 Today, on Tasty Solutions for Diabetes, join host Kelly Coffine and Lola Kunico as they whip up three delicious breakfast dishes. Learn how to balance meals using the right amount of carbohydrates, fat and protein without raising your blood sugar. Meet Skip and Maria, two people highly determined to manage their diabetes with advice from experts from Harvard Medical School. Easy recipes, important medical information and more today on Tasty Solutions for Diabetes. Food consultant and home economist, hello, my name is Lola Kunico and I am a certified diabetes educator. And today we're going to show you how to create quick and easy recipes that are full of flavor. Don't forget healthy, well healthy and delicious. These recipes are intended for people with diabetes, but they're great for everyone. And you know you don't have to surrender flavor to eat healthy and we're going to show you how. Tasty Solutions for Diabetes uses three main concepts for its recipes and menus. Concept number one, eat a variety of nutritious foods. Eat foods packed with vitamins and minerals as opposed to foods that contain mostly fats, sugars and starches. Foods that are nutrition superstards include leafy green vegetables, fruits, whole grains, beans, lean meats, nuts and low-fat dairy products. Concept number two, balance high carb foods with lower carb foods. Foods are made up of three energy nutrients, carbohydrates or carbs for short, proteins and fats. Each of these play an important role in maintaining a healthy body. So it's not a good idea to cut out any of these nutrients completely. Eating carbohydrates makes our blood sugar or blood glucose levels go up. A person who does not have diabetes will release insulin to keep the blood sugar from going too high. Unfortunately, people with diabetes have to help their bodies keep blood sugar at a healthy level because their bodies don't produce or properly use insulin. So it's important to control your carbohydrate intake. The key is to choose some foods higher in carbs and some foods lower in carbs at each meal. Only about half and half is a good balance. The third concept we need to emphasize is portion size. In today's super-sized world, huge portion sizes have become the norm. A key to calorie and carbohydrate control is to eat reasonable portions. For each recipe, we'll show what a reasonable portion size looks like for the recipe and other items on the menu. Now, back to the kitchen. Let's talk about the first recipe we're going to work on today. It's a vanilla crunch parfait and it's got a nice balance of carbs and proteins in the ingredients such as low-fat cottage cheese. We're using a light vanilla flavored yogurt. We're going to add some pecans for crunch and of course a little bit of granola for crunch as well. And then you know you can find some beautiful fruit in the grocery store. We've got fresh strawberries, beautiful blueberries and zesty kiwi that you can find year-round now in your produce department. Great. Let's start with the filling. Okay. So we're going to take, this is actually a cup and a half of low-fat, small curd cottage cheese. Right. And we're adding that for the protein, right? Right. For the protein and it gives it more substance. It'll make your filling a lot heartier. You know, it'll be a stiffer filling and we're going to add to that a cup and a half of vanilla flavored light yogurt. And the reason we're doing this amount is just so that you can create this cream and have it all week long. The reason we add cottage cheese to this recipe is because we highly recommend people with diabetes to eat a balanced meal for breakfast. Protein is one of the hardest things to incorporate into your breakfast meals. And it keeps you from getting hungry later on in the morning. So we're going to blend this up with a filling. It's going to be nice and smooth. You want to blend it until it's smooth, right? You'll need to pulse it a few times in the blender to get the desired consistency. Yeah, it looks pretty thick and clean. Yeah, it is. Let's build this parfait. Okay. First thing we're going to do is take our cream filling, which is our combination of vanilla yogurt and cottage cheese. And we're going to drizzle it in the bottom of our parfait glass. It's nice and smooth. It's really smooth and really hearty. And as you see, I made a bigger batch than what we need for this recipe. But it's a great yogurt that you can drizzle over fresh fruit or have with sugar-free cookies as a dessert. So we have a little bit of extra there. And you probably can freeze it, right? Oh, yeah. Freeze it and then you have frozen yogurt with protein. Okay. So next, we're going to add some pecans. Okay. And the pecans, the reason we added them is they have more protein. They add a little more protein and some fiber, and they have healthy fats in them. And then of course, a little bit of our granola. This is a low-fat. Right. We'll add to that. And then to that, we're going to add our fresh fruits. Can I build it? All right, go ahead. There you go. Strawberries are one of the fruits that have the least amount of carbohydrates, which is really nice if you are counting your carbohydrates. And you know, all the fresh fruit in the produce department is wonderful. Most of the