Food Safety at the Farmer’s Market | FoodSafety.gov

Food Safety at the Farmer’s Market | FoodSafety.gov

NMSU Food Safety Blog Link

For current food safety and food recall information please click on the following link:
http://www.nmsufoodsafety.blogspot.com/

Healthy Baking Tips

Low Fat Tips

• Cutting servings into smaller portions is sometimes all that’s necessary to lower fat consumption. (Check the Nutrition Guidelines included with each recipe for the fat amount in each serving.)
• Search BettyCrocker.com for “lighter recipe” and “low fat”—you’ll find an archive of recipes lightened for conscientious bakers and cooks.
• Use nuts in reduced amounts. When baking a cake, sprinkle nuts on top of the batter instead of stirring them in. The nuts toast as they bake, releasing more flavor—and there's no need for frosting!
• Try Betty Crocker® 1-Step White Angel Food Cake mix—angel food cake is fat-free. Add fresh sliced strawberries for the finish.

Low Fat Substitutes

• Applesauce and plain yogurt are good fat substitutes in most recipes. For maximum texture and flavor, replace no more than half the amount of the fat listed in the recipe. If a recipe calls for 1/2 cup butter, you can substitute 1/4 cup applesauce, saving 44 grams of fat and 400 calories (the fat and calories in 1/4 cup margarine)
• Mashed ripe bananas work well as fat substitutes in carrot or banana cake or muffins.
• Purchased fruit puree mixtures, usually prune—based, also are good and work especially well in chocolate, spice and carrot cakes. Follow the label directions.
• Baby food in similar fruit flavors can be good as fat substitutes, too.
• Replace 1 whole egg in a recipe with ¼ cup fat-free, cholesterol-free egg product substitutes (such as ConAgra’s Egg Beaters®) or 2 egg whites—you'll save more than 10 grams of fat and 100 calories.

Healthy Feet for People with Diabetes

 Every person with diabetes should have a complete foot exam at least  once a year. The exam should include:

·        Checking the pulses of your feet to see if there is a circulation problem.

·        Checking the nerve functions of your feet using a filament.

·        Evaluating any problems such as bunions, corns, athlete’s feet, fungal nails, ingrown toenails.

·        A discussion of of foot care. 

Take care of your feet every day:

·        Check your feet every day for sores, calluses, red spots, cuts, swelling, and blisters.  If you cannot see the bottom of your feet, use a mirror or ask someone to check your feet for you.  

·        Call your health care provider, no matter how small your wound.  A small cut can quickly become large and infected.  

·        Do not cut calluses or corns yourself.  See your health care provider if cutting is needed.   

·        Wash your feet every day.  Dry them carefully, especially between your toes.

·        Use skin cream (but not between your toes) if your feet are dry.

·        Cut toenails straight across. File the edges so they are smooth.  If you have trouble reaching your feet, ask a family member to cut your nails.

·        Don’t walk barefoot.

·        Don’t smoke! Smoking cuts off blood flow.

Choose comfortable shoes that fit well:

·        Choose shoes with a low heel and plenty of room for your toes. 

·        Choose leather dress shoes; for everyday wear, walking or running shoes are a good choice.

·        Break in new shoes slowly.

·        Check inside your shoes for stones or other objects before putting them on.

·        Wear clean padded socks to protect your feet.

Keep your diabetes under control.  High blood sugar levels are behind most foot problems of people with diabetes.

Karen Halderson, MPH, RD, LD CDE Extension Diabetes Coordinator

Adapted from materials from the American Diabetes Associaton 

Kids & Diabetes: Tips and Tricks For Halloween

Halloween — the very word can send a shiver up the spines of children and parents alike, albeit for very different reasons. While the kids are probably looking forward to costumes and trick-or-treating, the parents are likely more concerned about the vast quantities of sugar their kids are going to amass and what it’s going to do to their blood glucose control. As the parent of a child with diabetes, you may be wondering how to approach this holiday. What do the medical experts advise? What do other parents do? What would your child like to do? For tips on how to approach Halloween, as well as answers to these questions, we asked medical professionals, parents of children with diabetes, and adults who were diagnosed as youngsters for their opinions and advice on celebrating All Hallows’ Eve.

