Delicious desserts made with bitter gourd? Yes, say the students from the nutrition department of the Bejoy Narayan Mahavidyalaya in Hooghly’s Itachuna.

These students offered mouth-watering sweet delicacies using vegetable constituents, including korola to win over hearts of the diabetics, at a food festival on campus to mark the National Nutrition Week that ended on September 7.

With the aim of creating awareness about food for a healthy and sustainable lifestyle, 30 students of the nutrition department led by its head Shalmali Chakraborty and teacher and nutrition expert Rimpa Kar prepared over a dozen mouth-watering items to break the “monotonous” food habits enforced upon diabetics.

“The delicacies prepared by our students are for all, with commonly available ingredients... it can be fascinating. Our focus was to make something that can be enjoyed by the diabetics who often find their diet monotonous,” said Kar.

With this concept in mind, students prepared a juicy bitter gourd sweet, which they imaginatively named “Uchhcey Darling”, dragon fruit kulfi, dragon fruit juice, suji cake, spinach sweets, mushroom-soyabean fried rice, moong idli and many more items.

“At a time when fast food and home-delivered food items rule the roost, our students have tried to many such explore alternative delicacies that are healthy, delicious and easy to cook,” said college principal Goutam Bit.

Food lovers at a stall put up by the students of Bejoy Narayan Mahavidyalaya in Hooghly’s Itachuna earlier in September.

Kar said that nowadays often people at large avoid sweet items. For diabetics, these are largely prohibited. “However, sweets at a minimum level are needed for all. But yes, they definitely shouldn’t be sugar-based with a high glycemic index. We used processed jaggery lowering its glycemic index so that diabetics can enjoy.”

“We have used bitter gourd that is a good source of soluble dietary fibre and is low in glycemic index that helps minimise blood sugar level,” she said, adding that they processed it to reduce its bitterness and added jaggery for sweetness.

Similarly, students have prepared dragon fruit kulfi using fruit pulp. Student Soumi Ghosh said they used fruit pulp and small amounts of condensed milk and fresh cream.

“Dragon fruit is itself an ideal diet for diabetics,” she said. Students also offered moong dal idli as an alternative to rice idli, which is high on starch and carbohydratesStudent Mohammed Afsul Ali Sheikh added: “We used carrots and beans in the batter to make tastier idlis.”

From September 1 to 7, the students prepared these items on campus and offered them to residents in stalls as “change-makers”. Partha Chattopadhyay, a professor and member of the college governing body (finance), said he had tasted the items made by the students and thought they were “delicious”. The concept of National Nutrition Week was first launched in 1973 by the American Diabetic Association to educate people on nutrition. In 1982, it was launched in India.