Shireen Abdullah: 0:00

Podcasting from Dallas, Texas. I am Shireen, and this is the Yumlish podcast. Yumlish is working to empower you to take charge of your health through diet and exercise, and reduce the risk of chronic conditions like type 2 diabetes and heart disease. We hope to share a unique perspective and a culturally relevant approach to managing these chronic conditions with you each week.

Shireen Abdullah: 0:28

You don’t have to choose between culture and health. This episode shows how to keep signature flavors while dialing down sodium, sugar, and saturated fat using smart swaps, spice technique, and portion tricks for rice and flatbreads. Stay to the end for a three-item cultural grocery haul and label tips. Elisa Irvolino is a Dominican mom, author, and creator of The Mujer Within.

Shireen Abdullah: 0:51

Dedicated to helping Latina women reconnect with their creativity through food, culture, and home. She teaches cooking and craft classes that celebrate heritage and empower mujeres to honor themselves. Welcome, Elisa.

Elisa Irvolino: 1:04

Thank you so much for having me.

Shireen Abdullah: 1:06

It is an absolute pleasure having you on. Before we dive into the topic of the day today, which is right around keeping culture on the plate. Before we get into all of that, can you tell us a little bit more about yourself and what really inspired you to focusing on making healthier recipes? Where did all of that come from?

Elisa Irvolino: 1:24

Well, being a mom of four kids, I always try to research what was the best things for them. I made all my own baby food, and I breastfed. I tried to do the best that I could. As they got older, it got a little bit more difficult with, you know, take-out, things like that. And I’ve been in healthcare over 30 years, and one of the positions that I held was an office manager, where sometimes they would need me to come in the room and translate, and the physician would tell a Latino, “Okay, your sugars a little high, your cholesterol…

Elisa Irvolino: 1:54

We’re going to try three months on dietary changes. Here’s a list to follow, and we’ll test your blood again in three months.” And the dietary changes almost always started with no more rice, no more bread. You know, no more of these white carbs. And ultimately, what would happen is the patient would come back, and their blood work would still be abnormal because they felt like they left everything that they love behind, everything that was part of their culture: the rice, the beans, the chicken, all of that had to be left behind because they said no carb.

Elisa Irvolino: 2:24So they ultimately failed and came back and had to get on medication. So I think that motivated me as well to find a better way. Why can’t we be healthy but still have our culture honored?

Shireen Abdullah: 2:36

What you’re mentioning here, Elisa, just really strongly resonates with me. In fact, that’s been a lot of my own inception story for Yumlish, which was around trying to figure out how to eat healthy within the South Asian foods that I grew up on, and having a very similar encounter with a doctor for something that I was going through at the time where the doctor’s like, “Yeah, just eat healthy” I was like, “Okay, like, what does that mean for me?…

Shireen Abdullah: 2:57

Where do I start? Where do I begin?” It was really it was not only vague, but it was just incredibly unhelpful. This very culturally relevant story around you try as a physician to give the best advice you can, which is ultra generic, which doesn’t apply to everyone, which doesn’t need to apply to everyone. There’s no cultural adaptation for it.

Shireen Abdullah: 3:16

And that’s, I think, where you found this niche within which you work. And I really admire that, because that lens, that cultural lens, is so, I think it’s not only ignored, but it’s just overseen altogether. You know, many people feel that pressure, right, again in that doctor’s office to be able to choose between eating healthy and cultural foods.

Shireen Abdullah: 3:38

Why do you think this misconception even exists? Like where did this come from?

Elisa Irvolino: 3:43

I think a lot of it, you know, if you go back to diet culture, let’s say in the 80s, when there were all these like fad diets, and they told you “low fat, no more chicken thighs, only chicken breast.” I think a lot of it stems from there. And then also that we don’t educate the doctors in these cultural aspects.

Elisa Irvolino: 4:02

If a doctor doesn’t know, well, okay, you’re making an assumption, first of all, on what the patient is eating, and you’re not really educated in what the foods are, and you’re also not offering alternatives, not because there’s anything bad per se with the medical profession, but they just don’t know.

Shireen Abdullah: 4:20

Time after time the doctors just don’t have that understanding where the individual’s not getting the appropriate help that they need to. And we continue to turn to our primary care doctor, for instance, to get that advice. And they may just not be the person to have that conversation with. When someone wants to make a favorite cultural food, a dish healthier, where do they go?

Shireen Abdullah: 4:40

Where do they begin to understand what they could do differently?

