GET YOUR SALSA ON! Healthy HOT Latin Food Options for Hypoglcemia and Diabetes

GET YOUR SALSA ON! Healthy HOT Latin Food Options for Hypoglcemia and Diabetes

Enjoy healthy Latin food options with Hypoglycemia, Diabetes and blood sugar problems. Nachos getting you down? Help your blood sugar and get your salsa on!

Enjoying delicious Latin foods can be difficult if you have hypoglycemia, diabetes, and have to watch your blood sugar levels. Between Mexican nachos dripping in fatty cheeses, burritos swimming in carbohydrates, and super sugary sweets like Cuban tres leches, it may seem impossible to enjoy Hispanic foods without harming your health. And for the hundreds of thousands of Latinos in the United States suffering from diabetes, not being able to enjoy your traditional Latin American family dishes seems like punishment. But you can enjoy your favorite foods, just follow these tips.

Go Whole Wheat and Natural Vegetables Want a simple way to change up your carbohydrate intake to maintain your diabetes? Simply opt for whole wheat tortillas and vegetable chips. The body takes a longer time to break down the sugars in whole wheat products, and many vegetable chips taste delicious with our favorite Mexican favorites like low fat cheeses, salsa, and refried beans.

Another great option is to substitute a lettuce leaf for a tortilla, especially with fish tacos or dip. By substituting real vegetables for high carb tortillas, you can help maintain your hypoglycemia. Be sure to read packages. Corn tortillas typically have less carbohydrates than the flour versions. And if you want to make your own homemade tortillas, split the flour between whole wheat and regular flour to make a hypoglycemia happy tortilla!


The Power of Salsa
No, I am not talking about the hot Cuban dance or the high fructose corn syrup salsa at the grocery store chips aisle. I am talking about making your own natural salsa. All you need is a food processor or blender. Even a good knife will work. You can opt for the easy way out by purchasing a can or two of crushed tomatoes and then cutting in your choice of peppers, onions, and garlic, or go organic by buying fresh organic tomatoes and vegetables.

For a fun twist add in some mango or pineapple. My dietician recommends that I opt for real fruit over other sugar options. Natural unprocessed products are better for maintaining blood sugar levels because you can control how much sugar is put in your food, like salsa. If you like spicy, I recommend chopping in some hot peppers or a few drops of ghost pepper sauce.

Eat this not that!My family is Cuban and Dominican, and if anyone is familiar with Cuban cuisine, vegetables and healthy options are buried under mounds of delicious fried foods. Because my hypoglycemia is severe, I need to choose good healthy options. For example, I eat my frijoles without rice and opt for tostones over their sweet counterpart platinos maduros (or fried sweet plantains). I do not drink my favorite Caribbean soda options like Materva and choose water instead, especially if I know that I want to indulge in a bite of dessert. I will share my dessert with my spouse or a friend, since most postres, or desserts, are extremely high in sugar, even when homemade.

When I go to a Mexican or South American restaurant, I skip the complimentary nachos and will substitute broccoli for yellow rice. Maintaining my hypoglycemia is important to me, and I choose high protein options like steak, chicken, or fish, over food options that are extremely high in carbohydrates like paella, a Spanish favorite that involves seafood cooked with rice. Give me a bistec de palomilla with tostones and I am in food heaven. Delicioso!


Final food pointersAs you can see, it is possible to enjoy good Latin American food favorites without causing your diabetes or hypoglycemia to act up. If you are eating out, skip unnecessary carbohydrates like chips, rice, and soda, and try to substitute low carb options like black beans with salsa. Share sweet treats. Most Spanish restaurants will give you huge portions. Split your dinner with a friend or save the rest for lunch tomorrow. And if you decide to cook at home, find ways to incorporate whole wheat and protein into your favorite family recipes.

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New York City Girls fight Obesity with Organic Farming

Hola Everyone!

If you are interested in changing what your kids eat and stopping the high rates of obesity in the next generation, I highly recommend checking out this great kid-friendly documentary ""What's on Your Plate?"

The film's synopsis (from Whatsonyourplate.org):

"WHAT'S ON YOUR PLATE? is a witty and provocative documentary produced and directed by award-winning Catherine Gund about kids and food politics.

Filmed over the course of one year, the film follows two eleven-year-old multi-racial city kids as they explore their place in the food chain. Sadie and Safiyah take a close look at food systems in New York City and its surrounding areas. With the camera as their companion, the girl guides talk to each other, food activists, farmers, new friends, storekeepers, their families, and the viewer, in their quest to understand what’s on all of our plates."

These girls are making a difference in their hometown by bringing organic food and CSA's to their local NYC neighborhood. The film is also available through instant streaming on netflix.

