telling the world – nay, lying to the world – about how pretty much everything is killing us.
In addition to caffeine being the reason for our untimely deaths, here are just a few other things that are sending us to early graves:
- Vaccines (especially the HPV vaccination)
- Medications
- Antibiotics
- Red meat
- Dairy foods
- Doughnuts
- Gluten
- Caesarean births
- Doctors and other health professionals
- Hospitals
- Sugar (of course)
- Grains
When I got to a lovely poster that the site encouraged we print out and stick on our (nothing but organic kale and kumbucha tea containing) refrigerator, I knew it was time to throw my iPad across the room. The poster claimed that that ‘food is healthcare and medicine is sickcare’.
Every day, more and more of these sites crop up. Once the domain of pseudo-healthcare professionals, now anyone with a green smoothie maker and Internet access can set themself up as a ‘wellness consultant‘, create a website and convince readers of the credibility of the lunacy presented.
After losing about 30 minutes of my life clicking through the site, I put my iPad down. I thought about what I need in my life to feel well and healthy. I thought about how lucky I am to be able to access medication and devices and coffee and fresh food and doughnuts and a flu shot later this month and our healthcare system.
These are the things that are well-making. All these things. The choices I make, the decisions I make, the things I do. Nothing is killing me, there is no conspiracy by anyone to make me sick. It’s just common sense. Something that is sadly lacking from any of these so-called wellness sites.
Here’s something you can do if you want to waste a shed load of time and never ever sleep again. Google ‘healthy eating’. Or use it as a search term on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram or any other SoMe site.
Actually, don’t.
Because what you get is an absolute minefield of pop psychology, fad foods, promises of everything under the sun and very little that is actually of use.
Everyone will define healthy eating in different ways. For some, it is a plant-based diet; for others it is high fat, low carb; for others it is Nutella on toast. Whatever floats your (steam) boat.
So what’s my concern? Well, it comes back to the kidlet and her healthy lunchbox project that is a focus area of study for this term. For homework this week, she has to draw up a meal plan – seven days of breakfast, lunch and dinner as well as snacks.
She had made a great start – two days complete. For breakfast, she had porridge and berries for one morning, and cereal and fruit salad for the next; lunch one day was a salad and ham sandwich, a piece of cheese and an apple, and a couple of sushi rolls with raw salmon, avocado and cucumber, and watermelon for the other. Dinner on one day was a chicken stir fry with broccoli and green beans with noodles, and homemade pizza the next. Snacks included fruit, yoghurt, homemade cookies and ice cream (of course).
It all looked pretty good; it kinda looked liked what we eat at home.
‘I’m stuck,’ she announced. ‘I can’t think of other things to write.’ She refused my idea of repeating some meals – even after I reminded her that her breakfasts on most school days look pretty similar, as do her school lunches.
So, I suggested that we have a look online for some ideas. While she got on with some other homework, I thought I’d try to find some sites that would be safe for her to use. And kids love pictures, so I thought I’d start with Instagram.
Big mistake. Huge.
Photo after photo tagged as healthy eating showed images of green drinks (in mason jars), diet juices (in mason jars), fad foods masking themselves as ‘super foods’, claims of clean eating, boasts of detoxing, restrictive diets. And kale. Bucket loads of kale. The photos were often interspersed with pics of (mostly) women in yoga gear taking selfies in front of the mirror.
And the comments on these photos take on an eerily similar theme. Cult-like declarations of #nourishment and #RawFoodRevolution and #KaleQueen.
This wasn’t about health. This wasn’t about a healthy relationship with food either. This was about restricting food choices and making health claims that are actually not healthy.
I shut my iPad, and walked to the bookshelf where a bazillion cookbooks stand – I buy them somewhat compulsively. I found a couple by Donna Hay and Nigella Lawson, and handed them to our daughter.
‘Here you go, sweetie, let’s look through here. And we may come up with some things to make over the weekend too.’
The recipes included simple pastas, pies, noodle dishes, warming braises, soups and delicious looking desserts. There was a wide variety of ingredients and cooking styles. The food looked great and interesting and tasty.
I know that I seem to be harping on about this at the moment. Part of that is because when there is a ten year old in the house who is spending a lot of time thinking about food in a different way than ever before, I am conscious of how her beautiful mind is shaping a relationship with food that will last her lifetime.
Whilst I may not particularly like what I see when I look at my body in the mirror, this has not manifested into an unhealthy relationship with food. I love food, and see it as a positive, fabulous part of life. How did my mum make that happen? How do I make sure that I encourage the same thinking about food in our little girl at a time when there is so much out there doing its very best to work against me?
Dinner prep.
It’s Healthy Weight Week here in Australia.
Discussions about weight – mine or others – make me nervous. Last week I did a health check at work and before heading downstairs to take the five minute check, I removed all my jewellery. And my insulin pump. And I thought about ducking into the loo and removing my bra beforehand to take a few grams off my body before I weighed it. (For the record, my bra stayed on.)
I also timed it so that I had not eaten lunch yet, and had just done a pee. And I took my shoes off before stepping on the scales.
Oh, did I mention that the only person who would be seeing the results from this health check would be me? That’s right. It was a fully animated check, done by a machine. No human interaction was involved. No personal details were provided. There was no way that I could be identified. Only I would see the number of kilos my body holds and my BMI.
