November 19, 2007

From bench to bedside,
bedside to the community

Through Diabetes Awareness Day and other community outreach projects, medical school investigators hope to advance scientific research and public health at the same time.

Larry Lucky, also known as Chef Lucky, Lucky, gave a cooking demonstration during Diabetes Awareness Day at the Dixwell-Yale University Community Learning Center. He got interested in healthy cooking about 12 years ago, after his niece was diagnosed with diabetes and his mother got breast cancer.

When Larry Lucky was a boy growing up in New Haven, his mother was a single parent struggling to raise eight children on her own. “So I had to learn to cook at a young age,” Lucky says. “I fell in love with it, and I’ve been doing it ever since.”

Lucky, also known as “Chef Lucky,” gave a cooking demonstration last week during Diabetes Awareness Day at the Dixwell-Yale University Community Learning Center. He says he got interested in healthy cooking about 12 years ago after his niece was diagnosed with diabetes and his mother got breast cancer.

“My thing is that even though you’re trying to cook healthy, you have to have flavor,” he says. “If you’ve got a bowl of lettuce with no flavor, nobody will eat it. It has to be interesting.”

 Lucky also believes that teaching people about healthy eating should be interesting. That’s why he’s perfected the art of the food demonstration. “If you show people step-by-step and then let them taste it at the end, as opposed to handing them a piece of paper with a recipe on it, it makes a big difference,” he says. Lucky learned this when he worked as the food service director/chef at the Mustard Seed School in Hamden. “I’d bring the kids into the kitchen and show them how to make trail mix and carousel apples. They loved it,” he says. Today, he takes a similar approach with his elderly patrons at his job as chef at the Mary Immaculate Nursing Home in Queens, N.Y.

Chef Lucky demonstrated how to make a fruit pizza, a healthy, easy-to-prepare treat that's a big hit with younger diners.
(See recipe below)

During his Diabetes Awareness Day demonstration, Lucky showed the audience how to make a fruit pizza. “It’s a real kid-friendly project,” he says, “and the parents were amazed at how easy it was to make.”

Lucky is a big believer in healthy meals that can be prepared quickly. In just 10 minutes during his demonstration, he made a meal with canned salmon and potatoes served with fresh spinach sautéed in garlic and olive oil. For additional flavor, he used fresh herbs and Mrs. Dash, instead of salt.

Glucose screenings, used to help diagnose diabetes, were offered at Diabetes Awareness Day. It is estimated that as many as one out of three people with diabetes are undiagnosed. With obesity rates rising among children and adults, diabetes is rapidly becoming one of the nation's most pressing health challenges.

Diabetes Awareness Day, which also featured panel discussions, glucose screenings and risk assessments, is an example of the medical school’s redoubled commitment to partnering with the community for research and outreach activities. It was sponsored by CARE: Community Alliance for Research and Engagement, an integral component of the Yale Center for Clinical Investigation (YCCI). 

If YCCI’s goal is to translate research from bench to bedside, CARE’s mission is to take that one step further and translate research from bedside to community. It aims to do this by promoting rigorous community-based research and by translating scientific breakthrough into practical benefits.

Diabetes, which affects an estimated 7.5 percent of New Haven County residents and can be better managed through early detection, diet and exercise, is an ideal issue for this type of community engagement.  Other projects being planned will focus on pediatric obesity and evaluating the impact of a violence prevention program on urban youth in the New Haven public schools.  

Chef Lucky’s tips for a healthier Thanksgiving:

• The worst place for salt is on the table. Keep it in the kitchen, but try to flavor your food with herbs or Mrs. Dash instead.
• Don’t cook your vegetables to death. They’re not meant to be brown. Just let them wilt a little.
• Use a non-stick spray instead of corn oil or butter to grease your pots and pans.
• Used smoked turkey instead or salt pork or ham hocks to flavor foods.
• Cook fresh vegetables. If you can’t do that, frozen vegetables are better for you than canned, which contain a lot of sodium. 
• Use vegetable broth instead of beef broth.
• Read the labels. The FDA requires that the most plentiful ingredient is listed first. If sodium is near the top, you know the food has a high salt content.
• Most foods have low-sodium or low-fat alternatives. Choose them instead.
• Don’t cut out all treats or fats. “We still need some of that. Just don’t abuse it. My whole thing is moderation.”

—Jennifer Kaylin

 

Recipes

Fruit Pizza

1 large whole wheat Boboli dough
1 cup low fat cream cheese, softened
2 tsp. vanilla
1 cup orange juice
1 tsp. corn starch
¼ cup cold water
Assorted fresh fruit cut into pieces
10 pkgs. Sweet & Low

• Bring orange juice to a boil. Add 1 tsp vanilla and 4 pkgs. Sweet & Low. Mix the water and corn starch together in another bowl and slowly drizzle into the orange juice. Stir until the orange juice mixture thickens. Set aside to cool.
• Mix the cream cheese, 1 tsp. vanilla and the rest of the Sweet & Low together until smooth. Spread over the Boboli. Arrange fruit over the cream cheese. Drizzle cooled orange juice glaze over the fruit. Slice in wedges as you would a pepperoni pizza.

 

Teddy Graham Apple Carousel

1 large apple, cored
Peanut butter
Teddy Grahams
Raisins
Tooth picks
Lemon juice
Water

• Core the apple. Lay it on its side and cut into four slices.
• Discard the top and bottom pieces.
• Soak the two middle slices in lemon water for about 5 minutes (to keep the apple from turning brown).
• Spread peanut butter about ¼ inch thick on one apple slice.
• Stand four Teddy Grahams around the edge of the apple in the peanut butter.
• Stick four tooth picks into the apple in between the Teddy Grahams.
• Place the second apple slice on top of the tooth picks and cover with peanut butter and raisins.

Photos by Michael Marsland

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