• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content

Nutrition Experts Podcast

A podcast about nutrition experts and all they do for the world!

  • Home
  • About Me
  • Blog
  • News
  • Podcast
  • How To Podcast
You are here: Home / Home

Nutrition Experts Podcast Episode 54 Are You Energized by What You Are Doing with Allison Schaaf, MS, RDN

May 13, 2019 by matheaford Leave a Comment

Second only to a sharp chef’s knife, Allison’s meal-planning chops have become an indispensable tool for those looking to liberate themselves from boring meals, frozen pizzas, expensive and low-quality restaurant food, and lackluster health.
For six years and counting, Allison has made her way into the hearts and kitchens of home cooks all over the globe. Prep Dish was created  after a decade as a personal chef and gourmet chef  at a high-end spas because she knew there was more efficient, cost-effective, and sanity-saving to put healthy, crowd-pleasing meals on the table.

Mathea Ford [00:00:28] Hi there! It’s Mathea. Welcome back to the Nutrition Experts Podcast. The podcast featuring nutrition experts who are leading the way using food starts today right now with our next guest. It’s great to have Allison Schaaf on the show today. Allison welcome to Nutrition Experts.  

Allison Schaaf [00:00:44] Hi! Thank you so much for having me.  

Mathea Ford [00:00:46] I’m excited to have you on the show and share your expertise with my tribe. I am so interested in your business that you have now but I want to start with letting you tell the listeners a little more about you and kind of how you got to where you are.  

Allison Schaaf [00:01:00] It sounds like you’re going back really far but I’ll kind of bring it up to date pretty quickly so back in high school I have an interest in cooking and my Home Ec instructor got me a job as a personal chef which inspired me to go to culinary school. But in doing so, I always really felt like if I was going to be cooking to me it made sense that the food that I was putting in my body should also be healthy and nourishing. So, I wanted to pair my culinary skills with a Nutrition degree. So I went to grad school for nutrition and became a Registered Dietitian. After that I pretty quickly moved to Austin, Texas and started a business as a personal chef kind of going back to what I knew from high school and still have that business to this day. But while I was doing that work I also got inspired to create a meal planning website called PrepDish. So, that’s the very brief synopsis.  

Mathea Ford [00:01:56] So, your business PrepDish is an online business and it helps people with meal planning. What made you decide to start doing that in addition to being a personal chef?  

Allison Schaaf [00:02:07] You know I loved the personal chef work. It was great to have the one on one contact with people. You know part of me, I’ve always been an entrepreneur I’ve always been entrepreneurial and in doing that work I could also see that I didn’t think that was going to be my long term role. Like I knew I wanted a family someday and I’m like I just don’t know that I’m going in and cooking for people and only you know it’s great that I could help you know like the dozens of clients that I had. But I wasn’t reaching you know a large number. And so I really got interested in doing something online because I thought “gosh! This will be a really cool way to one work from anywhere. And 2: reach you know thousands of people instead of you know a handful each week.” So, you know that’s that’s what I set out to do.  

Mathea Ford [00:02:52] So, can you go into for us a little bit because it reminded me when you mentioned personal chef. What’s it like to be a personal chef? What’s that do? What do you do? 

Allison Schaaf [00:03:02] It was a really cool job. I still actually some of the clients I have today are still some that I was cooking for back like almost 10 years ago when I started. But the way I have it set up is you know I go into people’s homes once a week and prep their meals for the week and leave instructions for them on how they finish off that foods so I’ll go into their kitchen and cook say you know a chicken dish some salmon and veggies and then maybe like you know a frittata for breakfast and then leave it all in containers and label it and then they have their food for the week which was awesome. You know I worked with some really nice people. You really get to know the dietitian you want to see people. I think a lot of dietitians enjoy being on the preventative side of things and with the personal chef work I really got to see that. You know I got to help people sometimes it wasn’t always just preventative but you know really get to help people hands on day to day, year after year improve their health through food. I wasn’t just saying “Okay eat this way!” and then send them home and never know if they eat that way or not. I was literally making the food for that and so you could see the impact you know that that was having on them which was really cool to have that you know full circle while like they started this way and now you know this is impact it’s made so that it’s really cool to be able to see the results of your work.  

Mathea Ford [00:04:24] That sounds so fun. Like I mean if you really like cooking that would be fun.  

Allison Schaaf [00:04:29] And I did and especially and I always say I did work in some kitchens and some health spas but working in these and a lot of my clients have really nice kitchens and it was just me so I wasn’t and I you know hot sweaty kitchen with a bunch of rough chefs which is how kitchens can be. But now it is just me and like one of my clients her house like overlooks the lake in Austin and it’s just it was always a beautiful kitchen and me like preparing the foods is a very calm and relaxing atmosphere and yeah I just really enjoyed it while I was doing it.  

Mathea Ford [00:05:04] That’s an interesting thing that I’ve never talked to anybody about some and I’m glad you’re telling our audience a little bit about it just because it’s another thing that a dietitian can do and like you said implement and see changes. With the PrepDish program, do you do all the meal planning or do you have a team that you work with?  

Allison Schaaf [00:05:23] So, in the beginning I did it all which was kind of nice because I was doing I was still working as a personal chef as I was building up the meal plans which was nice because when I was cooking for my clients, I’d basically just write down the recipes I was using and there would be my meal plans and I would test out the recipes and I knew if you know five out of five clients enjoyed my eggplant lasagna and it was a winner. So, I kind of had a nice set of taste testers built in that I was getting paid to cook for. So, in the beginning that worked pretty nicely. Now, that was over five years ago. Since then I’ve had to give up cooking for clients so I could focus more on PrepDish day to day I built a team. So. That started out with customer service but now I have a meal plan editor. I have recipe developer, photographer, still have customer service, a project manager. So, yeah I have a whole little mini team of people that make sure you know PrepDish functions for week to week which is awesome.  

