Wayne and Mary Goodwin of Holland started a diabetic meal planning service after creating meals for Wayne’s diabetic condition that would be good for the entire family.

“What got me started planning complete meals was my frustration at finding many recipes for diabetics but not how to work those recipes into balanced meals,” said Wayne, who has been an insulin-dependent diabetic for more than 40 years.

He said he taught himself how to plan and prepare meals that meet United States Department of Agriculture and American Diabetes Association guidelines. He wrote a software program that makes meal planning easier.

After retiring about one year ago, Goodwin decided to start a website to provide meal plans to diabetics and their families. With about 7 percent of the population in Northwest Ohio having either Type 1 or Type 2 diabetes, he knew there was a market for the meal planning service.

The planning service is available at www.JustDiabeticMealPlans.com. Anyone can download individual meal plans for 99 cents or one week of planned meals including breakfast, lunch, dinner and two snacks with shopping lists for $12.99.

The service offers four full weeks of meals in starter, basic, low sodium and Italian menus. Coming soon will be “A Taste of France.”

Wayne Goodwin preparing a meal.

All individual meals are interchangeable, providing a larger variety of choices.

Each meal plan includes three diet sizes for 1,400, 1,800 and 2,200 calories per day with portion sizes and all nutritional data provided.

Several of the dinner recipes are designed to be wrapped in aluminum foil packets and baked in a conventional oven. The Salmon Packet Dinner with a tossed salad is designed for meals of 480 to 735 calories.

All meals are low glycemic index and the recipes are created with low fat, sodium and carbohydrates, and a minimum 25 grams of fiber content.

“Countable carbs are critical for diabetics that take insulin,” Goodwin said.

Special weekly plans for restricted diets such as low sodium meet the latest recommendations of 1,500 milligrams of sodium per day for all diet sizes, he said.

The recipes are created from raw materials with a list of all ingredients. The proprietary software Wayne developed calculates the food values for each recipe provided by the service.

All raw data for the recipes is from the 18th edition of the book, “Food Values of Portions Commonly Used,” Goodwin said.

A chemical engineer with marketing and sales experience, Goodwin said he is not a professional chef, dietitian or nutritionist.

Heather Harris of Rossford, a licensed and registered dietitian in Ohio, reviews all the recipes in Goodwin’s service to make sure the nutritional information is accurate. She operates Abs and Apples, a nutritional and personal training business, counseling individuals through doctors and the YMCA.

Goodwin earned an accomplished amateur chef certificate in classes taught by Mike Bulkowski, a sous chef who worked for both Emeril Lagasse and Wolfgang Puck before opening his own restaurant in Findlay.

“Food is what we do and food is fun,” said Mary, who enjoys cooking, helping to develop recipes and plan meals for the service.

Mary learned to cook traditional Italian foods from her mother and has traveled to France where she studied French cuisine. She has taught French in Sylvania Schools for many years and accompanied student groups to France. She and Wayne are going to France again in June.

Wayne is originally from New Hampshire and Mary is from Rhode Island, but they have lived in the Toledo area for the past 30 years. They have two grown children, a son and daughter who are both doctors, and three grandchildren.

All recipes are available in PDF format for downloading and printing from the website. For information about the program or recipes, visit www.JustDiabeticMealPlans.com.

Tags: Diabetes, JustDiabeticMealPlans.com

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 19th, 2011 at 5:16 pm and is filed under Community, Health Care.
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