Author and nutritionist Dr Sue Radd featured on Australian television’s Weekend Sunrise on October 20, sharing her insights on diet and diabetes—and highlighting her new book Food As Medicine: Cooking to Prevent and Treat Diabetes.
While it has been available since earlier this year in Adventist bookshops, Food As Medicine–Diabetes was released broadly on October 2 in conjunction with media coverage, including dozens of radio and print interviews.
“The book and I have been well received,” said Dr Radd, commenting on her interactions with hosts, producers and their audiences around Australia. “A producer on Sunrise told me she got very excited when she saw the topic for my appearance as she has pre-diabetes. She stated her whole family is rife with diabetes. I gifted her a copy of the book at the end of the program.”
As a follow up to her award-winning Food As Medicine, Food As Medicine–Diabetes is the first of a planned series of disease-specific cookbooks. Dr Radd explained that this was an obvious place to begin, with diabetes the fastest-growing chronic health condition worldwide. “Diabetes prevalence has more than tripled since the year 2000, according to the International Diabetes Federation, which now deems this condition a global health emergency of the 21st century,” she said.
Dr Radd said the new cookbook is designed to be complementary with the original Food As Medicine. “However, the diabetes book goes into specific details regarding this and other conditions relating to blood glucose and insulin,” she explained. “It provides a strong evidence base to support a whole foods, plant-based eating pattern with recipes highlighting those foods that are particularly useful if you have diabetes. To my knowledge, no other cookbook does that.”
Food As Medicine–Diabetes includes 50 new recipes, developed by Dr Radd with a view to their health-enhancing benefits. “I look for gaps in knowledge, consider trends and traditional ideas to come up with ways to showcase particular foods for which there is evidence for medicinal effects,” she said. “I test recipes multiple times before I get others to also make them and provide feedback before finalising them. I always seem to be in the process of developing new recipes—at different stages.”
In partnership with the new cookbook, resources are also now available for local churches, Adventist health leaders and health professionals, and literature evangelists to run Food As Medicine-Diabetes events in their communities. Resources include current statistics about diabetes, the clip of Dr Radd’s Sunrise appearance, and a short documentary featuring Dr Radd and Dr Andrew Pennington talking about the importance of nutrition for prevention and treatment of diabetes.
“These can be coupled with a demonstration of a selection of the recipes in Food As Medicine–Diabetes,” said Christina Hawkins, book marketing coordinator for Adventist Media. “And, of course, the cookbook itself is the core resource and this can be made available to participants, either as part of a registration fee or for sale at your event.”
Dr Radd said she is excited about the opportunities to partner with other health professionals and church members to share the core principles of “food as medicine”.
“It means choosing and using foods and meals not only for their flavour and enjoyment, but so that they can also prevent, heal and reverse chronic diseases,” she said. “The most important thing that people need to know about nutrition is how powerful it is to determine your health destiny—much more than we ever realised!”
To access the Food As Medicine-Diabetes resources, contact your conference health ministries director or visit foodasmedicine.cooking/communityimpact.
Food As Medicine: Cooking to Prevent and Treat Diabetes is available from Adventist and other bookshops in Australia and New Zealand, or online.