Mathea Ford [00:06:24] Yeah. So, you mentioned what positions. Are any of those positions dietitians? Are they you mentioned photography and recipe meal plan editor that type of stuff? 

Allison Schaaf [00:06:34] Now, my meal plan editor is a dietitian. My recipe developer is a dietitian and she does photos as well. And then I have someone else that I guess she’s still kind of like a recipe editor. She runs our nutrition facts for us and she’s also a dietitian. She started out as an intern with me and now is a dietitian and she’s just stayed on doing small tasks week to week. So, yeah I guess right now there’s three of them that are dietitians.  

Mathea Ford [00:07:01] Do you have… How does your program work? I mean do they come up with new recipes every week? Do you do some seasonal stuff or?  

Allison Schaaf [00:07:09] Each week we have three different styles of plans that we put out. We have a gluten free plan, a paleo plan and a keto plan which is newer for us and the recipes, we have new recipes every month but so say like a meal plan in May this year. Next year some of the recipes will be the same and then some of them won’t be. So, we switch out some of the recipes but not all of them. But week to week, we don’t really repeat many recipes. The year to year there will be some repeats and that’s based solely on customer feedback. We send out surveys and if everyone loves this dish then it’s not going anywhere because you know it doesn’t. It’s not so bad to repeat a dish you know twice a year or something like that but there’s a dish that only half the people liked then we take that off replace it with something else and we’re always just having new recipes depending on kind of the trends and you know what people are asking for and so we kind of try and keep it updated that way too and definitely seasonal like you say like we always look at the fruits and veggies that are in season and you know in the summer we’ll have grilling recipes and salads whereas in the winter it’s definitely more like soups and stews and crockpot meals in the fall when it’s like back to school times.  

Mathea Ford [00:08:26] So, do you have an international audience or as most people in the US?  

Allison Schaaf [00:08:31] Most are in the US but we definitely have U.S. and Canada and then you know I know we have had some people from Australia. We usually encourage them to sign up for our yearly plan because then they have access to the archives so because their seasons are switched, what is our winter they could access our summer plans. We do have some people in Europe as well. We don’t have the conversions ready for them like the cups and measurements and all of that but usually they’re able to do okay. And then it’s interesting that a lot of the international people we have are like Americans that end up like living in China. And so that’s really interesting to hear from those folks that are you know using our plans in another country so the most of the ingredients they can find but they always struggle with a few things.  

Mathea Ford [00:09:21] Yeah I get asked that a lot with my Renal Diet Menu plans is for the conversions like you mentioned but I could see where living in another country, having the ability to kind of have new recipes that are close to what you’re used to at home would be fun. Okay. So, tell me a little bit… We’re talking a little bit about business more than about the meal planning. But tell me what’s different now versus when you started the business besides hiring a staff?  

Allison Schaaf [00:09:49] I mean that’s most of it right is you know when you go from you doing everything to being able to really kind of feel like you’re doing just what your strengths are is huge. In [00:10:00]use [0.0s] is also different because I’m able to work on things that are I want to use the word fun. But you know in the beginning years doing what you have to do to get the product out but then now we’re to a point where it’s like we’re ahead of schedule and you know you can really play around with things a little more whereas in the beginning you’re just like hustling and doing everything you can to get a product out week to week.  

Mathea Ford [00:10:21] So, thinking about being an entrepreneur, as a dietitian you mentioned that you’re doing kind of the things that you enjoy doing. How hard was it to let go? Because you start out you do everything, this is your baby, you’re taking care of it even though it’s hard it’s still yours and you’re making sure the quality is great and everything. So, how do you let go of those things? How hard is that to let go and what did you do?  

Allison Schaaf [00:10:48] You know depends on what I’m letting go of some of it’s really easy for me to let go of because it’s obvious it’s not where I should be like customer service was really easy for me to let go of because you know if you have a lot of customers you’re going to have people e-mailing in with maybe a complaint, they’re asking for a refund. And that’s a small percentage of them but it’s it’s really hard for me to take those kind of emails day to day because PrepDish is like a baby to me and I can take it very personally you know when I’m having to like respond to emails like that. So, that was definitely something good to get off of my hands. The recipe development that took a little while actually it was a coach that I worked with and she was she said “look! You can’t be doing the recipes and trying to build a business at some point you’ve got to hand that off.” And you know it took at least six months from when she told me that before I was really ready to do that because it was something you know when I still make the recipes I still review them before they go into the meal plans but they’re not all my recipes anymore and that was hard in the beginning to let go of.  

Mathea Ford [00:11:52] What is the best part of owning your own business?   

Allison Schaaf [00:11:57] I would say that for me it’s the flexibility. I love to travel. I like to be in control of my schedule. So, that is one of the best things. A surprising best thing about owning my own business is in the beginning I actually didn’t think I wanted to build a team. I thought I kind of wanted to work on my own and I will say now I feel like one of the best things is building a team because when you have people to support you and to which is really cool to I get to have a job I love but then I also get to provide jobs for all these other it’s mainly women but women and men that also love their jobs. So, it’s really cool that we all get to be in this thing together where we’re helping people and feeling good about it. You know we have a team call each week and we start off the call by sharing a happy customer wins. So, you know something that our customers have said that they’re really pleased with. And then we each personally share something we’re excited about for the week. So, just really cool to be able to provide jobs for the team and to have their support.  

Mathea Ford [00:13:02] So, when you think about dietitians in general, I know a lot of dietitians when you get out of school you think about having to go work at a hospital. I’m going to go work at an outpatient clinic. Why do you think more dietitians don’t see entrepreneurship as an initial option or way to be a dietitian?  

