Donna Webb believes food has gotten really complicated. As diabetes program coordinator for CoxHealth, an advocate of clean eating and mother of school-age children, Webb understands the difficulty of maintaining healthy food habits, especially when varied eating schedules come into play. She says avoiding the quick fix of fast food comes down to creativity, planning and learning how to prepare your own on-the-go food, instead of reaching for something packaged.
“For decades it’s been ‘low fat, low fat, low fat,” she says of the food evolution. “But our message has changed – healthy does not equal low fat. Choose fresh ingredients, cook more and get back to the basics of eating.”
Webb’s work is a 50/50 mix between primary and secondary interventions. She teaches weight-loss counseling and classes on the preventative side and after a patient is diagnosed, she talks about living with diabetes, including classes, cooking demos and one-on-one education.
Diabetes affects one of every 12 adults. Webb says the Springfield area falls in line nationally, at about 8 percent of the population. However, diagnoses have tripled during the past two decades, to more than 1.7 million new cases in 2010, up from around 600,000 in 1990, according to the Centers for Disease Control.
“We are creating a disease epidemic in this country,” Webb says.
Webb believes education is key and is fired up to make changes.
“It’s not hard to get upset,” she says, “when you know about the millions of dollars that is spent on packaging of problem foods, or about the chemical manipulation of a food’s ‘bliss point’ – engineered to where we love the flavor, but are never quite satisfied. It’s why so many people keep coming back for more and more.”
With a career that spans 13 years, Webb’s education efforts include positions in both health care and public school nutrition. She developed and currently teaches a 12-week weight-loss class called Life Lerner, hosting a regular live health and cooking segment on KOLR 10 and is working with Price Cutter on a collaborative effort to bring nutrition expertise to its Taste Culinary Classroom.
“I know the food maze at grocery stores leaves people feeling lost and hopeless,” she says.
As past president of the Southwest Missouri Dietetic Association, Webb said the group noticed a shortage of dietitians and a need for an area internship. Working with Cox College, Webb helped establish the first dietetic internship in 2006. Today, the program has expanded into a two-year internship and master’s program where Webb still works as an educator.
Education never stops for Webb as she continues to learn about current research on the Western diet’s impact on chronic inflammation and metabolic syndromes.
“It’s easy to feel numbed by the statistics,” she says. “But we’re starting to see patients who have lost more than 100 pounds in a year, patients who have gone off their medications, had reversal of dismetabolism – all from just switching to the real food diet. We’re learning so much more than we have during the past 30 years. It’s exciting.”[[In-content Ad]]
