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“This book is aimed at giving you fantastic ideas and recipes so that your child can still be ‘part of the gang.’ You’ll learn how to balance diabetes control with nutritious food that tastes great and actually appeals to children.” – Robyn Webb
A list of American kids’ favorite foods reads like fast-food menu: Burger? Check. Pizza? Check. Sundae? Double check.
The list has been wishful thinking to the more than 175,000 children and teens under age 20 who have diabetes. Until now. Robyn Webb’s new cookbook, You Can Eat That!, puts these dishes and many other children’s and teen-agers’ faves back on the menu.
The soft-cover book has 182 pages of recipes, tips and nutrition information, liberally sprinkled with mouth-watering photos. Webb, who has years of experience developing diabetes-friendly recipes, concentrates on the kind of foods kids like to eat – chicken fingers, trail mix, birthday cake, pizza, and milk shakes. She packs each recipe with nutrition but pays attention to the flavor, too.
Tips on managing diabetes
Although the book is not a medical guide, it does include some information on how to manage childhood diabetes. The health info is served up in easy-to-digest bites. In everyday language, she discusses the three basic keys to managing childhood diabetes (insulin, overall healthy lifestyle habits, and diet management to prevent blood sugar surges), and then provides more than 150 pages of tips and recipes for doing so.
The recipes will be surprising to parents who have despaired of ever treating their diabetic child to birthday cake or a pizza party. In the book are recipes for such treats as strawberry-chocolate ice-cream cake, chocolate-raspberry brownies and chocolate-peanut butter pudding, among others.
The recipes were developed to be low in fat and carbohydrates but big on flavor.
“To kids (and to some adults as well), the world of sweets is something of a sacred place,’’ Webb writes. “Taking sweets completely away from a child with diabetes can spell only disaster.’’
Webb clearly is up on the latest research, which has found that controlling carbohydrates, not just sugar, should be the primary concern of diabetics.
More choices
“Just as recently as the past five to seven years, the food choices for adults and children with diabetes have expanded greatly, allowing for a more realistic (and flavorful) way to manage the disease,’’ Webb writes in her introduction. “”While some choices are clearly better than others, the emphasis is on the word ‘choice.’ ”
In the book, Webb shows how to use herbs and spices to add flavor to healthful homemade versions of popular processed foods, such as canned soup. She pays attention to adding extra fiber to the recipes, which is important for those with diabetes.
Most of the recipes are easy enough for beginner cooks or even children to handle. In fact, Webb recommends that parents encourage their children to help with shopping, menus and meal preparation, to share in the responsibility for managing their diabetes.
A good place to start is the chapter on after-school snacks. A child or teen-ager could easily make Webb’s Chocolate-Lover’s Peanut-Butter Pudding, which has just four ingredients and requires no cooking. Other easy snack recipes include banana sundaes made with sugar-free frozen yogurt, crumbled sugar-free cookies, a banana and light whipped topping, and brownie pizza, made with brownie mix, fruit and sugar-free ice-cream topping.
User-friendly recipe pages
Each recipe is printed on a single page, which makes the book easy to use in the kitchen. Photos accompany most recipes, and complete nutrition data are listed prominently. In a shaded box in large type are calories, calories from fat, total fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, carbohydrate, dietary fibers, sugars and protein. No reading the fine print, because there isn’t any.
The solid nutrition is just half the story, though. Webb created the recipes to appeal to everyone, not just children who have diabetes. One glance at the photo of her Extremely Easy Italian Steak will convince you that she has succeeded.
— Jane Snow
“It’s difficult enough to prepare meals for picky eaters. When you throw diabetes into the mix, the picture becomes much more complicated.’’ – Robyn Webb
Meet the author, Robyn Webb. CLICK HERE.
You CAN Eat That! Awesome Food for Kids with Diabetes.
By Robyn Webb. Cleveland Clinic Press. 182 pages.
ISBN-10: 1596240296. ISBN-13: 978-1596240292