Allison Schaaf [00:13:21] Yeah I think sometimes they just haven’t seen that model. You know you go to school and even when I was in school I was told you really need to do so many years of clinical so that you have the experience before you go and do anything else. And I… For a few days probably thought about that but I just I never I always knew I didn’t want to do clinical so it didn’t take me long to think about that and be like “well, they can say that but I just it’s not my strength. So, I knew that’s not where I wanted to be.” But I think it’s hard when that’s what you see modeled and you kind of feel like there’s just one path. So, I think you know one of the keys is really to look. Look out there and see what others are doing so that you can be inspired.  

Mathea Ford [00:14:02] You’ve mentioned like your strengths are doing things that are in your strengths. How did you kind of figure that out what those things are?  

Allison Schaaf [00:14:08] I mean one things that I look forward to doing. Things that I you know as an entrepreneur if you wake up and don’t work no one is going to say “Get to work!” So, I need something that like I’m jumping out of bed at 6:00 am excited to go and those things become pretty apparent you know? The things you’re putting off there’s a reason you’re putting them off. Either they’re scary which then you shouldn’t be putting them off but it could just be that it’s not like really your strength and then you know you just kind of can tell when you know when you start looking through what you’re doing. I’m pretty good at evaluating all my task and being like why am I doing this because someone else could definitely do it better or I just get really bored doing this I shouldn’t be doing it. Yeah. But it’s definitely something to look at and be aware of and just realize. I think actually what it really comes down to is like are you being energized by what you’re doing? Or are you dreading it? And there were times during my dietetic internship, there were certain rotations where I kind of dreaded it. I hate to say that but you know that’s why it’s important to try a bunch of different things and see what are those things that I really look forward to doing versus what are the things that I’m dreading.  

Mathea Ford [00:15:16] So, what do you think are some pitfalls if you were advising a dietitian who’s thinking about starting their own business? What are some pitfalls you’ve seen that maybe you could comment on?  

Allison Schaaf [00:15:27] You know I think sometimes people it’s easy to think that you need to be to a certain level before you jump in and try something and something I’ve learned is like the faster you can just try something, it’s almost like fail faster. Try it really fast just to see how it goes. And what I always like to do is you think through to the worst case scenario and it’s usually not so bad. So, don’t don’t think that you need to like wait three years before you try something you know. Sometimes you do need to I guess prepare a little bit but I think especially as dietitians because I can fall into this trap too. Dietitians like to be overly prepared and sometimes it’s like he’s been all this time preparing and it would have been better off just like doing the thing and trying it out.  

Mathea Ford [00:16:14] Yeah! I was talking to my daughter the other day and she’s in that you know middle school junior high age and they’re having a talent show. And I was like “you performed in the talent shows and in fifth and sixth grade why do you all of a sudden not want to do it?” And she’s like “well, I’m really worried about what other people are going to say” and I’m like “What’s the worst that can happen?Are they going to say that you don’t sing very well? Well, they’re not your friends” you know but it is that as we get older it’s interesting that we become worried about things outside of that instead of taking that moment saying what’s the worst that can happen like you mentioned. What’s the worst that can happen? You know if I do some ads and they don’t work well maybe I spent some money but maybe I spent the money that I plan on testing and I know more information now you know that type of thing. So.  

Allison Schaaf [00:17:04] There’s so much that you do have to keep in mind no one even knows. No one don’t know that you did that except for you stuff.  

Mathea Ford [00:17:13] That’s absolutely true. So, can you talk a little bit about how you built your team? How you found these people and are they all local to you or are they remote?  

Allison Schaaf [00:17:23] So, right now everybody is remote. I don’t have anyone local to me. In the past I have had people that are local. But you know it’s an online business and we do we do make sure to have a regular touch point every week and phone calls and all that I follow a model called Traction which is really helpful. And in terms of finding them you know it’s something through the years I feel like I’m constantly improving and I get better with every hire. One thing that I use is really a personality quiz but it’s kind of like a work style quiz similar to Myers Briggs but it’s called Culture Index and it is a short quiz but it’ll basically tell someone’s work style. And to me that’s been really revealing and knowing who I need. Even before I go to post position, I’ll know a specific culture index type that I need to hire for and that has been a game changer in terms of my team. And it really up leveled my team to the next level when I started using that system. Another secret weapon I have when it comes to hiring is my husband. So, you know after maybe even while we’re dating I realized he is much better at the interview process. He has his own company. He’s not really. He does have an official role at PrepDish but when I get to the final stages of interviews I will have him do my interviews for me because he has the patience to really go through step by step. And he does a process called Topgrading where you really hammer in you know what are the… If this person is going to be a good fit or not. So, I put him in charge of doing some of those interviews for me just to really make sure I’m getting again that goes back to the strengths and weaknesses. I know that interviewing candidates is not my strength and it’s his and because he’s my husband, he’s hopefully to jump in and help me out with that piece of it.  

Mathea Ford [00:19:12] You said you use a process, a model called Traction. What’s that?  

Allison Schaaf [00:19:17] So, in Traction is having… It’s kind of like a way of setting goals as a team and also having like a regular rhythm where you get together so we set a three year plan and then we build off of that. So, from there we have one year goals and then quarterly goals that we’re working towards all the time. And then once a week we have a call and we’ll check in on our status of those quarterly goals. And so that’s just a good way to have accountability all around for everyone on the team to make sure that the most important things that need to be getting done are getting done because it’s easy to say like “oh! I want to get you know all these things done this year” but then get caught up in the day to day and not have those things actually happen. So, it’s a model that really allows you to make sure the the rocks is what they call them. But make sure those rocks are getting done. There’s important things going on that are going to move your business forward.  