time, year-round, you can even get some zesty kiwi, which really adds to this recipe. Great. And kiwi does have lots of fiber. And then we're going to add another tablespoon, and start all over again. Most fruits do have antioxidant properties, which help to fight cancer also. And look at the color. I mean, this is such a, it's a great recipe not only to treat yourself to, but anytime you have company, it's a real treat for them as well. Right. Let's add a little bit more kiwi and a couple of pecans on top for extra protein. Can we taste it now? Yeah, let's do it. Wow, love. Yeah, it looks beautiful. Let's add some. What a great way to start the morning. We also put it in a plastic container so that if you're in a hurry, you can take it with you in the morning. When you're on the go, which we all are, this is delicious. It is. It's awesome. And healthy. Each serving has about 300 calories and 35 grams of carbs. And don't forget, it's healthy and delicious. Diabetes is a killer. After I was diagnosed, I didn't feel sick, so I didn't listen to my doctor. Then it struck. I had a heart attack, then a stroke, and I was only 49. People with diabetes also have high blood pressure and cholesterol, which can cause severe heart damage. In fact, two out of three people with diabetes die from heart disease or stroke. Don't let diabetes destroy your life. Call for your free Diabetes Survival Guide. Choose to live. Today, we meet Skip Chaffin, who speaks about family reaction and feeling guilty about his diabetes. Dr. William Polanski and Dr. Richard Jackson from Harvard Medical School say that diabetes is genetic. How did your family feel and how did they react when they first found out you had diabetes? Well, they didn't react very strongly because I didn't tell them at first. My family is very understanding. But at the time, it was something that I was probably a little bit ashamed of because I thought I had brought it on myself because I was so overweight at the time. The more I found out about it, I realized that that really wasn't the case. I probably did facilitate the onset of it by my eating habits and my physical condition. I was a little bit ashamed of myself, but as time went on, I realized that it's something that happens. It's something that I could take control of. I told the family members that I thought should know, the rest of them. I didn't want anybody feeling sorry for me. I just went about my way. If they ever asked me, I told them. If they didn't, then I didn't talk about it. I didn't think it was something that I was going to talk about on TV, actually. It's something I'm not ashamed of. It's something that I've learned to deal with. You never master a disease, but I have learned how to deal with it and how to control it to the best of my ability, which is an ongoing learning process for me. Great. So we just heard Skip saying that he blamed himself for getting his diabetes. Because of the way he ate, because of his weight, because he wasn't exercising so much, he felt he caused his diabetes. This is actually pretty common. People with diabetes may feel they cause it themselves, or just as likely, one of their friends, family, or medical care team might have told them that they caused their diabetes. Look at you. The way you eat, the way you exercise, you're bound to get diabetes. But that's really not true, right? We know that's not true. We know that if you don't have the genes to develop diabetes, if you don't have the ancestry, you can just eat and eat and eat. And it's just impossible for you to develop diabetes. And that's one of the important things we want to mention here as well. We hate to see people like Skip end up feeling so bad and guilty about themselves, when in fact, to a large degree, it can have to do with whether you simply picked the right parents or not. Anything else you'd think about that? It makes sense? Well, I think Skip is a little bit on the right track in that it might make a difference when he gets diabetes. It could be that if he had thought more about his exercise or food, he might not have gotten diabetes when he did, but a little bit later. But the main thing is, as Bill says, is you can't really make yourself get diabetes. In fact, sometimes it seems like everyone in the country is trying to get diabetes. We're becoming less active, we're eating more, we're weighing more, but only about 10 to 20 percent of us will ever succeed in getting diabetes. So Skip really can't blame himself. He just got a bad shuffle of the genes. Strong negative feelings about diabetes are normal and nothing to feel ashamed or guilty about. Many people speak of accepting diabetes. While you don't have to like diabetes, you do need to take care of yourself. Talking with family, friends, health professionals, or others with diabetes who understand these feelings can help you cope in more constructive ways. Welcome back to our kitchen. You know, we're always trying to incorporate vegetables into our morning menu. And we've done just that with this recipe. Right. I think we're going to call it the chili garden casserole, right? Is that what we're going to do? Okay. Chili garden casserole. So first thing we're going to do is we've got 10 eggs that I'm going to beat and whip up so they're