Blog – Eat Smart, Move More, Prevent Diabetes

Five Steps to Keeping Your Kitchen Knives Sharp

June 6, 2026June 6, 2026 by Carolyn Dunn, PhD, RD, LDN

There is nothing better than starting to prep food and finding your knife is super sharp. It makes your task faster and more enjoyable. On the flip side, there is nothing worse than a dull knife. Fighting to get through your prep work, slogging to get uniform slices or dices, it makes every task harder. Here are some simple steps to keep your knives sharp.

Buy a good quality knife. More expensive knives generally have a blade that is high carbon steel that will hold the edge longer. You don’t have to break the bank, there are plenty of $50 chef knifes that could hold their own against a $300 knife. For a budget friendly option, I like Mercer knives Renaissance series.
Store it properly. Knives should be stored in a knife block or drawer storage that separates each knife. A magnetic wall strip is also acceptable. The goal is to have the blade protected and not in a jumble with other knives.
Use a cutting board made from wood. Choosing glass, titanium, ceramic, or even bamboo will dull your knives due to the hardness of the surface. Plastic cutting boards, while soft and not damaging to your knives, can introduce microplastics to your food.
Keep it sharp by using a honing rod. This is key. You may have a honing rod if you bought a set of knives. If not, you can get one that is made of ceramic that is the most forgiving. Look for videos online to show you how to use this. Each time you use your knife, after you clean and dry the knife, run it over the honing rod a few times to get the blade back in alignment and smooth off any rough spots. A honing rod will not sharpen your knives, it will just help to keep it sharp.
Get it professionally sharpened every 6 months to 1 year. You can attempt to sharpen your knife at home but unless you have a professional-grade sharpener and some skill, you can actually make your knife worse. Most kitchen or hardware stores will sharpen one knife for free. Let the professionals do their job. How often you need to do this depends on usage obviously. I cook and use my knifes most days and have them sharpened about every 6 months.

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Make Oatmeal One of Your Go To Breakfast Choices

May 11, 2026 by Carolyn Dunn, PhD, RD, LDN

Oatmeal has been eaten for centuries. Its popularity comes and goes, and I am not sure why. Eating oatmeal as your go to breakfast has so many up sides. It is readily available, not expensive, and very good for you.

Oatmeal has fiber, we all know that. But did you know that the fiber in oatmeal is a special kind of fiber that has been shown to decrease bad (LDL) cholesterol and decrease your risk for heart disease. The research is so clear that the FDA has allowed this claim on the label of oatmeal.

The fiber in oatmeal slows digestion and decreases blood sugar spikes. This help keep you feeling fuller longer without that mid-morning crash that you may get from some other breakfast cereals.

Choosing the right oatmeal is important. You want to pick the least processed oatmeal you can. That means staying away from quick cooking oats and flavored oats. The flavored oats are quick cooking oats that have a lot of sugar added. Steel cut oats are the least processed oats that are readily available in most grocery stores. The downside of steel cut oats is that they take a long time to cook. You can cook them the night before and make enough for the whole week then just heat and eat. If this does not fit into your lifestyle, old fashioned oats will do just fine. They cook in 4-5 minutes. For more information on the different types of oatmeal check out an earlier blog on this topic.

Oats are naturally high in protein for a grain with 6 grams of protein per cup of cooked oats. Add a ½ cup of milk (4 grams of protein), ¼ cup plain yogurt (3 grams of protein), or 1 T of slivered almonds (3 grams of protein), to add a bit more. You can also find protein oats that are either grown to have more protein or have added whey or pea protein. For me, the higher protein oats make the most sense. They are simple to prepare and, even without added toppings, have 10 grams of protein.

Oats can be used in place of breadcrumbs in most recipes, so you don’t have to limit oats to your morning meal. Here are some recipes that use oats that you can incorporate into your diet.

Med Morning Muesli

Small bowl of Med Morning Museli with grape halves.

Banana Oatmeal Pancakes

Banana Oatmeal Pancake with strawberry slices and blackberries on top.

Banana Nut Med Muffins

Mushroom Almond Burger

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What to Take to Your Next Potluck or Picnic!

April 29, 2026 by Carolyn Dunn, PhD, RD, LDN

Deviled eggs are a popular staple on the Southern dinner table. I have made literally hundreds of dozens over my life. I was taught to make deviled eggs by my mother, who was taught by her mother and so on. Salt the whites, add a bit of vinegar, all these tricks from our past to make the perfect deviled egg…until now.

