Diabetes is a disease that happens when the body is not able to make or use insulin properly. There are three main types of diabetes: Type 1 diabetes, Type 2 diabetes and gestational diabetes.

Most adults who are diagnosed with diabetes have Type 2 diabetes. Type 2 diabetes happens when your pancreas does not make enough insulin or when your body does not properly use the insulin that it does make. Type 2 diabetes can be managed with food, movement, stress reduction and medicine including insulin.

We know so much more about diabetes and how to manage it than we used to know.

Vitamin D is a nutrient. We can get this nutrient in food and also we can make vitamin from the sun’s rays hitting our skin in the summer.

Vitamin D is good for our bones and helps us to absorb calcium for our bones. We are always finding more things that vitamin D is good for and more and more people are being found to be deficient in vitamin D. Ask your doctor or nurse practitioner to check your vitamin D levels so you’ll know.

Vitamin D is not found in many foods; however, you can find vitamin D in:

Cow’s milk

Fortified soy and rice beverages

Fortified orange juice

Fatty fish like salmon and sardines

Margarine

Egg yolks

Fortified yogurts (check the label)

Most people in Canada need more vitamin D, especially in the winter months because we get less vitamin D from the sun. 600 IU of vitamin D is recommended for all people over the age of one. For older adults the recommendation goes up to 800 IU. You can get too much vitamin D and people need to stay below 3000 to 4000 IU depending on your age.

There are two kinds of fibre in our food. Today we’ll talk about soluble fibre. Do you remember the oat bran craze of the 90s? That oat bran was soluble fibre. It was famous for lowering cholesterol.

Soluble fibre is found in some legumes, vegetables, fruits and grains.

For instance, cooked beans like black beans, lima beans or navy beans all have soluble fibre. Tofu, made of soybeans also has soluble fibre. Cereal that contains psyllium, like bran buds has soluble fibre. Breads and cereals made from oats and oatmeal also have soluble fibre. In the produce department you can find soluble fibre in oranges, avocados, figs, Brussels sprouts and sweet potatoes.

Soluble fibre is helpful at any age and we know it can be very helpful for women going through peri-menopause. Soluble fibre helps with cholesterol which naturally goes up with menopause.

Calcium is the mineral that works with vitamin D in our bodies. We know calcium helps us have healthy bones and teeth. Most people also know that milk is a source of calcium, and also vitamin D, but not everyone likes milk.

Most adults need 1000 to 1200 mg of calcium every day. You can get 300 mg from a glass of cow’s milk or fortified oat, soy or rice milks. Chunks of cheese, a bowl of yogurt or tofu can also provide 300 to 500 mg of calcium.

For a tasty treat, mix yogurt with banana slices or blueberries and scoop spoonfuls of the mixture onto a baking sheet. Freeze the yogurt puddles. Once frozen, dip in melted chocolate and pop into the fridge to harden. Enjoy eating a delicious snack that will provide both calcium, vitamin D and some yummy plant nutrition!

Your Registered Dietitian can help you figure out if you’re eating enough calcium. They’ll help you find ways to increase the amount of calcium you’re eating (like adding skim milk powder to your foods) or recommend a supplement if you need one.

Carbohydrates are a part of food. Just like fat and protein food also provides carbohydrates. Carbohydrates are found in bread, pasta, rice and many vegetables like sweet potatoes, carrots, corn and potatoes. We call these complex carbohydrates.

Carbohydrates are digested in our amazing bodies and they become the main fuel for our brain. Our bodies operate efficiently with glucose (the fuel that comes from carbohydrate digestion). We can also break down our muscles and fat for energy but it is not as metabolically efficient or in the case of muscles, useful to our bodies.

People often think carbohydrates are “bad” for them. Let’s get away from thinking foods are good or bad and think of what they can do for us! Enjoy eating carbohydrates like whole grain bread with peanut butter. The protein in the peanut butter and the fibre in the bread will slow down how quickly the sugar rises in your bloodstream. This can be really helpful for your blood sugar and even your mood. .

Try making Rice Balls. Mix together leftover rice, canned tuna, chopped onion or some salty crumbled nori (seaweed, yes seaweed!) and a little mayonnaise. Form the mixture into balls and refrigerate for a few hours. It makes for a tasty little, savoury snack that has delicious carbohydrates!

Fibre is famous for its help with staying regular in the bathroom. It’s likely the fibre in apples that helped establish the saying “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” And fibre offers us even more benefits than its most famous one.

Both kinds of fibre, soluble and insoluble, help to reduce blood sugars and cholesterol. When the fibre comes from legumes or beans it also offers a plant protein that is low in sodium and high in potassium.

Most of us don’t get enough fibre in our food. Some great foods that are high in soluble fibre include black beans, tofu, avocado, oranges, sweet potatoes, oatmeal and Bran Buds with psyllium. Fruits and vegetables are also a great source of insoluble fibre and we can also get it from wheat bran, nuts and seeds.