Getting into the spirit

As with many things in life, much of the excitement of Halloween comes from the anticipation and preparation leading up to the day. Planning a party, choosing or creating a costume, picking out a pumpkin and carving a jack-o’-lantern, or making arrangements for a visit to a haunted house or a hayride are all good ways to get into the Halloween spirit. Susan Shaw, diagnosed with diabetes as a child, says that she “would encourage families to have rituals to celebrate Halloween that include carving the pumpkin, toasting and eating the pumpkin seeds, and bobbing for apples.” This way, she explains, everyone can join in the festivities, and no special arrangements need to be made for the child with diabetes.

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Putting together a costume can be fun for everyone in the days leading up to Halloween. Although Kerri Morrone Sparling, diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 6, remembers the candy from Halloweens past, recollections of the treats don’t hold a candle to her fond memories of the costumes. Your child may enjoy taking a trip to the store to select a costume or, for a more creative touch, gathering materials to create a homemade costume.

Trick or treat!

Trick-or-treating is an important part of the Halloween experience, and everyone we talked to agreed that a child with diabetes should not be denied the opportunity to engage in the same activities as the other kids in the family. Indeed, as Allison Nimlos, diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at age 8, points out, the walking involved in this activity provides a healthy dose of exercise (and it may even make taking extra insulin for a small treat unnecessary).

Once the candy has been collected, there are a number of ways to handle the booty. Penny, mother of a young boy with diabetes, allows her son to pick out a few pieces of candy to eat when he gets home from trick-or-treating, covering the extra carbohydrate with a bolus from his insulin pump. He also gets a piece or two of candy for dessert several nights a week for one or two weeks, at which point any candy left over is thrown away. According to Penny, “I guess it would be a problem if Riley wanted to eat a ton of candy at one time. But for now, he’s satisfied if he gets a small piece of candy after supper.”

Since candy is high in sugar (and sometimes fat) but devoid of most other nutrients, this can be a good approach for siblings without diabetes, too. Kevin McMahon, fomer president of diabetes technology company Diabetech, has two daughters, one with diabetes and one without. After trick-or-treating, both girls choose a handful of their favorite sweets and then barter the remaining candy for a special prize such as a trip to the zoo. According to McMahon, “The girls don’t seem to mind, and they’ve bought into the fact that sweets aren’t the best choice anyway, whether you have diabetes or not.”

The use of carbohydrate counting should make it possible to incorporate occasional treats into your child’s meal plan with just a little extra planning. One option is to serve the candy instead of another carbohydrate-containing food, so the total amount of carbohydrate in the meal stays the same. (Consuming consistent amounts of carbohydrate from one day to the next can help with overall blood glucose control.) A second option is to adjust the premeal insulin dose according to how much carbohydrate will be eaten.

According to certified diabetes educator Gary Scheiner, if you opt to let your child have part of his candy haul, “you can manage blood glucose levels if you administer the right amounts of insulin at the right times. There is nothing about having diabetes per se that should force kids to not eat things that their peers are eating.”

Eating some candy can even be a good opportunity for teaching your child to take a more independent role in his diabetes management. According to Stephen Ponder, a physician and certified diabetes educator with Type 1 diabetes, partaking of the spoils of trick-or-treating “can be an opportunity for kids to learn some practical aspects of carbohydrate counting.” He added, however, that candy should not be a dietary staple, and he supported the idea of keeping a few pieces of Halloween candy to work into a child’s meal plan and throwing out the rest.

Dietitian Amy Campbell says that the trick to incorporating treats into your child’s diabetes meal plan is to know how much carbohydrate is in the candy and how much carbohydrate your child is allotted for a meal or snack. Because the nutrition information for snack-size candies is rarely printed on each individual candy, children can make a game of finding out how much carbohydrate each treat contains and labeling each accordingly (with masking tape or a small sticker). Company websites generally contain either product nutrition information or a phone number to contact customer service.

Parents of children who have celiac disease (an intolerance to gluten, the protein in wheat, barley, rye, and possibly oats) may also need to call companies to confirm whether candy is gluten free or encourage older children to start learning how to collect this information.

Bear in mind that the spoils of trick-or-treating should not be made available for continuous snacking. As noted by Scheiner, “‘Grazing’ tends to produce a prolonged post-meal high since the meal is virtually nonstop.” Instead, a piece or two of candy should be incorporated as dessert after a meal or as a snack, which can be covered by a bolus of insulin. For kids who don’t use an insulin pump, including treats in a meal or a regularly scheduled snack also limits the number of extra injections that may be needed to cover candy eaten at other times.