Elisa Irvolino: 4:45

Well, for me, I like to teach classes. So, a person can find there are some people that are teaching nutrition classes and educating people, but it takes a little time to go find them. And as far as for me, I try to start small with them. You know, let’s say your favorite dish, like I love, my kids call it Dominican chicken, but it’s really Pollo Guisado.

Elisa Irvolino: 5:08

So start with – what’s the biggest thing that makes that food delicious for you? The main component of that is the chicken. Okay, so we’re going to leave the chicken there. So it’s still culturally appropriate. It’s still what you love. But let’s change some smaller things. Let’s change the oil that we’re using. Let’s take out all the processed seasonings that we’re using. There are ways to eat that same food, just cooked a little bit differently.

Shireen Abdullah: 5:33

What kind of changes have you seen as a result of this? How can small changes like this unlock, perhaps better health outcomes?

Elisa Irvolino: 5:41

I’ve actually tested it myself with my husband, who started with a cholesterol of 270 and went down to 190 in a very short time. So it can be done. And I’ve had, you know, students of mine come back and say, “Wow, I don’t even taste the difference or it tastes better. I like this better.” So they’re just able to maintain the diet as opposed to that strict diet where they had to give everything up. And then in three months, “They’re like, this doesn’t work for me.”

Shireen Abdullah: 6:07

And why do you think that is? Right? Like, this doesn’t work for me. Where does that come from?

Elisa Irvolino: 6:12

I think it’s just all or nothing. If you feel that you have to give up everything, you’re not going to do it. But if we can make some adaptations where I can still eat the foods that I love and the flavors that bring me back to my home and to my country and honor my ancestors, if I can keep that in your diet, I think that you’re more likely to stick to it.

Shireen Abdullah: 6:36

Are there specific like herbs, spices? Just to get more specific here, that people can use or cooking methods, even that people can use, that can help to bat this whole making cultural foods healthier experience?

Elisa Irvolino: 6:50 

So I start with, let’s cut out processed food. We’re all quick to go to the store and buy that little jar of Sazón, all the little packets, and these kinds of fake flavor enhancements. If we just go back to the way that our grandma did it, I just do it. Very simple. I’m going to just mash up garlic, oregano, salt, and I make a paste out of it.

Elisa Irvolino: 7:13

And that’s how I season all my meats, all my stews, my beans. I don’t add any powders. I don’t add any processed foods to it. You’re going to start with just natural foods. Then you’re going to add some citrus. Some lime juice gives amazing flavor without using those processed foods. Some fresh cilantro. There’s also cinnamon, cloves. There’s so many natural things that you can put in your food to enhance flavor without putting those chemicals in there.

Elisa Irvolino: 7:40

There’s also fresh butter, ghee, things like that, as opposed to using margarine, which a lot of Latinos are using canola oil, like those kind of things – we want to cut them out. So there are ways to improve your health. Fresh olive oil, coconut oil, avocado oil is my favorite. So these are simple things that we can do that make a big impact at the end of the day when they all add up together.

Shireen Abdullah: 8:04

If you can help us understand some other smart swaps that help us stay culturally honest. Can you speak to grains, dairy alternatives that could work best in again, some of those classic foods without changing the identity of the dish?

Elisa Irvolino: 8:17

Grains is a good one. So I know a lot of Latinos love to eat white rice. We all love like that jasmine rice. Rice isn’t necessarily as bad as you think it is. Brown rice, quinoa, wild rice these are all options that are a little better than the white rice. But also I try to teach them okay, they don’t taste the same as white rice.

Elisa Irvolino: 8:36

When I really want white rice, I have it. But let’s talk about portion control. One cup of rice is what you’re supposed to have, cooked rice, not uncooked rice. So if you put that on a plate that’s much smaller than the big plate of rice that you’re used to eating. So how about we have just that one cup of rice.

Elisa Irvolino: 8:54

We’re going to load it with beans so that now that fiber makes it a complete protein. I also teach them that there are differences in starches, like resistant starch. So how about we put that rice in the refrigerator and have it tomorrow or in a couple hours so that it can be a more resistant starch? I still want you to have the things that you can enjoy, but let’s make small modifications.

Elisa Irvolino: 9:18

As far as oils for sure, not having corn oil, which is very inflammatory, canola oil, I would say for me is the worst one. Canola is not even a vegetable. You know, the margarines that are highly processed. If you read the back of a container of margarine, you don’t want to eat that.

Shireen Abdullah: 9:32

Thank you for that helpful perspective. You know, you talked about the rice one, and I actually want to double-click into that a little bit. When we’re thinking about rice, when we’re thinking about flatbreads on the plate, portioning, mixed grain strategies, or resistant starch tricks? Like, you know, you mentioned the chill and reheat or the par-boiling of the rice. Can you again walk us through some strategies there that still taste familiar?

