Tastes like hope
Telecommunication alumna cooks up health solutions
More than 21 years after earning her degree in telecommunication and 14 years of putting on trade shows and conferences for high-tech publishing companies, Bridget Hart, TEL 1987, enrolled in culinary school.
After graduating in 2006 from the Cook Street School of Fine Cooking in Denver, Colo., she started Sweet Enough, a personal chef and catering business that specializes in gourmet cuisine to help control insulin and blood sugar levels.
“I started eating this way originally to lose weight,” Hart said. “But there are so many benefits to eating this way. I immediately had more energy, my mood was steadier, my body changed in remarkable ways.”
After finishing an internship in Northern Italy and Southern France in 2007, Hart started whipping up tasty meals for those who face more danger than delight when dining. Sweet Enough provides in-home chef services, catering and cooking lessons. Dishes include mozzarella-and-sun-dried-tomato-stuffed chicken breast and dark chocolate espresso brownies.
Hart, who lives in Denver and is getting married in June, markets her food through bridget-hart.com, relationships with doctors and alternative medicine healers and word-of-mouth.
“When you’re overweight or you have a disease like diabetes, you lose your passion for food,” Hart said. “Food becomes the enemy. I consider what I do giving people back their relationship with food.”
Her father, Dr. A. J. Hart, an OB–GYN, suggests the low-carb diet for many of his patients.
“It holds great meaning for those who are pregnant and have problems with weight gain and water retention,” he said.
It can also help increase energy and serve as an anti-depressant, Hart said.
“Usually people feel so good that they don’t want to go back to the way they felt before.”
The decision to eliminate carbs is not a diet but a lifestyle, Hart and her father said.
“It is not a diet for me. It’s a new way of life that I either followed, or I could plan on having diabetes and heart disease when I got older,” said Dawn Delaplaine, an accountant in Denver and a repeat client of Sweet Enough.
When Delaplaine was diagnosed with polycystic ovarian syndrome, her doctor suggested the Atkins diet. She “hated it,” she said. She found Hart after searching for low-carb chefs on the Internet.
“She 100 percent changed the way I eat,” Delaplaine said. “She can take any dish that you believe that you can never eat again and make it low carb. She has made this transition so easy for me.”
Hart created a support group, the Denver Low Carb Living Meetup Group, in 2007. The nonprofit group, made up of her clients, meets monthly to provide an outlet for those who have had battles with food, some of them life threatening, to swap recipes and share stories, Hart said. “We talk about things like emergency cheesecake.”
This article was originally published in the Fall 2008 issue of communigator.
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