Pediatric nurse practitioner Jean Roemer supports the idea of allowing your child to pick 10 or so favorite candies from the bag and offers another suggestion for what to do with the rest: Auction it off to family members for spending money.

No matter which approach you take, one thing that is important is to make sure that your child with diabetes does not feel singled out. As Kelly Kunik, diagnosed with diabetes on Halloween at age 8, recalls, “We didn’t have carb counting back when I was diagnosed. My first night in the hospital, all the other kids were trick-or-treating, but I wanted no part of the special diabetes candy.” (It is worth noting that sugar-free versions of candy often contain more carbohydrate than their regular counterparts.) And according to Morrone Sparling, “It’s important to let the child with diabetes know that he isn’t ‘banned’ from treats, just that it requires a little extra planning and patience.”

We’re having a party

For parents who seek an alternative to trick-or-treating, a party, complete with Halloween-themed decorations and games, may be a good option. The following activities can get any party off to a spooky start:

• Costume Fashion Show
  Set up a runway and play a compilation of Halloween music while the kids display their costumes. Hand out awards in different categories, such as scariest costume or best homemade costume.
• Goo Relay
  Make some goo by mixing four parts cornstarch with one part water (adding some food coloring, if desired) until the concoction has a slimy consistency. Divide children into teams and line each team up about 20 feet from an empty bucket. At the word “go,” have team members take turns running a handful of slime from a container at the starting line to the bucket. The first team to fill its bucket wins.
• Guess the pumpkin’s weight
  Have kids write their estimates of a pumpkin’s weight onto a slip of paper. The child with the closest guess wins a prize.
• Silly telephone
  Arrange all of the children into a large circle. Have the first child whisper a silly message into the second child’s ear. See how the message has changed by the time it reaches the beginning of the circle.

For more Halloween-themed games, type “Halloween party games” into an Internet search engine such as Google.

Be sure to keep an eye on your child’s blood glucose levels if he is playing a game that requires a fair amount of physical activity: Getting more exercise than usual can lead to lower-than-expected blood glucose. On the other end of the spectrum, some children may experience very high blood glucose if they get scared by a particularly convincing costume or display at a haunted house.

Having a spooktacular time

There are as many ways to healthfully celebrate Halloween with diabetes as there are ghosts, ghouls, and goblins afoot on All Hallows’ Eve. By planning ahead and including your child in any decision-making, you can ensure a heck of a good time for everyone on Halloween. Just don’t forget to brush teeth and floss if there’s candy involved.

Dealing with Tantrums

When our children throw tantrums it can be infuriating or even downright scary! Yet tantrums, ‘melt –down’ or  ‘wobblers’ are a  perfectly normal stage in our children’s development. And it’s reassuring to know that diffusing tantrums effectively and reducing their recurrence is often relatively straightforward.

Here is a sample of some of our easy and effective tools for solving this issue

This works really well:

EMPATHY AND VALIDATION:

• Even if we think that our children can’t hear us over the sound of their own wails, it’s worth trying to get close to them just to let them know that we care.
• Say to your child with empathy “I can see you are very upset…”.
• However unnerving tantrums may be, we should try to provide a quiet, peaceful response (and atmosphere if possible) when they do occur.
• At the same time, hold steadfast to your own rules and try hard not to ‘give-in’. In this way our children will learn that tantrums are not the way to get what they want.

Here is another suggestion:

BIG HUG:

• Hugging almost always helps reassure and calm down distressed children.
  You can even call hugging ‘The Big Hug Time’ and refer to it whenever your child loses control.

• For example. Tell your child “I’m going to hug you till you calm down because I love you and I don’t want you to hurt yourself or anyone else”.
• If your child is really frustrated or upset, he or she may lose physical control, which may involve striking out at you or others. If you can get near your child without getting hurt, or without too much of a struggle, keep trying to hold him or her in your arms until the tantrum stops.
• If your child is in a public place (for example in the middle of a supermarket!), you should lead him or her to a quiet place, such as the car or a rest room and keep him or her safe until the tantrum has ended.

