By Arundhati Sarkar
Finding a place to eat out was always a task for Seema Pinto, a diabetic from Mumbai. Scanning through the food menu, to find a “healthy and diabetic-friendly” meal often took the fun out of eating at a restaurant or trying something new.
Having been a diabetic patient for 12 years, the marketing and PR specialist hit up the idea of a “Diabetic Food Trail”. Partnering with 200 restaurants across the five cities of Mumbai, Delhi, Pune, Bengaluru and Chennai, the “Diabetic Food Trail” offers specially curated menu for diabetics, pre-diabetics and the health conscious. “The menus have been prepared using a combination of healthy alternative ingredients, tweaking the balance of the recipe to ensure that it meets the calorific requirements, while retaining the flavours,” says Seema. The menus also prominently feature the nutritional value, calories, carbohydrates, fat and protein that each dish contain.
The food trail allows customers to indulge without worrying about their blood sugar levels. But more than anything, with acclaimed chefs having designed special menus, the trail hopes to set aside the perception that diabetic food is bland and tasteless. “The restaurant chefs have done several tastings to ensure that the taste of a particular dish is not compromised,” points out Seema Pinto.
But the aim of the food trail, Seema says, is to raise awareness about diabetes and the importance of eating a healthy diet, exercise and medication to managing the lifestyle disease. Besides offering food lovers a masterclass with chefs so that they may recreate their favourite dishes at home, the trail also offers a healthy dessert trail and a diabetic fitness boot camp. Seema notes, “This initiative is a collaborative effort to spread the word that we care for our health and we act on it.”
The second edition of the “Diabetic Food Trail” started on November 12 and will go on till November 30.