Megan Rush is a cook and the author of cookbooks for special diets. She writes for people whose diet is no longer a matter of choice: after bariatric surgery, with diabetes, with diverticulitis. She came to this kitchen as a patient before she was a cook, and it shows in what she writes. Her recipes respect the rules a doctor has set. Still, they taste like food you would choose to eat.
Where it began
She was born in 1975 in a small Midwestern town, in a close family that fed her well. It did not help. Through most of her childhood she was unwell in ways nobody could name. The doctors ran their tests, and then they sent her home with the same symptoms she had walked in with.
She refused to accept that as the end of the story. Instead, she read everything she could find, from research papers to natural health magazines. She was looking for something that explained what was wrong. After years of searching, she came across a little-known nutritional approach that fitted her condition. She tried it with more hope than faith. Within a few months, she felt better than she had in years.
That is the ground everything else stands on: what you eat can change how you live. The people who most need to hear it usually get a list of restrictions and nothing else.
How she cooks
Once she was well, she went back to learn properly. First came studies in culinary arts and nutrition, then years of travel, cooking beside local chefs and taking home whatever could survive the trip. Her own kitchen became the place where the two halves met: the discipline of a medical diet and the pleasure of a good plate.
She is not a doctor or a dietitian, and she does not write as one. What the surgeon or the dietitian says comes first, always. She writes as someone who has followed a restrictive diet from the inside. She knows how quickly boredom turns into giving up, and she has spent years working out what the limits still allow.
So she builds every recipe for the person who will eat it: the size of a bariatric portion, the carbohydrates a diabetic has to count, the fiber a diverticulitis patient manages in one phase and avoids in the other. Her job is to make the rules livable and, on a good night, delicious.
The books
Her cookbooks are each written for a diet that someone else has prescribed. The idea behind all of them is the same: the restrictions come with the diagnosis, but the sadness is optional.
- Bariatric Cookbook — recipes for every stage after weight-loss surgery, from the first liquids to solid food
- Gastric Sleeve Cookbook — for the smaller stomach, with portions and protein already worked out
- Gastric Bypass Cookbook — for a rerouted digestion, with the foods that bring on dumping kept out
- Bariatric Air Fryer Cookbook — small, crisp, high-protein meals with hardly any oil
- Diabetic Air Fryer Cookbook — air-fried dishes with the carbs counted for you
- Diverticulitis Cookbook — from clear liquids through the low-fiber stage to the meals that keep a calm gut calm