Why are you publishing unhealthy recipes?

I am taking the time to write this letter because I am concerned about the health of my community. I enjoy reading the paper and reviewing the local news and events. Being an avid baker and cook, I think it is wonderful that each issue includes several recipes and nutrition facts. My concern is: In this day and age of diabetes (even in pre-kindergarten children), obesity (ALL ages), high cholesterol, soaring medical, legal and malpractice costs, what are you doing publishing such unhealthy recipes? The recent recipe for pineapple sherbet sounded yummy but included uncooked egg-whites with no precautions about the health dangers of ingesting raw egg whites or alternatives such as powdered egg whites. The high-fat recipes that you often publish should be recipes only of the past.

We all should all be advocating for healthy diets. This seemed especially apparent when, on the next page of the paper, is an article about diabetes education in the hospital. If we all had better diets, less drive-through food, proper food portioning, there would be far fewer people with diabetes and related diseases. If your paper is concerned enough about health to put a pro-life article on the inside front page, I think you should consider pro-life for your recipes also.

Thank you for your future consideration of this problem.

Susan Bass, CNM, NP