As we try to transition most or almost all of the fat in our diet to healthier oils, deviled eggs were in need of a makeover. Who knew that the new healthier version would be oh so much more delicious than the traditional recipe – sorry mom.

Olive Oil Deviled Eggs

Ingredients

1 dozen boiled eggs, peeled
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
1 teaspoon white vinegar (you can use white wine or champagne or just plain white vinegar)
1/3 cup extra virgin olive oil
Paprika (optional)

Directions

Cut the eggs in half and place the yolks in the bowl of a food processor.
Add the vinegar and mustard.
Pulse the food processor a few times to combine.
With the processor running, drizzle in the olive oil. Most processors have a hole in the pusher to allow for a slow drizzle of oil. If yours does not, just add slowly in a small stream.
Stop the processor and scrape the mixture from the sides of the bowl.
Pulse once or twice to fully combine. The mixture will be light and fluffy (see picture below).
Fill the egg whites with the yolk mixture
Sprinkle with paprika (optional).

Nutrition Information per Serving

Serving Size: 2 halves (one whole egg)
Vegetables: 0 cups
Fruits: 0 cups
Calories: 122 calories
Carbohydrates: 0 grams
Fiber: 0 grams
Protein: 6 grams
Fat: 10 grams
Sodium: 76 mg

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What Can I Use Instead of Buttermilk in a Recipe?

April 29, 2026 by Carolyn Dunn, PhD, RD, LDN

Buttermilk is a great ingredient in baked products, marinades, and some desserts. However, not many of us keep it on hand.

The most common substitute for buttermilk is to mix a bit of vinegar in regular milk. I have done this and it works ok but does not have quite the same flavor as buttermilk. I have found a better solution. Mix equal parts milk and plain yogurt.

Mixing yogurt and milk results in not only a flavor close to buttermilk but also a texture that is similar as well. Using the mixture allows for you to create a great marinade for chicken or make buttermilk pancakes, or that special cornbread recipe that calls for buttermilk.

Now that you have this trick up your sleeve, try this Greek-inspired marinade for chicken. Instead of using buttermilk, which many marinades call for, mix 1 cup milk and 1 cup plain yogurt, add the juice of one lemon and 1 tablespoon of oregano. Mix with 2 pounds of chicken pieces and marinate in the refrigerator for 1 hour to overnight. Grill or bake the chicken until internal temperature is 165 degrees Fahrenheit. Enjoy!

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Track Before You Change Your Diet

April 29, 2026April 29, 2026 by Kathy Kolasa, PhD, RDN, LDN

Woman using dieting app to track nutrition facts and calories in her food

Whenever I hear someone say, “you need to eat more of…”, it brings back a memory of a time, years ago, when I was working with a young doctor who wanted to help his patients lose weight. I suggested he invite me into his visit with a patient so I could demonstrate what I would do during a shared appointment. He was convinced that all he needed to do was hand a diet sheet to the patient and tell them to follow it. Much to my chagrin, he found a 1,000-calorie sheet and gave it to the patient that day. A couple of weeks later, she returned distraught because she had done what he had asked her to do, yet she had gained 5 pounds. This time he asked me to visit with the patient, and she told me that she had continued her usual eating pattern and had added all the foods on the diet sheet. It was not surprising that she had gained weight since she was eating an extra 1,000 calories each day.

The new Dietary Guidelines (www.dietaryguidelines.gov) recommend that you:

Eat the right amount for you
Prioritize protein foods at every meal
Consume 3 servings of dairy per day
Eat 3 servings of vegetables and 2 servings of fruit throughout the day
Eat 2-4 servings of whole grains every day

Before you change the way you are eating consider what food and drinks you usually consume and the nutrients they give you. Casey Collins’ ESMMWL blog, “Write it when you bite it” (May 2024) gives tips on how to track your intake. Kelly Nordby wrote about tracking with the MyNetDiary app (July 2025). She also referred to her November 2021 blog where she described several other tracking apps. Most of these apps are free and easy to use.

Since we hear so much about protein these days, I wondered if I needed to add more protein to my diet. I tracked my intake using Cronometer (our ECU medical students like the Cronometer app (Cronometer.com)), and I found that I was more than meeting my protein needs. If I added more protein to my diet, it would have increased my grocery bill, and my body would have either wasted the excess protein or stored it as fat. I was also reminded that with skim milk, I was getting all the nutrients found in full fat milk, but if I switched to full fat milk, I would get an extra 50 calories and 3 grams of saturated fat per 1 cup, which are not in my budget.

Mindfulness is an important aspect of the Eat Smart, Move More programs, and tracking is a tool to use with it. I recommend you get to know your plate by tracking before making any changes.