Elisa Irvolino: 9:55

I made – moro is rice and beans when it’s mixed together. So you cook them together. The rice and beans – that’s typical in a Latino household, I made that with quinoa. So I use the same beans, the same seasonings, like I normally would, a lot of fresh cilantro lime. My family loves it just as much as they do moro. You can barely taste it because the flavors are all the same, so something like that is an easy swap where you can put quinoa in there because it has the beans and the same flavor profile that I use every time that they normally have it, they won’t notice it as much. So that’s like one good one that you could do.

Shireen Abdullah: 10:30

I’m like nodding my head away, because a lot of this is also resonating with me because in the South Asian culture, we’re big on rotis, which is like our flatbreads. And then the white rice is also big. We do the Basmati – but the point being, we’re still doing the white rice there. Let’s talk about the sodium game plan – that’s another big one. 

Shireen Abdullah: 10:45 

What per serving target does one aim for? And what are your go-to ways to hit it without again, the blandness of the food? You know, in the past, I’ve heard things around citrus or vinegars, if you wouldn’t mind talking through that a little bit.

Elisa Irvolino: 11:00

Yeah. So what I try to tell them is I don’t get into the numbers so much with them. What happens is when you get a little too scientific, especially with the older generation, they’re like, “Oh, I can’t count you know, how much sodium is in a teaspoon, And I had salt in my beans. I had salt in my rice.”

Elisa Irvolino: 11:18

So that gets a little complicated for them. So what I try to do is I teach them there’s no table salt. You don’t need salt on the table to add extra as like your finishing salt. I add my salt in the beginning in my garlic paste. Now I make a jar of it. When I use one teaspoon in a pot of beans, that is very little sodium.

Elisa Irvolino: 11:37 

When you put it out per serving and I’m adding citrus, I’m adding fresh cilantro, I’m adding onions, peppers, capers, olives, these are all things that give you the impression that they’re a little salty, a little brinier, but they’re not really high-sodium foods.

Shireen Abdullah: 11:53

Very helpful. Can you show an example of a traditional recipe that you’ve adapted in some of these ways that you’ve talked about that kept again its authenticity, but supported better health at the same time?

Elisa Irvolino: 12:05

Sure. I did a class where we did tortillas, so tortillas normally are made of corn if you’re going for a traditional tortilla. Now, the new corn that we have now is highly inflammatory, and corn doesn’t have any real nutritional value anymore, unfortunately. So what I’ve taught them is we can make tortillas out of plantains or yuca. So I take a yuca and I boil it, or a plantain and you boil it, which is loaded with potassium and fiber, which is much better than the corn.

Elisa Irvolino: 12:34

I boil it and then I’ll mash it. You can put it in the food processor or mash it with the fork and make it into a dough. And then I put it right in the same tortilla press that you normally use and put it on the flat iron. And they’re so delicious, much healthier for you. And a lower glycemic index than you would have if you went with the corn tortilla.

Shireen Abdullah: 12:53

One of the other things I want to touch upon here are things like family buy-in. How do you introduce changes with elders, kids who love sort of that original flavor or the original starchiness, whatever it may be. How do you go about getting that buy-in or, you know, or even do side-by-side taste tests that could work?

Elisa Irvolino: 13:13

I think first of all, especially with kids, the key is to have them help you, right? When you involve a child in cooking, they’re more likely to eat it than when you just serve it on a plate and say, “Oh, try this new thing.” So that’s my first takeaway. Even with elders, you tell them, “Oh, look, mom, I want to show you

Elisa Irvolino:  13:31

now how I make tortillas.” And they’re like, “What? What is that?” But when they make it with you, and they see what’s in it, they’re like, “Oh, this isn’t like, weird new scientific things – this is a yuca, something that we eat all the time.” But one class that I do for children is we do plantain waffles so I take a plantain, 

Elisa Irvolino: 13:48

just raw plantain. You do one plantain, one egg, a tablespoon of oil, some cinnamon, some vanilla. So it’s nice and sweet on their palate. I blend it all, and I put it in the waffle iron, and I take out a waffle. I also show them how to do homemade whipped cream. I bring a container of Cool Whip that has 9 or 10 ingredients, and then I do whip cream, which is just the cream with a little bit of cinnamon and vanilla, and they’re thrilled that they made it themselves. First of all, it’s homemade, and it tastes delicious with some berries on top. I find that when you show them how you’re cooking it, they get excited and they eat it.