To boost your fibre try peeling and dicing a small sweet potato and roasting it in the oven with diced onions and some red pepper and some olive oil. Add a little salt and pepper and enjoy!

Have your heard of Health at Every SizeⓇ? Health at Every Size or HAES is just as it sounds. It is a movement that believes everyone can choose health and it doesn’t matter what size your body is.

We know that bodies come in all shapes and sizes and yet it can be really hard not to judge ourselves or others based on our/their bodies. Health at Every Size encourages us to really accept that bodies do not all look the same and that all bodies are good bodies!

Sometimes people in larger bodies are treated differently (and sometimes unfairly) by their doctors and health care providers. This is called weight stigma. Health at Every SizeⓇ says everyone should have access to the same health care and that size doesn’t matter.

Thanks to Health at Every SizeⓇ we are beginning to see society change for the better. Places like Hope House are welcoming everyone by having comfortable chairs for all body sizes.

Talk to Molly the Dietitian.

Green vegetables like asparagus are packed with nutrients that nourish our bodies. In fact, 2,500 years ago, the Greeks and the Romans used asparagus as a medicinal herb.

Some nutrients that are found in asparagus:

Fibre… supports digestive health. Healthy gut, healthy body!

Vitamin K… is important for bone health.

Folate… is a B vitamin that supports healthy pregnancy.

Antioxidants such as flavonoids… help to reduce inflammation and risk of diseases such as cancer.

👏🏼 Wondering how to prepare asparagus? There are so many ways to enjoy it:

Steam

Grill

Bake

Use as an ingredient in: stir fry, omelette, soup, pasta, risotto, quiche, frittata…

The possibilities are endless!

Carrots are a delicious vegetable often found in our Food Market and at the Seniors’ Community Food Markets. Our Community Farmers grow them at North Field Food Farm. Carrots offer some great nutrition and beautiful colour on our plates!

Carrots have a plant nutrient called carotenoids. The carotenoids in carrots can turn into vitamin A in our bodies. Cooked carrots (½ cup) give us 766 ug of vitamin A (once our body changes it from beta-carotene) in a day and we can use between 700 and 900 ug/day as adults.

While you don’t need to take a vitamin A supplement you may want to try getting your building blocks of vitamin A from different sources. Bright coloured foods like spinach, sweet potatoes or even cantaloupe melon will offer you some carotenoids.

We all grew up with our family’s food rules. Holidays have even more rules around food and so we can get stuck in our old patterns of eating. Some folks are pretty hard on themselves about food and the holidays. This year, consider being kind to yourself. It makes a great gift for you!

Many people feel guilty about eating food. If you’re able to let go of the guilt you may feel more satisfied when you do eat special holiday foods. Eating more than you intended to eat may still happen. Remembering it’s okay to not to get things perfect is helpful. You can offer yourself some compassion and understanding. It may help you feel better and get back to the celebration.

Eating for comfort can be a coping strategy during the holidays too. Not everyone can enjoy the holiday season for many reasons. While eating too much can be uncomfortable, it can help to recognize that eating is a tool that you need to manage this challenge. Caring for yourself is a gift for you to give to yourself!

Alzheimer’s Disease is a problematic disease that includes memory loss and behavioural changes in people. It is becoming more common in older adults, and many people know someone with some dementia or Alzheimer’s.

There is evidence that some eating patterns can help decrease the Alzheimer’s or its most common symptom, dementia. Including foods like vegetables and fruits, fish, legumes, nuts and olive oil may help reduce the risk of dementia and cognitive decline.

Try including some canned tuna in your weekly meals. It’s excellent as the protein in your rice bowl. Add some canned lentils into your canned soup as you heat it up for some power from legumes. Enjoy a handful of trail mix with nuts for some healthy fat. All these foods can help boost your nutrition while decreasing your chance of getting Alzheimer’s. Item description

Beans keep making the news for their many fine qualities. Beans have soluble fibre helping to keep our cholesterol numbers in a good range. Beans have protein mixed with their carbohydrates and it can help keep our blood sugar steady when those two are combined. Beans are a source of iron which people who have periods need to keep their iron levels up.

One of the easiest kinds of beans to prepare are canned baked beans. People sometimes call them pork and beans. Or you’ll even see them as beans in tomato sauce. These cooked beans are canned in a sweet sauce that is delicious in many ways. Whether you’re eating them on a camping trip over the campfire or with a lovely breakfast of eggs, toast and baked beans you’re getting a nice dose of nutrition.

Potatoes are a staple in many kitchens in Guelph. They offer comfort in the form of mashed potatoes and joy in the form of French fries. Versatile in their many preparations there are full cookbooks of potato recipes for every part of the meal (care to ice your cake with potato frosting?)

