San Diego Food Writer Opens Up About Diabetes Diagnosis

MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: What does a prominent food writer do when she finds she has to start limiting her menu? If that writer is Caron Golden, it is the start of a whole new way of eating, discovering new foods and preparations, and sharing that information with eager readers. A diagnosis of type II diabetes was a life changer, but Karen says in a way, it was the best thing that ever happened to her. Caron Golden is author of the blog San Diego Foodstuff, and has written a series of articles about eating choices and recipes for diabetics running in UT San Diego. Caron, it is so good to see you, welcome. CARON GOLDEN: It is so good to see you. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: In what way was this diagnosis the best thing that ever happened to you? CARON GOLDEN: I went from being a person who hated to exercise and basically found eating anything and anything as much as possible was a great way to live. I turned that around to losing over 60 pounds, being able to not go to the plus sized departments, and I could shop and get cool clothes and look like a normal human being. And have fun in my life and not feel like I was always dragging, and breathless, and looked horrible. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: But you did not feel this was a good thing from the start? CARON GOLDEN: It is one of the scariest things that can happen to you. You get a feeling I am going to die. All of the things you hear about and read about with diabetes, possibly losing sight or losing your feet, possibly having a heart attack or stroke, there are all of these things that come up when you have this diagnosis. And they are probably real. Trying to figure out how to change it is essential. If anyone is going to beat it and have a normal life. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Did you have symptoms before you were diagnosed? CARON GOLDEN: No, I mean other than being overweight, no. I know that people have felt thirsty, or there are a lot of other things that are symptomatic of that. I never did. It was simply a normal visit to the doctor and getting bloodwork done, and it coming back with a very high blood sugar levels. They wanted me to turn that around very quickly. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Did you think that having diabetes would hurt your career as a food writer? CARON GOLDEN: I was not sure what was going to happen, I'm lucky that I was one of those people that did not have bad food choices as much as I had bad food habits. The difference is, when I first started, when I was first diagnosed, I went to a nutrition class offered by Kaiser Permanente. It was eye-opening. There were easily forty people in the class listening to this dietitian talking about all of the things that you could or could not have, or that were not good choices, including things like frozen chicken pot pie. She would show us how much we could have in terms of a slice of one of those individuals bites. You could have a slice, to have the right carb amount. You have to watch your card intake for a meal. People were still asking can I go to McDonald's and get a big Mac? How much of it can I have? Can I go and get a sausage biscuit, whatever the breakfast one is. The mindset among a lot of people across the country is fast food eating, all of that. I was not doing that. I was just eating a lot of food. A lot of it was very good food, it was just too much of a good thing. So, I had to really pull back, on portion control. I really had to learn how different cooking technique works. I signed up for Weight Watchers, because that was a way that I could use that structure to visually see an account for everything I ate. It did not mean I could not eat a lot of the good stuff that I have to read as part of my work. It just meant that I had to take a bite of desert instead of a whole one. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: What are the kinds of foods that diabetics have to watch out for in their diets? CARON GOLDEN: High carb counts and high-fat. People say it is essential to lose weight, not everyone with type II diabetes have to lose weight. But more and more Americans are becoming overweight. One of the problems that occurs when you have significant weight gain is diabetes. The extra fat increases insulin resistance. In that context, you have got to lower carb count, because carbs are converted into sugar, and sugar raises blood sugar and insulin rates. You have to lower fat to stay healthy. To me, all of this means just eating healthily. It is not a special diet, it is a healthy diet. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Most people associate diabetes with sugar, and people who have diabetes have to cut out sugar. CARON GOLDEN: I found that part of what I've experienced going to the last few years of this with people trying to compensate not being able to serve me a piece of pie or a slice of cake by serving me a huge bowl of fruit. I cannot have that either. I have fruit and can have fruit, but I can only have small amounts. Fruit turns into sugar. I cannot have juice. I miss it terribly, I miss a good glass of orange or grapefruit juice, or lemonade in this heat. I cannot have it, because what you are doing is taking a normal amount of fruit, and adding more and more and more concentrated fruit to get the juice, which is high carbs. In fact, that is what they give people with type I diabetes who pass out and have a spike, they give them juice. That is the exact opposite of what I need to have, even though in theory it is healthy. