Students: Get ready for pizza with whole-grain crust and bigger portions of fruits and vegetables on your school lunch tray. You’re still going to get french fries, but they’ll probably be baked and sprinkled with less salt.

Today the government is releasing new nutrition standards for school meals that spell out dramatic changes, including slashing sodium, limiting calories and offering students a wider variety and larger portions of fruits and vegetables. These changes will raise the nutrition standards for meals for the first time in more than 15 years.

“When we send our kids to school, we expect that they won’t be eating the kind of fatty, salty, sugary foods that we try to keep them from eating at home,” first lady Michelle Obama said in a statement. She is announcing the new standards today along with Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack…

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NEW YORK – Paula Deen, the warm, down-home cooking star known for her Southern recipes loaded with butter and sugar, says she decided not to talk about type 2 diabetes when she found out she had it three years ago. But beginning today, she’s going public in a big way.Read Full Article

“I made the choice at the time to keep it close to me, to keep it close to my chest,” she told USATODAY in her first interview about the disease. “I felt like I had nothing to offer anybody other than the announcement. I wasn’t armed with enough knowledge. I knew when it was time, it would be in God’s time.”

Deen, 64, star of Food Network’s Paula’s Best Dishes, built her career by making calorie-rich, indulgent recipes such as fried chicken, macaroni and cheese and rich desserts, the kind of foods that can contribute to obesity, which increases the risk of developing type 2 diabetes.

She says her delay in talking about the disease had nothing to do with fear about hurting her reputation. “That was not why. My knowledge about the disease was very limited. But now I’m coming with good information, something that can help and bring hope to other people. It may sound cliché, but it’s the God-honest truth.”

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The Daily

Rumors of Deen’s diabetes first started to swirl in April, when The National Enquirer and The Daily Mail both reported that the TV chef was hiding her disease for fear that it would endanger her credibility as a chef.

There’s no doubt that fans would be upset to learn that Deen had been keeping such a major disease, and a major consequence of heavy eating, from their knowledge. It would certainly cast an alarming pall over the reckless abandon with which she endorses delicacies like turducken. And it would lend support to rival Anthony Bourdain’s much-ballyhooed critique of Deen’s culinary style.

It’s worth noting, though, that in the past nine months, Deen has diversified her activities away from her old monomaniacal focus on fatty foods. She’s been selling flavored lip balms and announcedplans for a clothing line. She wrote a best-selling cookbook and ink a contract for two more, at a new publisher. And her son Bobby recently debuted his Cooking Channel show “Not My Mama’s Meals,” which showcases healthy versions of Southern classics.

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By Teresa Dunmain, msnbc.com

What can I eat? If that’s not the first question you ask after a diabetes diagnosis, it’s probably a close second.

You figure fruits and vegetables are at the top of the list (they are); lean meats, some fish, and healthy whole grains make the cut too. Those you expect; these you may not: oils, olives, nuts and seeds, avocados, and dark chocolate. These five foods are packed with monounsaturated fatty acids, or MUFAs (moo-fahs) for short.

Incorporating “good” unsaturated fats into a fruit-veggie-lean-protein-whole-grain diet helped people with prediabetes reduce their risk of developing full-blown type 2 by almost 60 percent, according to a landmark government study. And now, emerging research points to MUFAs in particular as potential superheroes for controlling blood sugar, reducing insulin resistance, and fighting belly fat specifically visceral belly fat, the dangerous kind found deep in your abdomen and strongly associated with prediabetes and diabetes.

Of course, you can’t simply add lots of chocolate or handfuls of nuts to an unhealthy diet and expect great results. The key is to work right-size portions of oil, olives, nuts and seeds, avocados, and dark chocolate into the mix of healthy foods you’ll eat at every meal. Here’s a closer look at how these five fab foods help fight diabetes and boost your health, plus some delicious recipes you can try today…

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Neural tissue was extracted from either the hippocampus (which controls memory) or the olfactory bulb (which controls smell) of the rats’ brains through their noses and stem cells were extracted out of the neural tissue. Human protein Wnt3a, which stimulates insulin production, was then applied to the cells. After maturing for two weeks, scientists laid a collagen  sheet (collagen is the main structural protein found in connective tissue)  infused with the modified stem cells on top of the affected rats’ pancreases to see if insulin production would continue and the disease would be cured. After seven days with the implant, blood glucose levels in the rats returned to normal and the diabetes was considered cured.