How to Get your Kids to Help in the Kitchen

Kids who are given the opportunity to be involved in meal preparation are more likely to understand basic nutritional concepts that will form a foundation for the rest of their lives. Parents can be skeptical that their young kids can learn to cook but exposure to “scratch cooking” helps to develop a taste for fresh wholesome ingredients. Kids are also much more likely to eat what they make because cooking creates a sense of ownership. And meals prepared from scratch are usually much healthier than pre-packaged foods and restaurant meals. Here are some ideas on how to start cooking with your kids: Pick a good time. It’s important that your first cooking experience with children is a positive one, so pick a time when everyone is well-rested and not starving. Start with something familiar. When introducing the concept of cooking to kids, it’s important to start with one of their favorite dishes so that they equate cooking with something they already enjoy. Find assistants. Invite Grandma over or keep your sitter for an extra hour. It will be more fun for everyone if there is someone else to help oversee the project and clean up. Accept that it will get messy. Plan on some mess and you’ll feel less stressed. Kids are great cleaner-uppers so ask them to pitch in. Many kids, as young as 2 years old, love using a sponge and do a surprisingly good job of wiping up. Roll with the punches. If something goes wrong, just laugh. It’s a good opportunity to teach children how to shrug off mistakes and learn from their blunders. Praise their efforts. They adore making food for family members so give them lots of compliments when they complete a task well – genuine, well-deserved praise builds self-worth and confidence. Choose the right tasks. Plan ahead when deciding what to prepare. For younger kids, consider starting with a simple dish with few ingredients. These are additional suggestions for age appropriate activities. Measure and Pour: • Very young children can watch as you measure wet and dry ingredients, explaining the terms “cup,” “teaspoon,” and “tablespoon.” Once you level the dry ingredients, your child can pour them into a bowl. This is a great time to practice counting (to keep track of how many cups or teaspoons are already in the bowl). • As children get a little older, around 4 or 5 years old, you can start letting them pour or scoop ingredients into measuring tools. Teach them how to level dry ingredients by using the straight edge of a knife or metal spatula, and how to check liquid measurements at eye-level. • School-age children can continue to measure and count on their own, but this is also a good time to introduce conversions (i.e., 1 tablespoon = 3 teaspoons or 1½ cups = 3 half-cups) and measuring by weight. Stirring and Combining • Very young children can practice stirring batters and combining dry ingredients using a wooden spoon, a fork, or a spatula. • Preschoolers can start learning to use different techniques, including beating or whipping ingredients using a whisk or egg beater. When they stir ingredients together, teach them to scrape the sides to incorporate everything. • School-age children can begin using hand-held electric beaters and learning new techniques like folding when using airy ingredients. Preparing Ingredients • Even the youngest children can help with preparing ingredients by fetching things from the refrigerator, assisting with the salad spinner when you clean greens, and rinsing fruits and vegetables. • Preschool kids can start tearing lettuce for the salad, scrubbing potatoes to clean them, and cutting soft foods (like olives and strawberries) with a butter knife or dull plastic knife. They can also begin learning how to crack an egg. • Make sure school-age children are aware of knife safety before letting them use the “grown-up” knives. It’s up to you to determine when your child is ready for these serious tools, but peeling vegetables and cutting ingredients are great jobs for older kids. You can also start teaching culinary skills like mincing, chopping, dicing, and julienning. Another great skill to teach at this time is how to separate an egg. Just make sure you have extras! Cleaning up • Small children can help with clean up tasks by using a small brush or broom and handheld dustpan on the floor. They can wipe up spills on the counter, and put away clean flatware (great for practice in sorting!). • 4- to 5-year-olds can add to these cleaning skills by using spray bottles of nontoxic cleanser to spray the counter before wiping it clean. They can use brooms or Swiffers on the floor, and help with the dishwasher by filling the soap compartments and pushing the “start” button. • School-age children can begin washing dishes and loading the dishwasher. When the dishwasher is finished, they can put away things in the cabinets and drawers that they can reach. • For all ages, make sure to reinforce these skills and habits by making cleaning fun, praising kids for independence in the kitchen (even when they make a mess), and holding kids accountable. Setting and Serving • Young children can set out the silverware, put napkins in napkin rings, and carry their own bowls and cups to the table. • Preschoolers can set the table and pour drinks for the family and make place cards for holiday or event seating. • School-age children can help serve entrees and side items in addition to setting the table. Teach them which serving utensils are appropriate for different kinds of foods, and then begin letting them choose which one to use for each dish. Kids who help out in the kitchen and share family meals are creating lifelong memories that will influence the way they eat for the rest of their lives. What better incentive to make this a priority. Enjoy the time you have with your children, we all know that they grow up too fast.