Buffalo cauliflower and a spinach salad with watermelon are healthy eating choices, especially for residents with diabetes.
Those are just two of the food ideas that local diabetes patients learned during a nutrition class held in the community room of at Holy Family Catholic Church, Thursday.
The program was hosted by Fresh Start, a partnership between East Carolina University nutrition students and free community care providers. Fresh Start provides free healthy food items, cooking classes, nutritional advice, learning lessons and more to low-income and uninsured diabetes patients throughout northeastern North Carolina.
According to the Fresh Start initiative, the incidence of Type II diabetes in the adult population in eastern North Carolina is 14%, which exceeds the state average of 12.5% and the national average of nearly 11%.
ECU public health student Brandon Stroud opened Thursday’s session by discussing the importance of adhering to appropriate meal portion sizes. Using plastic replicas that represented different food items, Stroud asked residents to guess the number of calories in a small portion of nuts, which was about 80, he said. Considering that, he said a third of a cup of the same nuts amounted to about 280 calories.
“You see how that adds up quickly?” he asked.
Stroud emphasized the importance of balancing food options while ensuring people are eating enough protein.
“We don’t want y’all to get hangry,” he said, using an amalgamation of the words hungry and angry.
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