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: You talk about delicious ways of serving foods. Roasting vegetables, using veggies as pasta substitutes, what are some of your favorites? CARON GOLDEN: I will roast anything. I think it brings out the sweetness and flavors of mostly vegetables, but roast chicken and meat. Last night I was trying to figure out what to make for dinner, and I had a piece of chicken. In the past that would've had a whole chicken leg, now I just have a piece of chicken. I realized I had a pepper, a red pepper from my garden that I had picked that was starting to go south. I needed to use that, and I had other little peppers I had grown, and I had a lot of garlic and some onion I sliced up, and I cut it all up and tossed it with olive oil and season the chicken and with the vegetables all around the chicken. I roasted about an hour, in a 400 degree oven. It was so delicious, and my start was a small sweet potato. That is another thing that is kind of an issue with me, and with anybody who is buying produce from markets. We talk about super sizing at places like fast food restaurants, but will you do not realize, until you are in this kind of situation, if you go to the market, produce tends to be supersized. If I want a baked potato, and I love a good baked potato, and I am always looking for little 5 ounce russet potatoes. I am dealing with 15 ounce potatoes. They are huge. Same with sweet potatoes, and fruit. I would love to eat a whole apple or a peach, but I am limited. I keep an electronic digital scale in my kitchen. I have to weigh these to see what the carb load is, because the weight is equal to the number of carbs. I look for the smallest pieces of fruit, the smallest potatoes, the smallest anything. Corn, anything. Then I can enjoy the whole thing. That is psychologically very satisfying. We want to eat the other half of a refrigerated big potato? No one. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: In your articles for UT, always include recipes. It seems from recipes and from your commentary on them, that being diagnosed with diabetes has made you even more creative when it comes to finding foods you can eat but are also fabulous and delicious. CARON GOLDEN: One of the things I came across, I used to go to those places that made smoothies. But most smoothies are made with fruit and fruit juice. Talking to different people in finding what they were doing, I realized I should experiment. So I started buying low-fat kefir yogurt. I combined that with spinach and frozen berries, which are low glycemic, with berries and honey with a little ice. It took getting used to with the spinach, but actually, I have been experimenting. Do not try it with kale, it does not taste right. Spinach is a good vegetable. I'm getting my vegetables, and I'm having a wonderful shake, and there's nothing in there that I cannot have in them out I cannot have them. It works beautifully. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: You spend a lot of time in your articles talking about not just the types of food changes you have made, but the lifestyle changes you have made. You have gone from a self-admitted sedentary person to someone who is committed to exercise. CARON GOLDEN: I wore out a treadmill my first year. I had to get another treadmill. I am lucky, I have two large dogs who need walking every morning. My routine, which I hate to have interrupted, it bothers me when I have a conference call at 7 o'clock and I cannot do what I want to. But I tends to run and walk the dogs first thing in the morning, which I always did. As soon as I feed them, I get on the treadmill. I'm on that from forty-five minutes to an hour depending on what my day is like. The other thing is, you hear this with people trying to lose weight. You're not looking for the parking space closest to the entrance of a store wherever you are going. Wherever you find a place, it is good. I look for any excuse to walk. Now that I have lost weight, stairs are not an issue for me. Any opportunity to try to get a little exercise is great. I like it, and I can do it more easily now. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: What would you say to someone who has just been given this diagnosis of diabetes, things that they face, flavorless food, and deprivation. What advice would you give them? CARON GOLDEN: Take a nutrition class geared towards diabetics. If you belong to something like Kaiser Permanente and some of the other healthcare organizations, they offer these classes. Even if you cannot do that, get some books that focus on diabetic recipes. Beyond that, I would say, the world has not ended. I know when I first got diagnosed, I went to Trader Joe's and had a mini meltdown. Everything that I picked up, I would read the labels and I knew I could not eat them. But you adapt. Make sure you do portion control, and enjoy most things. Switch over to whole grains, including pasta to rice. You can enjoy it and get more flavor. MAUREEN CAVANAUGH: Caron Golden's latest food feature is called Embracing the Green, and it is in today's UT San Diego. Thank you for coming in.