Scientists left the collagen sheet on the rats’ pancreases for five months, at which time they removed the sheet to see if the rats would revert back to their diabetic state. Although they did revert to diabetic insulin and blood glucose levels after the sheet was removed, scientists are still confident that if the collagen sheet is left implanted, the stem cells have the potential to cure diabetes for good. Their next step is to set up trials in humans to see if stem cells from the same parts of their brains can be used to cure human diabetes by the same process. The cure could help improve quality of life for many people living with either type of the disease.

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In a bittersweet moment, former Chicago Cubs great Ron Santo was was elected to the Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee in an announcement made Monday.

The Cubs legend and third baseman was named on 15 of the 16 ballots. He was the lone candidate to receive the necessary 75% of votes. Pitcher Jim Kaat finished second with 10 votes, two shy.

“Such an honor for Ron,” said Santo’s widow Vicki, in Arizona for a conference call. “My initial emotion is ‘we dared to dream this. It was always so important to Ron and such a long time coming.

“He was always meant to be in the Hall of Fame — obviously not in his lifetime. But this continues the legacy of his heart that he played with, that he broadcast with and for all the good he did for Juvenille Diabetes research. This carries that legacy forward.”

Former Cubs teammate and Hall of Famer Billy Williams was on the committe that elected Santo. He said that the discussion, prior to Sunday’s vote, went far beyond Santo’s perfrormance on the field. Former Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda, a committee member, said for instance that he didn’t know Santo ate candy bars to combat his diabetes…

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(CNN)

“I remember a lot of things changed.” Morgan said. “I went from having juice every day and M&Ms to not having sugar at all. I remember getting shots every day, finger pricks, my parents had to hold me down.”

School, she says was difficult. “You had to let teachers know what was going on. You had a special relationship with the nurse because she had to check your blood sugar every day before going to lunch.”

At 14 she entered a second trial, this one at the University of Virginia, for a continuous glucose monitoring system called The Navigator. It was at UVA that she first learned about the artificial pancreas. A high school senior at 18 now, she has participated in four clinical trials and two have involved artificial pancreas systems…..

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In a report issued on Monday, the advocacy group estimated that 552 million people could have diabetes in two decades’ time based on factors like aging and demographic changes. Currently, the group says that about one adult in 13 has diabetes.

The figure includes both types of diabetes as well as cases that are undiagnosed. The group expects the number of cases to jump by 90 percent even in Africa, where infectious diseases have previously been the top killer. Without including the impact of increasing obesity, the International Diabetes Federation said its figures were conservative…

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Three diabetic New Jersey bus drivers are suing one of the world’s largest bus, coach and rail companies, claiming it discriminated against them with unwarranted suspensions.

The three drivers say in the suit that Coach USA violated the state’s Law Against Discrimination by suspending them for conditions they didn’t have. Coach USA, a New Jersey subsidiary of Scotland-based Stagecoach Group, says the company was in compliance with federal law.

Coach USA attorney Christina Stoneburner said the company allows diabetics who are not dependent on insulin to work as interstate commercial drivers, provided the company deems the disease is controlled with oral medication, diet and medical supervision. Without those controls, drivers run risks including losing consciousness on the road from hyperglycemia or hypoglycemia…

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November 14^th is World Diabetes Day. I’d like to make one request of you. Sometime during this week celebrate your work as a diabetes educator by taking no more than 30 seconds (no joke) to sign the petition in support of the Diabetes Self-Management Training Act legislation introduced 9/2 in the U.S. House and Senate http://www.thepetitionsite.com/1/support-access-to-diabetes-self-management-training/.

Then if you would please take another couple of minutes to ask your patients, friends, family and people with diabetes you know to sign this petition (anyone can sign). With some recent push we’ve now got over 700 signatures but we have work to do. The goal is 10,000 signees. Please do what you can to help. It only takes a few minutes. If all AADE members work together, we can accomplish this goal and many others!

Donna Tomky MSN RN C-NP CDE FAADE

AADE President 2011