Mathea Ford [00:20:10] Any dos and don’ts for hiring that you’re thinking about? Like you mentioned the… Do you have people take the Culture Index before you do the interviews?  

Allison Schaaf [00:20:19] Yeah. Before I even so say we get customer service, if we get three hundred applicants I will only look at the applicants that are a Culture Index fit. So, that helps me wipe it out like from 300 to maybe 20 there even a fit so that it’s really my first step in narrowing down the candidates. I start with that.  

Mathea Ford [00:20:40] So, is that like a website? Is it free for them to take the Culture Index on?  

Allison Schaaf [00:20:44] It’s free for them. I pay a fee to have access to that. I have a consultant that I work with and and he’s been really helpful too because I can kind of use him as a as a sounding board when I’m hiring. And that’s another thing that I’ve had to figure out and I think I’m still figuring out is making sure that I have resources. So, when you work on your own it’s easy to just get caught up doing everything by yourself and I’ve really worked to try and have resources and mentors and people I can tap into to get help with things like hiring or certain decisions that maybe I need a sounding board for.  

Mathea Ford [00:21:19] When I want to do something and I ask somebody out about it and they’re like there’s an app for that. And I realize that I was thinking in my little frame of mind of what I’m just used to and having those outside coaches or mentors or other people they have that completely different perspective. They may know something that works different than what you’re used to. So.  

Allison Schaaf [00:21:40] Yeah, I get that outside input it’s always helpful.  

Mathea Ford [00:21:44] A hundred percent agree. Thinking about the audience mostly dietitians. How would you encourage them to use the information that we talked about in their day to day life whether it’s thinking about starting a new business or it’s just even being entrepreneurial in their own job?  

Allison Schaaf [00:22:03] Yeah. I know. I think that’s and I think that’s a really good point. Is that you can be entrepreneurial and not have your own business. No matter what your position is there’s always ways or you know most employees are going to appreciate you kind of like thinking outside of the box and coming up with new ideas. And I think a lot of it’s to realize like technology is changing, the world is changing and no matter what your role is as a dietitian there’s ways that you can kind of improve on what you’re doing and improve how you’re working with others and just kind of like thinking outside of the box on how you can best do that. And you know it’s everything like the atmosphere is changing so much and that’s when I have interns that’s what I always encourage them to do is like if you have an interest in something then don’t hesitate to explore that even if it is with another employer because you know some of our best opportunity it is you really have to create for yourself.  

Mathea Ford [00:22:59] Yes! So, this was awesome. I always ask my guests that’s my last question the hardest question of all. What is your favorite food? Because I love talking about food.  

Allison Schaaf [00:23:11] Gosh! I mean chocolate.  

Mathea Ford [00:23:15] Yes! What kind of chocolate?  

Allison Schaaf [00:23:16] Dark chocolate. I really. Right now my favorite is Hu like H-U and they have a dark chocolate sea salt and I think like cashew butter something.  

Mathea Ford [00:23:29] That sounds good! So good. How has? I know you mentioned before you we were talking before the podcast you mentioned you’re a new mom. So, how is that kind of changed your workflow or anything or how you do things? Have you found that…? Have you overcame that challenge if there is one in your business?  

Allison Schaaf [00:23:52] Yeah! I mean I don’t know that I would say I’ve overcome it just yet. I think honestly I think it’s probably you know I’m a mom now I think it’s changed my role for the rest of my life right? Like I no longer can say PrepDish. Wake up and say PrepDish is my top priority every day I wake up and I say “look I have a top priority. And then in comes PrepDish you know after that it is a game changer. But you know just finding the support, being open and honest in conversations with my husband who’s also an entrepreneur. So, you know we have to figure out both of us like how to handle the workload and you know having some help at home to help in his care and then you know just trying again not being afraid to try things out. So, you know I’ve tried working four days a week and spending one day with him and you know it’s just I think constantly experimentation to see what’s going to work best with my schedule and how I want to spend time with him. I will say one thing that’s really cool is my PrepDish team up until I had I was the only one that wasn’t a mom. And so now we’re all moms and that’s something that’s always been built into basically our company values is family first and said something as a team we all know is like we all are committed to PrepDish. But at the end of the day if something comes up with a with one of our children we all know that that’s first. And so I think that’s kind of cool that because it’s my company I was able to have family be one of the values and that’s something that we all kind of respect about each other so I never feel worried that if I have to say “oh you know I’ve been sick today I have to take the day off. No one’s going to be mad about that” and I wouldn’t be mad if they had to do the same.  

Mathea Ford [00:25:30] Well, Allison thank you so much for being on the podcast today. It was a pleasure to have you on the show. I know my listeners have learned a lot about entrepreneurship, business a little bit about your meal planning business. So, if listeners want to connect with you what’s the best way to do that?  

Allison Schaaf [00:25:45] So, I’m at PrepDish on social media so Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest all those places and then also if they want to try the meal plans, I have a two week free trial and it’s if they just go to prepdish.com/nutritionexpert I have that setup for them there.  

Mathea Ford [00:26:04] Awesome! Well, guys this has been another great episode of the Nutrition Experts Podcast. The podcast that is all about learning more so you can do more with nutrition in your life. Thanks.  

