WEBB CITY, Mo. — A home-based business created by a Lamar woman is proving to be a blessing to some people who suffer from cancer and other illnesses that require special diets.
Erica Lloyd moved to Lamar about four years ago and was in and out of a few jobs, but she needed more flexibility to raise a young son as a single mother.
She started Easy Peasy, making and selling frozen meals from recipes she came up with because she was on a keto diet and it was hard to find keto meals.
She offers her meals every Saturday at the Webb City Farmers Market. That’s where Jacque Smith, Joplin, found her back in October 2023, about a month after Smith had been diagnosed with breast cancer.
“My concept of the special diet and eating healthy was to get through chemo in the healthiest way possible,” Smith said. “The doctors told me even with the toxins and the chemotherapy medications that I was going to take that I could eat what I felt comfortable eating. But it was very hard to actually eat because the medicine made things taste like metal. It’s horrible.
“For me, the meals that Erica makes, she has the right flavors and I didn’t have to cook a lot because with those treatments you get pretty tired. My partner and I have four kids in the house and there were times I couldn’t cook, so because of Erica there was a meal in the fridge with a meal for me so I could eat and still feel like I had something nutritious.”
Lloyd said she cooks with one hard and fast rule — all meals are sugar free.
“That’s why I have a lot of customers who have cancer or diabetes or different ailments, because my food is safe for them to eat,” Lloyd said. “I use local ingredients from the local farmers because knowing all the ingredients you are eating is huge.”
A study published in December 2022 by the National Institute of Health backs up the importance of sugar-free meals for cancer patients.
“Human epidemiologic studies and mechanistic preclinical studies in multiple cancers support a causal link between excess sugar and cancer,” the study concluded. “Preclinical studies show that high-sucrose or high-fructose diets activate several mechanistic pathways, including inflammation, glucose and lipid metabolic pathways.”
Lloyd said she also offers meals for people who suffer from other chronic diseases that limit what kinds of food that people can eat, such as Alpha Gal, a disease that is spread by ticks and makes people allergic to beef, pork and any other meat from mammals.
“I have learned so much about special diets and that’s why I specialize in gluten-free, alpha-gal options, vegetarian and vegan meals,” Lloyd said. “Everything is healthy oils, which are big because you don’t find them hardly anywhere, like organic, extra-virgin olive oils, all that good stuff. And sugar free is huge.”
Some of her most popular dishes use cauliflower rice.
“The Mexican chicken is very popular,” Lloyd said. “It’s very flavorful. I designed this meal myself, it’s custom to Easy Peasy. I make it with Spanish cauliflower rice. It’s low-carb but it’s very delicious and nutritious. Then it has some sweet corn or sometimes I’ll put in black beans or broccoli with a Mexican street corn sauce, everybody loves that.”
Lloyd said meals with smoked pork or chicken are popular as well.
Smith said Lloyd doesn’t realize what a blessing she has been to her and her family.
Smith said, “When I’m there at her booth I’m getting the meals and other people walk up and say ‘What about this?’ and I’m like, ‘Yeah, you really need to try this one.’ Those meals mean the world to us in taste, health, being able to eat something when things tasted awful and knowing that I’m getting healthy ingredients in the process.”
This post was originally published on here