nice and well blended. And now a lot of people don't want to use regular eggs because of their cholesterol. The recommendation is that most people can have one egg a day. But if you're watching your cholesterol, you can always use egg substitutes. Yeah, you know, I've never tried those, but I heard they're great. I hear there's different flavors and oh, good. Okay. So what we're going to do to this is we're going to add some protein along with the eggs as protein. So we've got, this is a small curd cottage cheese, slow fat, right? It's low fat. And this is about two cups. Whip that up. Come on, come on. Two cups, but like four. Dump it. And then we're going to add some dry ingredients. We're going to add, this is a half a cup of flour. Do you want me to dump it? Yeah. Dump it. And they're going to add a teaspoon of salt and we're going to do a teaspoon of baking powder. All right. Now for the good stuff. Okay. My favorite. Green chili. Got to have some of that. It has lots of vitamin. Chopped spinach. You can buy one of those salad bags of spinach. You know what? They're great. Frozen. They're all cleaned. You know, they're nice and clean. And they're fresh. Yeah. And you can use frozen if you needed to. But really, in your produce department, you can get the fresh bags that are all cleaned. And then this is part skim mozzarella cheese. And then we're also using sharp cheddar. So we're adding a quarter pound of mozzarella. And we selected mozzarella because it has, it's part skim. Right. Has less fat. And really. And probably less saturated fat too. Right. And the taste is somewhat the same as a Monterey Jack cheese. Right. And the taste is low in fat. So. And then we also are using a smaller amount of cheddar cheese because we're using a sharp cheddar. The reason we use sharp cheddar is because it's so concentrated, you tend to use a little less in recipes. And it's great if you're really watching your fat content. So we're just going to put a little bit in and save a little bit to go on top. It's all about looks for you, isn't it? It's all about color and presentation. Me? I like the flavor. So we folded that in. It looks nice. It's well blended. And all we need to do is we're going to pour it in. We just sprayed a little Pam in our 13 by 9 baking dish. It's going to have a lot of protein because of the cottage cheese. All the eggs. It's a beautiful product. And it tastes great. Should we put some cheese on top? Yeah. Sure. Which side is yours? Because I'm going to put more cheese on mine. Mine starts right here. It's all the way over there. Okay. Kelly, one of the things that my patients have problems with is having vegetables for breakfast. Well, and I think that's exactly what we did. You know, we added the spinach. We've got the green chili. And it's really a quick and simple way to do that with an eight dish in the morning. Right. And if you look at this, the total meal will have about 320 calories with about 35 grams of carbs. You can not only do it ahead of time. You can do it the night before. Bake it in a 13 by 9. But you can also do it in muffin tins and bake them, freeze them. And then when you're on the go, pop them in the microwave. And you've got a great little to-go dish. There you go. Isn't that great? Not very good. You don't have to knock yourself out to prevent diabetes. Get real. If you're over 45 and overweight, you can prevent diabetes. Lose five to seven percent of your body weight. Get 30 minutes of physical activity five days a week. And eat healthy. Take the first step. Talk to your health care provider. Prevent diabetes. Today, we meet Maria Martos, who says that she is the first member of her family to be diagnosed with diabetes. Experts, Dr. William Polanski and Dr. Richard Jackson from Harvard Medical School, say that all family members should get tested for diabetes. Senora Martos. Are you the first person in your family to get diagnosed with diabetes? I am the first person in my family who has diabetes. And what was your family's reaction? They were not too alarmed because they don't know that much about diabetes. They said I was preoccupied with it. Maria brings up the point here that she's the first person in her family to have diabetes, which is actually not so usual. Type 2 diabetes, the most common kind of diabetes and the kind that both Maria and Skip have, is actually increasing in the country. And we know that one of the risk factors for getting to type 2 diabetes is having a family member. So one of the things that Maria needs to think about, and her family does, is that some of them are very likely to either already have diabetes or even more likely to be at risk for developing diabetes in the future. And I think the interesting point here is that if they have a risk for developing diabetes, there's some things they can do to affect that risk and really push it off. Things that are very reasonable. Bill's had some experience in this. Yes, I was lucky enough to be part of a very large study that was completed all over the United States. It was completed just a few years ago called the Diabetes Prevention Program. And the exciting result from that study was that if you can identify people who are at risk for type 2 diabetes, we know that, in fact, relatively