Mathea Ford [00:26:15] Hey there this is Mathea. I’m back at the end of the show to share with you that the show is going on hiatus and I won’t be producing any new episodes for a while. I’m not exactly sure how long but as of right now this is going to be the last episode I loved talking to Allison and I loved talking to all the dietitians and other practitioners over the last year. This is episode 54 so it will be a little bit over a year that I’ve done this and I have enjoyed every minute of it and I’ve loved getting to know all the dietitians. But right now it’s getting ready to be summer so we’re going on a break. And I look forward to picking back up at some point in the near future with the podcast and continuing to bring you interviews with awesome nutrition experts who love to share their stories and inspire you. So, thanks for all of your support and I look forward to talking to you again soon. Thanks.  

https://media.blubrry.com/renaldiethq/p/app.pippa.io/public/streams/5aba77b58bdf7ba53cccc618/episodes/5cd442d632e190f415ecbfc1.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Email | RSS

Filed Under: Blog, Podcast Tagged With: Allison Schaaf, Culture Index, Meal Planning, meal prep, Personal Chef, PrepDish, Traction

Nutrition Experts Podcast Episode 53 Don’t Get Overwhelmed with Meal Prep with Toby Amidor, MS, RD, CDN

May 6, 2019 by matheaford Leave a Comment

With 20 years experience in the food and nutrition industry, Toby Amidor, MS, RD, CDN is an award-winning dietitian and Wall Street Journal best-selling cookbook author who believes that healthy and wholesome can also be appetizing and delicious.


Toby is the founder of Toby Amidor Nutrition, where she provides nutrition and food safety consulting services for individuals, restaurants and food brands. She is a founding contributor to FoodNetwork.com Healthy Eats blog and the nutrition expert for FoodNetwork.com for 10 years. Toby is also a regular contributor to U.S. News and World Report Eat + Run blog, MuscleandFitness.com, Shape.com and has her own “Ask the Expert” column in Today’s Dietitian Magazine. She has been quoted in hundreds of publications like FoxNews.com, Self.com, Oxygen Magazine, Dr. Oz The Good Life, Mic.com, Reader’s Digest, Shape.com, Women’s Health, Redbook, Men’s Journal, Huffington Post, Everyday Health, and more. Toby has also appears on television including shows like The Dr. Oz Show, Coffee with America, and AMHQ with Sam Champion.


Live. For the past 10 years she has been an adjunct professor at Teachers College, Columbia University and also is an adjunct at Hunter College School of Urban Public Health in New York City. 

Toby trained as a clinical dietitian at New York University. Through ongoing consulting and faculty positions, she has established herself as one of the top experts in culinary nutrition, food safety, and media communications. Toby is the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Media Excellence Award recipient for 2018.

Mathea Ford [00:00:28] Hi there! It’s Mathea. Welcome back to the Nutrition Experts Podcast. The podcast featuring nutrition experts who are leading the way using food starts today right now with our next guest. It’s great to have Toby Amidor on the show today. Toby welcome to Nutrition Experts.  

Toby Amidor [00:00:44] Thank you so much for having me.  

Mathea Ford [00:00:46] I’m excited to have you on the show and share your expertise with my tribe. I know you have a lot of experience doing a lot of different things. So I’d like to let you start with telling my listeners a little more about you and what you do.  

Toby Amidor [00:00:58] Sure. So I’m a Registered Dietitian with a Master’s Degree in Clinical Nutrition and Dietetics from NYU which I actually received while my mom got her Master’s Degree in Food and Nutrition from NYU. We graduated together. Since then I’ve taught at culinary schools in New York City and eventually I am now the nutrition expert for Food Network for the past 10 years. August will be eleven years and I’ve also a cookbook author. I have four cookbooks I have two more coming out. One of them is a Wall Street Journal best selling cookbook. That’s my Easy Five Ingredient Cookbook. And then I do a lot of spokesperson work and I write for about I don’t know five or six national publications. You might have seen me on U.S. News or Shape or on Yahoo or something like that because I would like to write a lot.  

Mathea Ford [00:01:50] One of the things you specialize in is really helping people do meal prep and focus on that. So why do you think that meal prep is important?  

Toby Amidor [00:01:59] I have to meal prep books. The Healthy Meal Prep cookbook and Smart Meal Prep for Beginners and The Healthy Meal Prep cookbook was just it did phenomenally well. And the reason is a lot of people don’t have enough time and nobody has enough time these days. And so what it tries to do is helps you organize, shave off time during the week but then allows you to eat healthy well-balanced meals. And so I think a lot of people appreciate that you don’t have to cook up go home 30 minutes every evening and make a meal you can actually pre prepare it in advance which is nice.  

Mathea Ford [00:02:35] So in your books you really talk about how to make healthier meals? You said you have a book called Smart Meal Prepping for Beginners and that I think is your latest book right?  

Toby Amidor [00:02:47] That’s the latest one the first one was The Healthy Meal Prep cookbook and The Healthy Meal Prep cookbook. I didn’t really take into account that someone who is never meal prep before. So after it came out it’s still doing phenomenally well it’s a bestseller. You know for us since it came out in 2017 on Amazon but then we were like you know my publisher and I were like you know what about those people who are just getting started and need a little bit more of a 101? So, then I did Smart Meal Prep which is almost like a prequel so you can actually use the recipes and combine the two and you’re you know you’re good to go. But my Smart Meal Prep what it does is let’s say you get really nervous you know all those people on Instagram have like 9, 10 recipes and it’s overwhelming and that’s something you don’t want to do get overwhelmed you know because then you won’t do it. So in smart meal prep what I have is I have five or six meal plans but I start with like three recipes. That’s it. So, you can have a breakfast and then I have like two lunches that you can rotate between and that’s your three and if you want to continue to do it at 3. That’s great! If you want to continue to evolve and do more because you really want to do like breakfast and lunches or lunches and dinners however you want you can build on it to make it individual so you are comfortable with it.  

Mathea Ford [00:04:03] So why did you call it Smart Meal Prepping? Kind of what is Smart Meal Prep?  

