Healthy Eating Program
Designs Diets to Boost Health, Fight Disease

December 19, 2005

Just as the holidays approach - with their traditions of roasted turkeys and hams, baked squashes and mashed potatoes, and aromatic cookies and pies - university employees hoping to avoid an expanded waistline have an ally on campus: the new Healthy Eating Program.

Featuring healing-foods classes and nutrition-based research as well as healthy-eating classes, the program offers personalized diet plans that help promote health and fight disease.

The Healing Foods classes, for example, teach how to prepare easy and healthy recipes, and include demonstrations, discussions about ingredients, tasting and educational handouts. Introductory classes are free, and all classes are held in the Healing Foods Kitchen in the Moores UCSD Cancer Center.

The Healthy Eating program offers computerized dietary analysis with consultation, and personalized, one-on-one counseling tailored to individual needs - each participant has her or his own personal dietary counselor.

The program also conducts research, with some studies still open for enrollment. The MEAL study, for instance, is investigating whether the program's innovative telephone-counseling system can help men with localized, low-risk prostate cancer adopt a cancer-preventive diet. The program, in short, combines telephone coaching, guidance and support; education in delicious and healthful meals; and important ongoing research in diet and health - useful resources regardless of the time of year (or the state of your waistline).

To take advantage of the Healthy Eating Program - before the turkey, stuffing, gravy, biscuits, and pumpkin pie can slow your response - visit their Website at http://www.healthyeating.ucsd.edu/.