small changes in lifestyle can help to delay or perhaps even prevent type 2 diabetes from ever happening. And that means, well, a lot of the things we've been talking about today, things like regular physical activity, a small amount of weight loss, et cetera, can really be enormously effective on dramatically reducing the likelihood that you could even develop type 2 diabetes. So as Rich is talking about, it's probably quite important for Maria to talk to the rest of her family about making sure they get tested for type 2 diabetes to see if they have it or if they might be at risk for it. Particularly the younger people in her family because the sooner you're able to begin these habits and get them integrated into your life, the more successful you are in achieving that long and healthy life afterward. Good point. How well someone takes care of his or her diabetes usually depends on the amount of support from family and friends. To get support, educate your family and friends about your diabetes. Tell them how you want them to help. Ask directly for help and teach them how to give it. Here we are again and we're going to help you incorporate more vegetables into your breakfast. This is a great little recipe. It's just whipped eggs and then we're going to top them with a bacon salsa. Right. And we're using turkey bacon to add some flavor but not a lot of fat. Yeah, and with the green chili and you've got fresh tomatoes and onions, it really makes a great morning dish. Let's start. Okay. First thing we'll do is whip up four farm fresh eggs. Without the noise, right? Just whip them up. There you go. And to that we'll add two tablespoons of nonfat milk. This is just very, very simple. And we've lightly coated a cast iron skillet with a cooking spray. So now we're just going to cook these up until they're light and fluffy. And remember, you can use egg substitutes and they work especially well with scrambled egg dishes. Okay, so I'm going to have Lola stir that until it's nice and fluffy. Now we're going to take our four pieces of turkey bacon and add that to our skillet here. And we're going to let that cook until it's nice and crispy. You know, you can actually find this turkey bacon in the deli meat section of your grocery store. We're just going to cook it up so it's nice and crisp. And then we're going to add all of our fresh ingredients like our tomatoes, green chilies, and our onion. Okay, now that our bacon's crisping up, we're going to add a little bit of garlic here. Is that fluffy enough? Wonderful. Yes, that looks wonderful. I love garlic. Doesn't that look great? Smells good on you. We're adding lots of vegetables because of the vitamins A and C. And the chili and onions are mostly for flavor. And I like the vine rice tomatoes. Those are as close as I've found that are homegrown in taste and texture. Are they sweeter than most tomatoes? I think they are. I think they are. So now we have a cup of fresh green chili that we're going to add to this. And we're going to add three minced green onions. Wow, lots of vegetables. Look at how many vegetables we have incorporated in this recipe. The vegetables not only add lots of fiber, but they have a very small amount of carbohydrates. Oh, and just the aroma is incredible. I know, I'm so glad I created this recipe. I think I was the one who created this recipe. Okay, you were. Thank you. I just add the fun. Oh, and I'm all about flavor. Okay, are we ready? Because my eggs are dry now. Is it time? It's time. Okay, let's plate it. You use about a fourth of the egg. That's about a serving. And then we're going to just top that with about a fourth of the salsa recipe. Doesn't that look wonderful? Yes, this recipe makes four servings. So you can make it the night before. Put it in the fridge. Get a whole wheat tortilla that morning if you're in a hurry. Stick your eggs and all your vegetables in there. Warm it up in the microwave and you have about 35 grams of carbs and you're ready to go. And that's the point. We're all on the go. And if you plan ahead, you can get up the next day and know exactly what you're going to have from meal to meal and really control your diet. Right, and that's the key, Kelly, to eating healthy. It's planning ahead and keeping it simple. Most people with diabetes also have high blood pressure and cholesterol, which can cause severe heart damage. In fact, two out of three people with diabetes die from heart disease or stroke. Call 1-800-DIABEDES for your free Diabetes Survival Guide. Don't let diabetes break your heart. For more fun recipes, expert advice on diabetes, or to order a copy of this program, visit our website at www.tastysolutions.com. Today we prepared three breakfast recipes that include lots of fresh vegetables and fresh fruit. And it was a perfect carbohydrate protein balance. We made the vanilla crunch parfait. Right, and it's perfect if you have a sweet tooth. And then the egg casserole that had a lot of fresh spinach and green chili in it. And our last egg dish was the scrambled eggs with the turkey bacon salsa, which is a great way to incorporate more vegetables with great flavor in your morning menu. That's right, and if you enjoyed these recipes, wait until you see what we have for lunch. Yeah, let's do lunch.