Toby Amidor [00:04:08] Well, with Smart Meal Prep, I really have five steps to help you meal prep so I really take that 101 and give you all the steps. So, the first thing is to choose when to prep. And I think it’s a misconception people think that you have to do everything on one day and sometimes that just doesn’t work like my kids on Sunday they have activities and a lot of driving. I don’t know if you have kids too. And if you’re driving them and you know our stuff is our one day sometimes it’s not possible to do all that prep and so you can switch it into two days a week if that helps you too. You could do two or three dishes one day and two or three dishes the other and kind of break it up. But just choosing one is step one. And then deciding what you’re going to prep I focus on healthy. So, everything I have is in the healthy arena. And you know looking online and finding and printing and then knowing what you’re going to prep that step two. Step three is going food shopping which you do have to plan for. One of the biggest things I like about food prep is that it helps also minimize food waste. How many times you go shopping and then you go and you’re like “oh! I just bought something I have already. I’m not ever going to finish both that’s going to go bad.” So when I make my shopping list I don’t know about you, do you like I sit down with the three or four recipes or whatever I’m doing. I actually send one of my kids do I have this? Do I have that? Do I have this? Go bring it out put it on the counter I take all my dry goods on the counter and I write down so I’m not over buying.  

Mathea Ford [00:05:31] Yeah we do that. My husband I’ll say “this is what we need.” And he’ll go through and open the cabinets and say “this is what we have. We have that! We have that!” And we mark it off.  

Toby Amidor [00:05:40] Exactly. So, I literally go one ingredient by one ingredient so I don’t forget anything. And then after your food shopping it’s time to prep and cook. So you have to set time to do that. And I’m always slow cooker is the great is like one of my favorite tools because you could put it as the first thing to do and it takes a while to cook while I do my other two dishes for I want to do three dishes total let’s say. And the last step which I think people forget and it really makes a difference when you’re trying to eat healthy is to portion and pack. So, a lot of times when you hear healthy eating and nutrition it’s all about portion control. And this is where you have it the most control. So, you don’t want to leave like a big dish. You actually want to portion it out into those individual dishes so you can either take it to work or you can pull it out of the fridge when you need it for your meal.  

Mathea Ford [00:06:27] So, I guess I was thinking of meal prepping as food that you’re packing basically for your lunches for the week but you made a little more than that right?  

Toby Amidor [00:06:36] I do it so if you want to do a double batch of let’s say meat balls and then freeze it for later because sometimes you don’t have time over a weekend so you can actually again you plan it however works for you. But if you have time you’re like you know I’m going to do a double batch of this and then I’m going to save it in the freezer and individual containers and then you can defrost it a month, two months later whenever you need it too. So that helps some people too.  

Mathea Ford [00:07:00] A lot of my nieces use Pinterest a ton for recipes. They were actually like I have a I have an instant pocket book and they’re they’re like “Do you have your own insta pot?” “Yeah! I use this cookbook. I do.” They’re like “use a cookbook?” Any tips on finding like really healthy recipes on Pinterest? How to search for those or?  

Toby Amidor [00:07:21] Well, I mean I have boards on Pinterest that I put my recipes or healthy recipes on you just want to make sure whoever you’re finding from first of all is tasty because that’s a huge thing. Just because it’s something is healthy doesn’t mean it’s not tasty and they still are recipes out there that use like you know just go low fat on it or use non-fat and you’re like “oh! You can’t do that all the time. It’s not going to taste as great.” So, you have to find those that really taste well. There’s a lot of dietitian and healthy food bloggers out there with amazing recipes. But just definitely look through it and read through it before you decide to make it, read the reviews on it if you can. And once you like it this is what I do once I like it I check market and I put it in a binder.  

Mathea Ford [00:08:04] So you can find it later?  

Toby Amidor [00:08:05] Yeah I’ll do my a if you do it digitally and someone knows how to organize it digitally you could do that as well like do a digital cookery recipe book cards on your on your computer but whatever works for you but I’m good with pen and paper. I’m a little old school.  

Mathea Ford [00:08:21] Like I said I have a bunch of cookbooks. So, yeah. So, thinking about meal prepping and you mentioned your five steps, what are some of the things that people do wrong? So, you mentioned how to do it right. What are some of the things where people do it wrong or get messed up when it comes to meal prep?  

Toby Amidor [00:08:36] First of all, they don’t leave enough time. They don’t plan and they want to do meal prep last minute and that just doesn’t work. You really need to plan to find the recipes. You need to plan to get your shopping list together even if that takes 20 minutes to go in your pantry and check and write a list digitally or pen and paper. You need to find time to go to the supermarket that takes at least an hour because you’re remembering shopping now for not just one or two recipes but for many more. And then you need to leave yourself time to cook so and pack. So all these things take time. So, although you may not be doing it every night of the week and it does help shave off about 45 minutes during weeknights you still have to plan for everything else. I think another mistake people do is they rush and they’re like “Okay, I got to do like nine dishes for that you know gung-ho and going full force ahead. But if that doesn’t work for you and that’s going to make you like fail you’re not going want to do it again so you have to do things that are doable for you and that you like to do and that work for you. Another thing is freezing extras. You might have an extra like few batches or few meals in there. You know don’t just throw it in the fridge for you know who knows where it’s going to go. Could go to waste. Put it in the freezer label it so then you can eat it within two months and then you have for a rainy day that you didn’t have time to meal prep. Those are just some of the things.  

Mathea Ford [00:09:59] So, you know when you’re thinking about planning your meals you mentioned not enough time. I’ve found that the older my kids get that the more input they want on meals and that’s a big thing in our family like what do you want? You get to pick a meal this week or something like that so that they’re involved and they’re more likely to eat it because they I wouldn’t call them picky eaters but they do like to….  