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New Strength Training Guidelines Released

March 31, 2026 by Carolyn Dunn, PhD, RD, LDN

The American College of Sports Medicine (ACSM) has released their first new strength training guidelines in 17 years. The gold standard in all things strength, the ACSM reviewed over 130 systematic reviews with more than 30,000 participants to answer the questions we all have about how to get the most out of strength training. For those that want a very deep dive into the science, the report can be found at: https://journals.lww.com/acsm-msse/fulltext/2026/04000/american_college_of_sports_medicine_position.21.aspx. For those that want the highlights, here are some of my takeaways from the new guidelines.

Do 1-2 more reps. If you get to the end of a set, ask yourself, can I do a few more repetitions? Those last few reps are where you really begin to see strength gains as you stress that muscle to the max.
Consistency is KEY. Strength train at least twice per week. Aim to get 10 sets total per body part each week. Remember to skip a day in-between body parts. For example, if you do exercises for your legs on Monday, don’t train your legs again until Wednesday.
A variety of tools can build strength. As long as you are stressing the muscle, with stretch bands, kettle bells, dumbbells, or your own body weight, you can gain strength.
Use good form. It is important to stress the muscle with heavy weight – BUT – it should never be too heavy to sacrifice good form.

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How to Perfectly Sear Meat, Seafood, or Vegetables

March 31, 2026 by Carolyn Dunn, PhD, RD, LDN

There is nothing quite like a perfectly seared chicken breast or scallop. That golden brown color is the hallmark of restaurant quality dishes. Getting that perfect sear is not easy. You need several things working in your favor all at once.

On a recent trip to Gordon Ramsay’s Academy outside of London, I picked up one special trick that can make all the difference. More on that in a minute. First, let’s go over what is essential for a good sear.

You need a good pan. You can use nonstick but they are not designed to get as hot as needed for a great sear. If you are just getting started in your cooking journey, you can use a nonstick pan to give you more confidence. However, the gold standard for searing is a stainless steel or cast iron pan. Heat the pan over medium high heat. Heat the pan dry with no oil at this point.

Whatever you are searing needs to be bone dry. If the meat, fish or vegetable is wet or even moist, it will steam and not sear.

To test if the pan is hot enough, add one drop of water. If the water quickly evaporates and dances across the pan, you are good to go. If it sits there a second and just barely bubbles it is not hot enough. If the water explodes quickly, the pan is too hot.

Once the pan is the correct temperature, place the food you want to sear on a plate or in a bowl. Add your oil to the food, not the pan. Make sure all sides are coated. This is the tip I picked up from Chef Ramsay. Adding the oil to the food and not the pan keeps oil from burning in the places on the pan where there is no food.

Place your oiled food to the pan. Do not move it around or try to turn it too soon. It needs that contact with the pan to form the crust. For some delicate foods like scallops, this will only take a few minutes. For beef or chicken, it may take 5-7 minutes. The food should release easily once the sear or crust has formed.

Turn the food once a golden brown sear has been achieved and cook the other side. If you have a large piece of meat or chicken, you can finish it in the oven to get the internal temperature correct.

Now you can impress your friends and family with a perfect sear.

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Can You Build Resistant Starch by Chilling Carbs? Does it Matter?

March 12, 2026March 26, 2026 by Kathy Kolasa, PhD, RDN, LDN

My younger patients spend a lot more time on social media than I do and seem to have become fascinated with cooling foods like rice or pasta or toasting or freezing bread to increase resistant starch. Why? Some are looking for ways to reduce blood sugar spikes or a strategy to manage their weight. Others are into feeding their gut to support healthy bacteria.

Trends in nutrition tend to cycle and reports suggest we are in a “carb cautious” trend. People are worried that eating any bread or white potatoes will cause weight gain. Yet, they still want to eat foods that are affordable, easy to prepare and that they like.

Before becoming a Registered Dietitian Nutritionist (RDN), I trained as a food scientist. While the concept of resistant starch was present in our food science and food chemistry books in the 1960s, the modern term of “resistant starch” did not yet exist. We were taught that starch resists digestion, cooking makes it digestible, and cooling makes it resistant again — which is exactly the modern definition of resistant starch.

I don’t really recall any link to human nutrition, but rather we were interested in “raw starch digestibility”, “enzyme accessibility of starch granules”, “gelatinization and retrogradation”, “bread staling”, and “unavailable or indigestible” carbohydrate. For making a desirable bread product, the focus of the food scientist was on creating a bread with an appealing texture while delaying staling to extend shelf life. Today we know that resistant starch, which acts like soluble dietary fiber and escapes digestion in the small intestine and is fermented in the colon with clear physiologic effects, has modest clinical effects and strong variability between people.

