The Wooden Spoon is a cooking and lifestyle web site for people and those who are touched by people who are diabetic and suffer from renal failure.
The diet for a hemodialysis patient is quite restrictive: limit phosphorous, potassium, sodium, and liquid intake all while eating an increased amount of protein. 99.9% of the recipes that various medical and kidney associations disperse replace salt with sugar, ignore phosphorous levels in foods and use many simple carbohydrates (which your body turns to sugar). Since over 86% of people diagnosed with renal failure are diabetic and must watch their consumption of sugars and carbohydrates, the recipes provided tend to fail on multiple levels.
To my knowledge, Cooking for David is the only recipe book that covers dialysis recipes that are also diabetic friendly. Cooking for David is not open-sourced and has to be ordered by mail.
When someone is stricken with renal failure, that person (and his/her surrounding family) must immediately change cooking and eating habits. Eating out is virtually impossible. Food becomes bland.
The Wooden Spoon is a free service (hopefully, funding would later come from the National Kidney Association) that is quickly and easily accessible. New recipes are posted daily, are searchable by type (sodium, phosphorous, amount of liquid, etc) and would include QuickTimes showing the user how to prepare the recipe. Tips for watching your levels (i.e., treated water contains sodium, potassium and phosphorous. Check out the websites below and determine which water – your local tap or a certain brand of bottled water – is best), how to change your favorite recipes into dialysis/diabetic friendly recipes (save your old Italian bread to make homemade breadcrumbs. Slice and toast stale bread in an oven to remove excess moisture, then grind or grate. Not only do these breadcrumbs taste better, but they contain approximately 3000 mg less sodium per cup than those sold on store shelves), and easier living while on dialysis (Look at your meals for the day as a whole. You can eat 80% of your daily sodium allowance in one meal, as long as you curb your intake of salt for the remainder of that day) are on the website and a daily tip is sent to you via email or phone.
The user’s account tracks what foods he/she is eating. Consumption and daily counts of common foods and chain restaurant foods can be entered and accessed via mobile or the Internet. What was eaten and its levels are recorded and are later used to help a health care professional properly diagnose or prescribe medication (phosphate blockers, quinine pills).
A blog would provide emotional support as well as feedback on the recipes tried. Requests to turn a non-diet friendly recipe into a diet-friendly recipe are sent to the web master. Users can submit their diet-friendly recipe, which will be analyzed by the site and then officially posted with their dietary counts.
Reedʼs Law says that the value of the network multiples far more rapidly, at the exponential rate of 2N, when human social networks use the technical networks to form social groups.
-Howard Rheingold, Technologies of Cooperation
It is my hope to bring this website and its contents to the forefront of the medical associations that deal with kidney disease (i.e., American Association of Kidney Patients, National Kidney Association) so that families and patients who are faced with this affliction have a free and accurate source of knowledge to help them through a difficult time.