Toby Amidor [00:10:24] Take their individual plate. Right. The individual tastes and flavors and I think that’s really fun when you get the entire family involved. You can have if you’re doing four recipes and you have four people in the family then everybody can pick a recipe. Could be mains or sides or whatever it may be and they can even help in the kitchen. My soon to be 12 year old she’s actually my recipe tester with me. So, she comes she knows at 12 she’s like what’s the yield? What’s the serving size? So, she can actually help me formulate and edit my recipe. “Oh! How much does it measure?” She pulls out the right you know measuring cup, she knows the measurements and at this point she can help me cook the meals. Yeah, it’s just really getting involved. Even coming to the supermarket I have my older daughter she’s just turned 14 picking produce because then you can teach them. This is the colors and then one time she brought an onion home or pepper home and it had a blemish on it and I didn’t say anything and I opened it up and and you can see it was no good it was black and in the inside and I wanted to show her. “This is the black mesh. When you open it this is what you see.” It wa more of a learning moment. I was able to use half of it and then she knew for next time this is how we select and what we’re cautious for. So, there’s so many different learning moments when it comes to food and kids of all ages. My kid was my youngest was 18 months so I’m wheeling around showing her the colors and the protest styles. So, that’s great. And I picked a sorry avocado and just to press it with your fingers and pears like we do that together all the time.  

Mathea Ford [00:11:53] Well, that’s life skills that people don’t always think about. I noticed that when I taught dietetics at a local college that some people had not experienced their parents cooking at home very much. They did a lot of out to eat meals and stuff so they didn’t have that base of how to go find foods in the grocery store. You know like you said what is a good fruit? What is a good avocado? That type of thing. I love that you also mentioned that doing like nine meals at once because you see these epic blog posts and they’re like plan for the whole month. Make twenty seven crockpot meals and fill up your freezer and if you had a lot of help maybe if there was like I know sometimes like me my little sister talk about this like we should get together and make a bunch of these freezer meals together then you’re doing like half the work and you share in the bounty but doing it yourself that’s just almost overwhelming especially initially.  

Toby Amidor [00:12:46] And with so many meals I advise then do some insta pot and some slow cooker recipes just those are so it’s like basically dumb things and closed cook. And those are really easy to do.  

Mathea Ford [00:12:59] Yeah I love my instant pot. I just have been getting really into it. So. My kids seem to like they act like the slow cookers like not very good. So, I’m like “fine. I’ll do it in an instant pot it’s similar idea but.” So, speaking of a little bit healthier meals, what are some things that you do to recipes or that people can do to recipes to make them healthier for meal prepping?  

Toby Amidor [00:13:23] Well, I like to bulk up a lot of my meals with fruits and vegetables. So if I have a pasta dish I will most certainly add that you know fresh tomatoes even like shaped carrots. I just do anything to bulk it up to add those fruits and vegetables because we know that 90 percent of Americans just don’t get the recommended about vegetables and about 85 of Americans don’t meet their fruit recommendations. And then one of the things I also realized with meal prep to make it healthier a lot of these main meals don’t have a lot of dairy in them or fruits. So, those two foods sometimes can be missing from your main. And think about it in your main meals unless you’re drinking a glass of milk or really putting a little cheese you’re really not getting dairy or fruit  in there. So, making sure those snacks you can meal prep snacks and I have those in my cookbooks or just make sure you get like a yogurt and put some fruit on the side of that are fresh fruit when you go. So, plan for those missing food groups as your snacks and that’s something important to remember.  

Mathea Ford [00:14:21] Yeah. I love yogurt. I especially love Greek yogurt so I always try to get some breakfast because I’m just not a milk drinker but I always try to get those other options like you mentioned with the cheese because there’s also help you to feel more full. So, like you mentioned like you can have cardboard healthy food or you can have tasty healthy food. And I think some of that is your spices and your flavors and some is just being willing to try a variety of things and add those other in there. You mentioned the five steps. Those don’t have to be all done in one day right?  

Toby Amidor [00:14:54] No. So if you’re picking recipes you could do it as you see them you know in the evening and you’re picking them and then you have to you know by the end you have to settle on X amount of recipes and if you have to think about it if you get fed at work for lunch you don’t have to go out. You don’t have to make those if let’s say dinner. You know you have a couple dinners that week for work you’re going out those don’t need to be meal prep so you have to work within your own constraints in your own life. You know you have to do what works for you.  

Mathea Ford [00:15:24] So, when you’re thinking about making like for recipes for the week about how long are you thinking that’s going to take for a person?  

Toby Amidor [00:15:31] Three or four recipes shouldn’t take that long depending on what you’re doing. I’d probably like I said I always like to start with like an instant pot or like a slow cooker or say can make let’s say a chili so that can be one. All you have to do takes 15 minutes and then you press the button so then you really worrying about your other three meals. So, let’s say you want to breakfast, do you want to do like muffins? That’s easy. That’s 15 minutes to prep and 15 minutes to cook. You’re done with that. Maybe a side of broccoli or cauliflower steamed and however you want makes sure divided up and then I don’t know. Let’s say you want to wholegrain, rice let’s say brown rice. So, you have to think about how all these kind of come into play and you know when one thing is going like the Rice let’s say it takes 40 minutes to cook brown rice, I can then go steamed my broccoli and so you’re working in tandem and once you start getting the hang of it with smaller amounts of items then you can build slowly on it. So, I would say like four recipes about a half a day. Start going more it’s going to take you like three or four hours. You take a little bit more goes longer.  

Mathea Ford [00:16:31] I love the idea like you mentioned with your kids that are a little bit older. But even at different ages there are different things they can do. It is teaching them a life skills so letting them peel the carrots, letting them cut something if they’re old enough to handle a knife or letting them you know even just get out the bags and write on the bags what everything is or the tubs, containers or go through the cookbooks.  

