Dinner is served. On the menu: baked pork chops, Parmesan cauliflower, orange-almond salad and pumpkin fluff.
Jackie Baumann serves the meal on paper plates and with plastic cutlery in a conference room. It's not quite the ambiance of an upscale restaurant, but the fare pleases the palates of the small group around the table.
There's a lot more at stake here than just serving up tasty dishes; the diners are all diabetics or family members of diabetics. Nutritious meals are key to warding off or delaying a multitude of life-threatening diseases and health complications caused by diabetes. Baumann's goal is to make them appetizing, too.
Meals like this one are prepared during the "cooking school" portion of Purdue Extension's Dining with Diabetes. A Purdue Extension educator in Putnam County, Baumann is one of the many statewide who teach the program.
More Hoosiers Diagnosed
DWD was offered in response to an alarming increase of type 2 diabetes, http://www.diabetes.org/diabetes-basics/type-2/ formerly known as "adult-onset diabetes," among Indiana's adult population. It particularly affects people who are overweight, lead sedentary lifestyles or have poor nutrition. Also on the rise is the number of people developing complications due to the disease.
According to a 2010 Indiana State Department of Health report on diabetes morbidity and mortality, 9.6 percent of the state's adults have diabetes. Another 2.9 percent have yet undiagnosed diabetes, and 26 percent have high blood glucose, putting them at risk for developing the disease, the most-common type of diabetes. The seventh-leading cause of death in Indiana, diabetes causes a litany of serious health complications—heart disease, stroke, high blood pressure, blindness, kidney disease, nerve damage, loss of limbs and dental disease.
DWD educates participants on ways to lessen health risks through improved nutrition and food choices. The cooking school shows diabetics and their families techniques to prepare foods they enjoy in ways that help control plasma glucose by reducing calories, fat, and sodium, and increasing fiber and minerals. Participants sample the food and beverages that are prepared in class.
"When I prepare a meal during class, they see how easy it is," Baumann says. "Everyone is excited to taste a new recipe." Participants also learn how to read food labels when grocery shopping, reduce portion size, incorporate exercise into their daily routines and make food choices based on how those foods affect blood glucose. "It really makes a difference (in their health) when they follow the program," she says. "It takes both diet and exercise."