Shireen Abdullah: 14:24

I absolutely love that. I love the idea of making it like a family experience so it doesn’t feel like, “Oh, this is this isolated thing that I have to do only for myself all on my own.” Right? It’s like bringing in and also changing habits together, which is an important part of it. You know, for our listeners here today, Elisa, can you walk us through, so if someone is listening to this and thinking, “Okay, I want to be able to make some changes, I don’t know where to begin.” What advice do you have for someone who wants to get on track or again, want to sort of reclaim their health, but may even not have, like the time or the money or the culinary training that it may need to sort of get there?

Elisa Irvolino: 15:03

I think you start small, go to the supermarket, you’re going to start, first of all, with your pantry, start reading the bottles, and look at the ingredients. I go to the store, and I see my olive oil is a dollar more for organic oil than regular olive oil. Spend the dollar and buy the organic – try to reduce the chemicals that’s in your food.

Elisa Irvolino: 15:24

So the less number of ingredients, if you have five, six ingredients on that package, that’s okay, compared to something else that has 12 ingredients. Can you even read those ingredients? Do you know what they are? Start small like that, just looking at labels. Before you change anything, just start reading the label.

Shireen Abdullah: 15:41

If we’re doing a grocery haul this week, what are five staple items or three, 3 to 5 simple items that you could recommend from ethnic markets to purchase? And then can you walk us through maybe a quick label literacy tip for like, sauces? I know you spoke about that a little bit ago, but for sauces and mixes, like what to look for on the on the labels there.

Elisa Irvolino: 16:02

So if I’m going shopping, I’m definitely buying my garlic and oregano because that’s going to be my base to the cooking. And I’m definitely having limes because limes goes in everything that’s going to give you the big flavor profile. As far as labels, what I’ll tell them is they don’t want to have any seed oils. So anything that says corn in it, I’m sorry, but you should be avoiding it.

Elisa Irvolino: 16:24

You’re going to want to check that you don’t have the saturated fats we could look at. You know, as opposed to the non-saturated fats. If you’re going to go buy some chicken, can you buy a pack of organic chicken thighs that are nice and healthy and don’t have that excess chemical in it? You know, all the antibiotics and the things that we’re using in the meats now.

Elisa Irvolino: 16:44

So I would look for those things, and really, I think just for them, just keep it simple as opposed to looking at specific ingredients. How about we just look at less ingredients? Those are going to be much healthier, just less ingredients. Things that I can pronounce and not these chemical makeups that are in all our foods now.

Shireen Abdullah: 17:02

I love this rule of thumb around like buying things that you can pronounce if it’s, like, too complicated, just might as well push it to the side. At this point, we are toward the end of the episode, Elisa, would you help our listeners understand how they can connect with you – learn more about your work?

Elisa Irvolino: 17:16

Sure, so you’re going to want to go to my website, which is ElisaIrvolino.com. It’s a blog about Latina lifestyle, so it’s going to have some home decor in there, some travel, heritage, and a lot of recipes. We’re adding new recipes every day. Also, I have a podcast that’ll be out soon. We don’t have it finished yet, so I won’t give all the details.

Elisa Irvolino: 17:36

But follow me on social media and Instagram: elisa.irvolino. You’re going to see tons of events happening there. I have classes coming up. If you’re on Long Island, go to your local library because I book a new library almost every day, and those classes are free or very low-cost to patrons and very educational.

Shireen Abdullah: 17:53

I absolutely love that, Elisa, with that, thank you so very much for your time here today on the podcast. To our listeners, we want to head over to our social media, please, and hear from you. Help answer this one quick question, which is: What’s one traditional dish from your culture that you would love to make a little healthier? Again, head over to at Yumlish on Facebook, on Instagram, find this podcast post, and again comment below to tell us what’s one traditional dish from your culture that you would love to make a little healthier?

Shireen Abdullah: 18:23

We’ll continue the conversation there. Elisa, thank you so much again for joining us.

Elisa Irvolino: 18:27

Thanks for having me.

Shireen Abdullah: 18:28

Thank you for listening to the Yumlish podcast. Make sure to follow us on social media at Yumlish_ on Instagram and Twitter, and at Yumlish on Facebook and LinkedIn for tips about managing your diabetes and other chronic conditions, and to chat and connect with us about your journey and perspective. You can also visit our website, Yumlish.com, for more recipes, advice, and to get involved with all of the exciting opportunities Yumlish has to offer.

Shireen Abdullah: 19:00

If you like this week’s show, make sure to subscribe so you can hear more from us every time we post. Thank you again, and we’ll see you next time. Remember, your health always comes first. Stay well.

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