Vitamin C, fibre and even protein can be found in a potato. Potatoes can be served at any meal and go with a lot of other foods. Many drive-thru restaurants are including potatoes in their breakfast options in the form of hashbrowns or egg and potato bites. The egg and potato bites are tasty and since they mix potatoes with both eggs and cottage cheese they become a great source of breakfast protein

The nutrition in an egg makes them a great and convenient food for many of us. One egg has 6 grams of protein and 5 grams of fat. Most of the fat in an egg is “healthy fat” or not the kind of fat that your liver makes into cholesterol. In fact, depending on how many flax seeds the chicken was eating an egg can even be a source of omega-3 fatty acids and most of us can use more of those.

Egg storage is one thing that can be challenging for people living on a fixed income. For instance, at our Seniors’ Community Food Markets most of our market-goers live alone in apartments with a small fridge and freezer. A dozen eggs from the market can last a long time when you are cooking for one so correct food storage is important to make the eggs last safely.

Raw eggs are safest stored in the refrigerator. Ideally you would keep them in the main part of the fridge rather than the door (which is often a little warmer than the rest of the fridge). If you separate some eggs for a recipe you may end us with the other half of the egg as a leftover. You can keep separated, raw egg yolks or egg whites in the fridge for two to four days in the refrigerator before you need to use them up.

Freezing eggs is possible, but not in the shell. Crack your extra eggs into a bowl and beat them together. You can freeze the beaten eggs. Label your freezer container with the date and how many eggs are in the container. You can thaw the frozen eggs in your fridge overnight and use them the next day in baking or cooking.

Sprouts are a great way to enjoy your greens. There are so many kinds of sprouts including peas, mustard greens and broccoli and they all have some nutrition benefits. Rich in vitamins such as vitamin K, vitamin A, vitamin C, folate and potassium these little plants can help us a lot.

The Food Market at Hope House is fortunate to receive sprout donations each week from a local vertical farm. Vertical farming uses an indoor, hydroponic system that can have some environmental benefits by using less water than traditional farming.

You can eat sprouts raw. They add a nice bit of flavour to a salad or you can blend them into your smoothie. Some folks will even blend a whole container of sprouts with a cup of water and a couple tablespoons of lemon juice and then freeze it in ice cube trays to make frozen smoothie pucks for future smoothies!

Sprouts can also be sauteed and served as a side dish. A handful of sprouts garnishing a bowl of soup adds nutrition and a bit of crunch before the sprouts melt into the warm soup. They have the same effect served as a nest under a just-cooked fried egg going from crunchy to cooked as you eat your meal. Enjoy your sprouts!

Reading the nutrition information on your morning breakfast cereal box was a past-time for many of us who grew up before cell phones (or even the internet) was invented. One thing that doesn’t show up on nutrition labels is how much you will enjoy the food and I’d say it’s just as important as the milligrams of riboflavin.

One way to really enjoy your food is to pick foods that are satisfying. For instance, lately I”m hearing from people about their worries around evening snacking. Folks are worried that they shouldn’t be snacking in the evening or they worry about the nutrition quality of their evening snacks. While we know that evening snacks are fine (your amazing body still metabolizes food in the evening!) and even recommended for many people (one more snack can help us get all the food we need into our day) we also want that snack to be enjoyable and satisfying. Here’s our chance to listen to our bodies about what foods are satisfying and enjoyable!

For instance, if you are craving chocolate but choose to have an apple instead you may not find the apple completely satisfying. The apple offers different flavours, textures and nutrition than chocolate and truthfully, it wasn’t what your body suggested. Most folks will end up eating the apple, possibly another unsatisfying option and then the chocolate too.

Aim for satisfaction by trusting your body and using your mind. One way to make this snack more satisfying would be to add a little dish of peanut butter and dip the chocolate (and maybe some apple slices too) into the peanut butter. Your body gets what it’s craving and you get a snack that includes protein, carbohydrates, fats and fibre.

Coffee is an important part of the Hope House experience. Many of the community members, volunteers and staff come to the Hope House café to enjoy a coffee each time they are in our building. The coffee is served by one of our volunteers and often comes with a bit of pleasant conversation or a kind smile. Coffee has the power to make us feel better in many ways.

Coffee is famous for its caffeine and is one of the reasons it is so well-loved. Most cups of coffee have between 50 to 170 mg of caffeine. The recommendations are to keep our caffeine consumption under 400 mg and so many folks will enjoy one or two cups of coffee a day.

In addition to caffeine we know coffee has health benefits for us. In fact, an article from a newsletter at Harvard explains that “ there was a decreased risk of certain cancers among those who drink coffee regularly”. There are even long-term studies which show that coffee drinkers are less likely to develop Type 2 Diabetes than non-coffee drinkers.

If you love the smell and taste of coffee you can continue to enjoy it! Swing by Hope House and have a cup in our café.