There are reports that cooling rice lowers glycemic impact and freezing bread reduces carbs. These claims come from the process of retrogradation — cooling converts some digestible starch into resistant starch. So, we are seeing “science-backed food hacks” and comments like leftover pasta is healthier than fresh. The effect of cooling is indeed real, but modest at best. It does not make carbs “free” foods. Portion size as well as the other ingredients in the pasta dish matter.

As a side note, for many years I helped patients interested in using the glycemic index of food to plan their meals. There is evidence to suggest that resistant starch can blunt post-meal glucose some and possibly improve insulin sensitivity over time, but the variability is great. Few patients are willing to follow through with testing their blood sugar before and after eating their favorite foods to determine the glycemic index and load. Others find it tedious to use the charts to plan their meals as every combination of food changes the load. You can find protocols on the web for figuring out your body’s glycemic response to a food, but it is not “simple”.

As for the gut-microbiome hype and claims like resistant starch is “fertilizer for your gut”, it is true that resistant starch is a prebiotic and feeds beneficial microbes that produce short-chain fatty acids and support metabolic health. You can find supplements of corn or potato starch and green banana flour, but like all dietary supplements it’s difficult to learn what’s in the bottle and its efficacy and safety. Rather than taking supplements or trying to create resistant starch in your favorite foods, make sure you are meeting the recommended intake of dietary fiber which is about 25 grams for women and 38 grams for men (most Americans do not consume enough fiber). Increase your fiber slowly and drink plenty of fluids to avoid gas and bloating. Choose foods naturally high in resistant starch, including legumes like lentils, chickpeas, black beans, kidney beans and white beans. Beans are good for not only their resistant starch but plant proteins. Eat your bananas while still slightly green. Enjoy grains like steel-cut oats, barley, farro and wheat berries. Eat your left-over grains, pasta and rice–rather than adding them to food waste. And if you really want, go ahead and freeze, thaw and toast your white, sourdough or whole grain bread.

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New Year’s Resolutions One Month Later

February 6, 2026March 26, 2026 by Carolyn Dunn, PhD, RD, LDN

Making New Year’s Resolutions in January is easy. Keeping them going is another story. More times than most, we make our resolutions too complicated and without flexibility. We need to give ourselves some grace and allow for our goals to be tweaked. Some progress is better than no progress. Don’t throw in the towel just because you are not perfect. Aim for progress not perfection. Below are some simple healthy eating goals and one TIP to help you make progress. Keep trying and know we are all on this health journey together.

Stay Hydrated – This is not always easy in the winter months when the last thing you want is a cold beverage.
TIP: Drink hot lemon water. A simple and satisfying drink is hot water and a slice of lemon. It will keep you warm and hydrated. Need a bit more flavor, try herb tea.
Eat More Fruits and Vegetables – This goal is evergreen. Whenever anyone asks what is one thing they can do to improve their diet, I choose this one. Not only is eating the fruits and vegetables healthy, they will likely replace other foods that are not so healthy in the diet.
TIP: Make twice as much as you need. If you are roasting or steaming vegetables, make twice as much so you have leftovers (plannedovers) for future meals.
Keep or Get Moving – Winter is a hard time of year to keep moving. Too cold, too dangerous to be outside, and all of the other cold-weather excuses makes winter harder to be active.
TIP: Join a gym (and go to the gym). There are so many low-cost options now to give you a daily indoor option for moving. If you don’t have a gym in your area or are not into a gym, try youtube videos of walking. I REALLY like Leslie Sansone, here is one of her videos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=enYITYwvPAQ.
Sleep – This is something our programs highlight and emphasize over and over. Lack of sleep interferes with your hunger and satiety hormones making you hungrier when you don’t get enough sleep.
TIP: Keep your phone out of the bedroom. If you cannot do this (I have an elderly mother so I have to have my phone nearby), silence alerts and pushouts, especially weather alerts.

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“I lost 10 pounds without dieting and my A1c ended up much lower”

February 4, 2026February 4, 2026 by Christine Lavelle

“I took the course over a year ago as my A1c was creeping up. Our instructor was excellent and provided us with in-house and outside sources of support along the way, with recipes and exercise tips. I found out about many new resources, lost 10 pounds without “dieting”, and my A1c ended up much lower. It is down to 5.2 and is the best it has been in memory. Worth it!”

–Nancy, a successful Eat Smart, Move More, Prevent Diabetes Participant