Can I Still Be Italian If I Don't Eat Pasta?

Illustrated by Mallory Heller. "Cut out the booze and the coffee. And dial back your workouts." That's what the doctor told me a few months ago. My first reaction: no, no, and no. When a woman gets that kind of talk from a doctor, it's probably because she's pregnant. But not me -- I had just been diagnosed with adult onset Type 1 diabetes (it's commonly known as juvenile diabetes). I was floored -- I exercised five times a week and steered clear of fast food and soda. Turns out, that didn't really matter. "This is an autoimmune disease, it has nothing to do with your lifestyle," my doctor said. To stay alive and manage my disease, I had to accept rules and restrictions on a part of my life that had very few. I now had to fundamentally change the way I ate and lived -- forever. For an Italian woman who grew up on pasta, this was like creating a new identity. For me, cooking and eating meals were passionate and sometimes irrational affairs. My pursuit of good food could sometimes reach absurd extremes. I once walked into a "humane" butcher store and asked for veal knees so my Roman grandmother could make a traditional bone soup for Christmas. "Veal isn't humane," barked the bearded lumberjack-cum-butcher behind the counter, "and it's not sustainable." When my husband and I heeded warnings to evacuate our Lower Manhattan apartment a few years ago ahead of Hurricane Sandy, the first thing I grabbed was my large cast iron pot and a can of San Marzano tomatoes so I could ...
Source: Healthy Living - The Huffington Post - Category: Consumer Health News Source Type: news