Chefs promote healthy eating through M-Fit Culinary School

As Ben Franklin once said, "An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." These are the words that Lizzie Burt and Kathy Goldberg live by as the M-Fit Community Nutrition Culinary School chefs. Together, they promote a healthy lifestyle for the University community through biweekly cooking classes, guest lectures and enough nutritious, yet tasty recipes to make you second-guess having that second piece of cake.

Lizzie Burt and Kathy Goldberg prepare "magnificent mushrooms" at an M-Fit cooking class. (Photo by Paul Jaronski, U-M Photo Services)

In the demonstration kitchen of the East Ann Arbor Health Center on Plymouth Road, Burt and Goldberg make an array of sumptuous appetizers, exotic salads and rich desserts before an audience. One bite of their mushroom caps or warm blackberry pie sundaes would seem to indicate high fat and calorie contents, but this is not the case. Their secret to healthy, delicious food? Ordinary ingredients chosen smartly and in moderation.

Unlike many diet programs, Burt and Goldberg advocate healthy choices without sacrificing taste.

"Our primary goal is always to make it delicious first," says Burt, a retired registered nurse and former aerobics teacher. "We feel that it is so important, and some people think they have to punish themselves to eat healthily, even to the extent of thinking they have to eat tree bark. Nobody is going to stick to a diet that isn't appealing and doesn't taste delicious."

The class "More Magnificent Mushrooms," held April 9, was a testament to this creed. Serving a variety of dishes, including leek and mushroom tart with smoked salmon, Asian marinated portabella mushroom salad on baby greens, and, the pièce de résistance, wild mushroom fried rice, Burt and Goldberg showed how ordinary mushrooms can be transformed into delectable culinary masterpieces. One look at the audience after sampling these treats is evidence enough that the pair have a way with fungi—and healthy food.

But Burt and Goldberg go beyond demonstrating how to concoct these wonderful dishes; they also educate the community about why these foods are healthy, and how they can help prevent heart disease and cancer. In addition to the recipe booklet that accompanies each class, students are given informational sheets about the health benefits of the food being served that day. Mushrooms, for example, are high in potassium, magnesium and beta glucans, and are believed to improve immune function and lower cholesterol.

The educational component to Burt and Goldberg's work has taken them all around the University, from promoting health to hospital employees to showing international guests at the Business School how to eat right. Goldberg, for one, says educating the community is fundamental to adopting a healthy lifestyle.

"We want them to have the knowledge base of why they should be eating spinach salads instead of iceberg lettuce," as spinach has valuable nutrients not found in its paler counterpart, says Goldberg, a registered dietitian and nutrition specialist. "We want to try to keep it on a level that they can understand and not get too technical."

The M-Fit culinary classes have had substantial benefits for members of the Coronary Alternative Treatment Strategies (CATS) program at the U-M Hospital. Beginning as an inpatient residential program and continuing as a two-year follow-up, CATS was designed to reduce the need for bypass surgery and angioplasty in patients with established disease. The program's participants attended three M-Fit cooking classes, and several of them since have avoided surgery with the help of the advice that the chefs provided.

People should adopt a healthy diet at an early age, Burt and Goldberg say, so they can prevent problems down the road.

"We think that at any stage of your life, it's important to try to do the best you can in every way, whether it's not smoking or drinking too much," Goldberg says. "Eating is just another part of that. So many people come to us and say it's been an important difference."

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