“How can you still enjoy life and not just give up?”
That’s the question Elsa Ordona tries to answer everyday as she and her team swirl sugarless delights with care and finesse at her bakery cafe – for many people with diabetes the unassuming shop off Main Street in El Centro has turned out to be a life changer.
“I’m gonna die anyway so let me eat whatever,” Ordona says, adding, “I've heard that a trillion times.”
At first sight, her delicacies sparkling with sweet wisps of color seem exactly like what a person with diabetes should stay far away from. The cupcakes crystalline, pillowy, bright – a sugar bomb? The dozens of house-made syrups in glass bottles look incandescent – it’s surely a trap.
Turns out though, it's not.
Instead, it’s diabetes friendly. Keto friendly. All sugarless and low in carbohydrates which break down into sugars in the body.
Like many of her patrons Ordona has diabetes, but she has made it her business to help her customers cut their weight without losing the flavors they love.
She is her own success story, having lost significant weight – more than 100 pounds – after changing her dietary habits, namely, cutting out sugar. But more importantly, through experimentation, Ordona gained valuable knowledge about the nuances of a healthy diabetic diet. Now, with that knowledge, and decades of experience as a school teacher, she hopes to do her part in addressing diabetes in Imperial Valley.
Diabetes, a chronic disease that occurs when the body can’t regulate high blood sugar levels, has long been correlated with obesity. The disease attacks blood vessels and can cause nerve and organ damage, and can lead to blindness, amputations and death.
It’s also a slow-moving disease and many don’t learn they have it until it has already taken a toll. One in three U.S. Americans are pre-diabetic, meaning that their blood sugar levels are higher than normal and without intervention, they may develop the disease. Pre-diabetes does not usually show any symptoms.
Diabetes death rates in Imperial Valley are almost double that of California. The number of people with diabetes in the Valley hovers just under half the population. Over 60% of adults and almost 40% of children are overweight or obese.
More than a third of Imperial Valley adults drink one or more sugary sodas a day.
Ordona makes sugar-free cupcakes, turnovers and carrot cake. But she also makes some specialties that certain locals flock to her for: holiday tamales and horchata, both made with almonds, bringing them back into the reach of people with diabetes.
For many, she says, mourning or struggling with access to their own cultural foods makes the condition that much more difficult to manage.
“I'll speak for my community: we want what we can't have,” Ordona said, noting that traditional Latino food can be unhealthy because it’s high in fat, carbs and sugar.
And for when it’s scorching hot, as it is for several months throughout the year, Ordona makes dozens of flavored sugarless iced drinks. Customers even call them in ahead of time and run in out of the sun to swoop them up.
Just three years after she started her business “Sweet Nothings Pastry and Coffee Shoppe,” she already has patrons coming to her with stories of losing weight and learning how to manage the disease and more questions about what else is possible to concoct.
“All my life, I’ve been struggling with weight,” said George Dominguez, a patron. Coming to the cafe has helped him manage his sugar intake and learn about alternatives.
Diabetes rates are also higher among Latinos than whites in the Valley. In San Diego County, 9.2% of Latinos and 7.5% of whites had been diagnosed with diabetes, while in Imperial County the numbers show a larger gap, with 17.1% and 12.5%, respectively.
Dr. James Creek who runs the nonprofit Diabetes Centro de Salud Sin Fronteras in Calexico says that over his thirty years in the Valley, he has not seen much change when it comes to diabetes. That’s due in part to the high-carb Latino food culture putting people at high risk for the disease. It has made him question purely clinical approaches.
“I've been in health care all my life, you know, is it health care or sick care?” Dr. Creek said.
He has turned his attention to wellness and education, an approach that Ordona has taken to heart at her cafe. She has also started to give lessons and workshops in the community.
The community-oriented approach is one that is circulating throughout the Valley.
El Centro Regional Medical Center’s diabetes education program currently run by Dr. Stephen Jaime follows a similar ethos.
Jaime, who also has diabetes, says that real results come when he actually sits with patients, sometimes for hours. He trades stories with them, shares his own experience and gets to know them. He says he tries to be personal – and real.
He understands that part of dealing with the disease is also confronting the cultural norms that may impede a change in diet or habits. The community’s food culture focuses on higher-carb foods and few fresh vegetables – despite the fact that the Valley’s farms grow a huge portion of the vegetables produced in the United States.
So he recommends manageable changes. Maybe instead of three enchiladas, he says, take it down to one or two.
“Be real, not ideal.”
He also shares Ordona’s story, especially for those with a particular sweet tooth. And he patronizes her cafe. Of late he got his daughter a birthday cake. She too has diabetes. Diabetes can be a genetic disorder, passed on generationally.
Ordona also spends time talking when she sees a spark of interest. Though she says she is shy, she deftly folds her patrons’ questions into conversation, and the cafe is often a flutter with new knowledge and discoveries her patrons savor.
She wants to add another, brighter layer to the narrative of dealing with the disease which she knows well can be heartbreaking, life-ending and scaring.
“Even though there is a horror story to that, there is also a light at the end of the tunnel,” Ordona said,” adding that with healthy diet and lifestyle changes, “You can live a long time.”
That narrative has spread mostly by word of mouth and now the door swings open all day long. And Ordona has even been asked to ship her goods out of state.
inewsource investigative reporter Philip Salata reported this story while participating in the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s 2024 California Fellowship.