African-Americans and Hispanics have the highest instances of diabetes, high cholesterol, and obesity in the US. We can change that by teaching our children how to avoid the snares of the big food companies. Eating well will protect them from the sicknesses that have affected our generation. I wish I had known as much as these two girls when I was younger. I would have avoided serious blood sugar problems today.

Enjoy the flick! And take care of your kids!

Love,
Mami Mozart

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Image by victoriabernal via FlickrAfter a creative hiatus, I have decided that I will embark on my first symphony. I have so many ideas in my head, so many things that I want to accomplish - a film, an opera, a novel, a symphony...mentally checking each off in my head before the last day I draw breath.

I will dedicate this symphony to my abuelita, whom I miss each and every day. How I wish she could hold my daughter in her arms! She would smile at my new mom anxieties, help me care for her, she would be here each and every day, just like she was when I was a child. I loved her, and still love her, so much, mi abuelita linda. I hope she watches her great grandbaby from Heaven and sends her besitos. I hope she intercedes with God for us daily, like she did when she was alive...her Bible worn and always in hand. I hope her and Abuelo have regained their youth, have reunited with their first daughter, Iris, who they lost before they left Cuba in '65.

I hope that this symphony, if I am able to create it, if time and resources will allow, that I will be able to create a work worthy of their struggles.

I send you besitos, Abuela. And little Eva sends the same.

Mami Mozart

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Shiny Urinals, America, and Latino Pride

This morning I scrubbed a church urinal, and I felt shame welling up within me. My pride ached within my chest. Years of college study, teaching at the university, my national reputation as a composer meant nothing as I succumbed to the worst of Latino stereotypes - the Spanish Maid. A hundred small steps brought me to this place, shining the receptacle of a hundred men's waste. The American economy, high energy bills, one too many vacations this summer, a new baby, a car that is too new, a body that is too old, university budget cuts - all contributing factors. In the end, my husband and I decided that taking care of our child and paying for the necessities was more important than our respective egos. 

I suppose my handsome gringo husband, his mother having to support four children on a janitor's salary alone, gave him a unique perspective on the cleaning job. He understood that children do not judge their parents the way that society, or even our own hearts do. But I had been raised that if you succeed, are the best, and overcome all through hard work and dedication, that you would want for nothing. Even when I chose the least lucrative field of all - the arts - I had foolish faith that as long as I gave my all, all would be already.

But then the economy failed, our old Toyota died, and I gave birth to our new baby girl.  

I spoke with my mom on the phone yesterday about the new cleaning job, along with other happenings from the week - baby took her first steps, I was published in Yahoo!, and I am composing a film score for an art film in California. I admit my relationship with my mom is tenuous. Its been calm for many years now, but I am always afraid that it will revert to the shouting matches of twenty years ago. The child within in me, I suppose, fears for the worst. She reminded me of the time when she scrubbed toilets, a couple of years after she had served as V.P. of my dad's engineering company. There is nothing shameful in taking care of one's family, no matter what the job. 

Jump back one more generation, and I think of Abuelo and Abuela, newly arrived from Cuba. My abuelo, a former medical student in cardiology became a pizza delivery boy, and eventually worked in construction. My abuela, a professional singer in her youth, then a kindergarten teacher (and official seamstress for the Cuban resistance against Castro), worked in a shrimp factory for twenty years. Each day she peeled shrimp in a factory in Miami, along with other new immigrants to America. Abuela had lost a young daughter in Cuba, and never again saw the child's grave once she stepped on American soil.

Sacrifice. Love. Pride.

These adjectives describe any Latino father working a day job so his children can eat for one more day, or the Hispanic mama slaving away in a restaurant kitchen or cleaning a bathroom just to provide a warm bed for her family. Mis hermanos y hermanas, your children do not care if you feed them working at a high paying job or as a janitor. All they care about is that you show them love. Ignore the idiots who try to pin the label "lazy" onto you, just because you speak the mother tongue to your children. The Latino people are hard working, American citizens or Americans citizen-to-be. It is only fear that attempts to keep us down. It is only fear that prevents us from succeeding. It is only shame that we put on ourselves which keeps us from holding our heads up high. 

Next week I will again clean shine the urinals, once again scrub filth, and once again feel the pain welling up within my sinful heart, but this time I will crush the shame and replace it with pride - the same pride that mis abuelos felt as they stepped onto American soil for the first time, the same pride my mother felt as she cleaned the church bathroom decades ago to put food on the table, and the same pride that I feel as I hold my little bebe in my arms, knowing that she and her papa have done all that they can to give her a chance at a healthy and happy life.