I can’t remember the last time I was weighed. I guess it was when I had my cataract surgery and the anaesthetist needed to know my weight. But I am pretty sure that I didn’t see the number.
My endo doesn’t weigh me as a matter of course. She always asks if I want to be weighed and I say no.
The last time I went to see a GP for something and they wanted me to step on the scales I refused. ‘It’s not relevant to what I’m here for. Why do you need to know my weight?’ I asked. The doctor couldn’t give me a good enough answer to change my mind, so I stayed seated.
The aim of healthy weight week seems noble. Here is what it says on the website:
The aim of the 2015 campaign is straight-forward: to encourage more Australians to cook at home as a way to help achieve and maintain a healthy weight.
I am all over the idea of supporting people to prepare more meals at home. Educating people about how easy it can be to prepare healthy, tasty meals that everyone is going to love is a terrific idea.
Most of the focus of the Healthy Weight Week website is great – really constructive and encouraging and non-judgemental. There’s a downloadable cookbook with some really interesting and easy recipes (the poached chicken salad looks particularly delicious and perfect for the warmer weather we’ve been enjoying).
The pledge page has some really terrific goals that focus on health and ditching fad foods and diets and thinking about food positively.
The pledges can be scaled to be manageable – they’re not too difficult to incorporate into most people’s busy lives. And, of course, if followed, it is possible that one of the results may be weight loss. But I would suggest it would be so much more.
The results might include improved body image, feeling healthier, sitting around the table eating with others, trying new foods, getting better at planning meals and shopping smarter. All of these are really positive things to aim for.
So with that in mind, why is it called Healthy Weight Week? Why not Healthy Food Week or Healthy Living Week?
For me, the problem with Healthy Weight Week is that the focus is on the wrong thing. If I pledged to do all the things listed on the pledge page and then carried them out, surely at the end of the week the fact that I had adopted some really healthy habits should be enough – regardless of what the number on the scales say. There is far more to being healthy than what we weigh. It’s a shame that fact might get missed because of the name of this week.
There is a new film about to released about sugar, healthy food and confusing food messaging. I attended a preview screening brigh and early this morning and wrote about it for the Diabetes Australia – Vic blog. Have a read here!
‘Oh and I need to keep a food diary this weekend for my homework. Everything I eat today, tomorrow and Sunday,’ announced the kidlet in her rundown of what she had been up to on her second day back at school last Friday. We were walking to our local café for a Friday afternoon treat and to meet up with one of her friends and her friend’s mum.
What? Fuck? Why? The words ‘food diary’ hit me like a brick. Immediately, I wanted to charge at her. ‘Who is going to look at it? What are you doing it for? You know that there is no need to keep a record of what you eat – we eat a really healthy balanced mix of great food.’
I took a deep breath and didn’t say any of that.
While I may not, at times, have a particularly healthy relationship with my body (stupid, broken, scarred, unable to do the things that it should etc. etc.), I do have a very healthy relationship with food. But I know that a lot of other people don’t and I am frequently concerned about how food is discussed.
Food shaming is real and can be damaging. People’s understanding of food and nutrition varies widely and when we start using words like ‘clean’ or ‘good’ and ‘bad’ to describe what we are eating, food suddenly goes from being a source of joy to a source of judgement.
I stepped back for a moment as the kidlet continued her random commentary of her school day and, half paying attention to what she was saying (I knew there would be a quiz about it later!), I thought about how to approach the food diary thing without projecting my issues onto her.
‘So,’ I started casually. ‘What are you doing in class that relates to keeping a food diary?’
‘We are talking about healthy lunchboxes.’ She was wrangling the lead of her puppy as we were walking and pulled Sooty closer to slow her down. ‘You don’t like this idea, do you mum?’
Damn kid and her astuteness. I thought I was playing it so cool.
‘Um…well…I…Why do you say that?’
‘Because I know that you get annoyed when people talk about food in negative ways and say that some foods are bad. And I know that you think things like I Quit Sugar, and that other guy you keep saying is nuts, are really terrible because you love food and think that it should be enjoyed. Not something that is judged. Right?’
We arrived at the café and the conversation was (thankfully) cut short. She ran off to play with her friend.
The next day, we were in the car together, heading home to awaiting homework, and the kidlet said ‘One more thing. We need to say what the word ‘diet’ means to us.’
Again, I (internally) shuddered. What an ugly word. Why are they teaching kids to diet? Or even talking about diets? What is going on? I slowed down my thinking.
‘Okay’, I said. ‘How would you define that word?’
‘I would say it is the variety of foods we eat. And I would say that we have a diet that is made up of lots of different foods including fruit, meat, vegetables, bread, dairy, sometimes we have cakes and biscuits… And that we mostly have homemade food, but eat out too sometimes.’
She paused.
‘Oh darling,’ I wanted to say. ‘You are so on message.’ Instead, I reached over and squeezed her knee. For a brief moment, it flashed through my mind that just maybe we were doing something right in raising this gorgeous kid.
I glanced over at her and smiled, about to tell her that I thought it was a perfect way to define the word diet. But before I could she added, ‘Oh – and Nutella. We eat Nutella too.’ She was looking sideways at me with a cheeky grin on her face.
Bang! On message. That’s our girl.
Diabetogenic 