Toby Amidor [00:16:55] And actually flip through them if they’re you know some of them they’re on the computer all the time so I don’t mind I’ll pull out some of my cookbooks because I get a lot in the mail too or just going through mine. I said “What do you want?” And they’ll go through “Oh I remember this one I want you to” because they’ve taste tested and I have between 100 to 250 recipes in every book. So, they’re like “oh! I remember the the lime chicken three or five ingredient cookbook. I want to do that one.” So, you know and of course whatever they want I’ll try to incorporate. Another thing I do at smart meal prep, I have meal plans developed and what I try to do to minimize food waste is let’s say I’m making like an egg muffin for breakfast with broccoli in it. I try to have that broccoli used for another meal for that week so maybe it’ll be like as a side or maybe shredded into a pasta salad whatever it may be. But I utilize the food so you’re not like “Okay, I need one carrot. Now what do I do with the rest of the bag?”  

Mathea Ford [00:17:51] Yeah! I think that’s important because not only are you making healthier food but you’re also saving money. If you plan on buying groceries and you put the food together you’re not buying lunch, you’re not getting post mates, you’re not going through the drive through. So, yes it’s healthier but it’s also a cost savings don’t you think? 

Toby Amidor [00:18:12] Yes, I absolutely think and I’ll go to those big warehouse stores and I’ll get the hamburgers and I know like I usually have a pound and a quarter of hamburger meat that serves four. If I need more I’ll add on that’s like one of my recipes and then I’ll all separate them out. So, if I want to make two portions I take two bags once I get home I’ll separate out the meat into portions and then I know exactly how much I need per person. And so that’s why all of my cookbooks also have a Toby’s tip on the bottom which is an action will tip if you want to swap something, you want to add something, you want more vegetables, you want a different grain, you don’t know how to store the herbs like I always put some sort of actionable tip ’till like “oh! I could do that!” So, it’s kind of fun to read through my recipes in that sense too.  

Mathea Ford [00:18:59] What tips do you have for people just getting started doing meal prep so like you mentioned your whole smart meal prep is really for beginners. What are some tips that you have for people starting with meal prep?  

Toby Amidor [00:19:12] Start with just a few recipes. Like for example, the first meal plan that I have in the smart meal prep book has three recipes. I have a smoked salmon breakfast bowl which is basically have smoked salmon, you have a hard boiled egg, some vegetables and cheese and like some lemon. I have a deconstruction chicken burritos and then I have a beef and mushroom stir fry with brown rice and lentils. That’s it. And if you want to swap anything you’re allergic to something you don’t like smoked salmon for breakfast you can go there I have recipes and you can swap it and so you can have three. Once you’ve done that and you feel comfortable with the process then start adding a fourth. Start adding two different breakfasts that you can rotate between and I think that’s really important. Another thing that’s really important is to remember to divvy everything up like do not forget that step because if you forget to divide and have all the ingredients there you’re still going to take time to assemble it and you’re not going to have time during a very busy workweek to do that.  

Mathea Ford [00:20:11] So, what about people who maybe want the same food every day versus people who maybe want to have something a little different? So, for me for example, if I made chili I’d eat it for three or four days but maybe there’s people that really are I can’t stand Chili two days in a row type thing you know? How do you handle that? 

Toby Amidor [00:20:31] So, the smart meal prep was designed for people because that’s the feedback we were getting is that people wanted to eat the same thing every day. But then I started hearing other feedback. “No no we don’t like that.” It’s like almost like you know like on your on your plate. People like food touching and people like food not touching?  

Mathea Ford [00:20:47] Yes.  

Toby Amidor [00:20:49] I don’t like my food touching though I’ll let it. It’s like it’s being done right. I like how they taste together.  

Mathea Ford [00:20:54] My daughter. This weekend we had quesadillas for dinner and she put ketchup on her plate and she went back to get a second case study and I put on her plate and she said “oh! It touch the ketchup! I’m like “well, aren’t you going to pour ketchup on it anyway?” So, how do you handle those different things.  

Toby Amidor [00:21:11] So, what I try to do is I try to repurpose it. So, let’s say I have a white beef and chili on my Healthy Meal Prep Cookbook and that white bean chili actually repurposed it to make you can put the chili in the quesadillas with a little bit of cheese in it. And so I repurpose it that way. I also have a barbecue chicken in the slow cooker which is really nice and soft. So, what I do over there is I can make a pizza with barbecued chicken. My kids love that. And so we would do wholegrain pizza crust that you can buy. You can put some tomato sauce or make your own tomato sauce or you know and then you have your chicken on there and so you’re repurposing it you can make them into tacos you can make a baked potato and put the barbecue chicken on it. So, you’re still utilizing. This meat’s expensive. You’re still utilizing that dish but you’re just serving it in a variety of ways.  

Mathea Ford [00:22:00] It’s just one of those things that you just don’t always think of but it really it makes a lot of sense to do it that way.  

Toby Amidor [00:22:06] And you always have like extra quesadillas is usually laying around or an extra potato you know or sweet potato. So, it’s like stuff you have in your house.  

Mathea Ford [00:22:14] I like the idea you mentioned earlier of putting things into the freezer instead of keeping them in the fridge. So, for me if I make like I said a bowl of chili. I’m going to keep it for three or four days if I make a large bowl of chili for the family and then I’m the only one eating it for three or four days after that then I do take part of that and freeze it in containers and put it in the freezer so that I can use it in a week or so and it not go bad.  

Toby Amidor [00:22:39] Right. And you can actually put it at. The only thing I would do is label it but you can actually eat it up to two months later as long as you know you put it and you could do an individual or you could do it in a family style and then you reheat it right on stovetop if you don’t want to use microwave. You could do it that way too. But yeah it’s just using your freezer not over filling it with some other junky foods you know that people have because I’ve had that complaint too that people have very very little freezer space. So, if you want a meal prep with very little freezer space your best bet is probably meal prepping twice a week so you can eat it you know do half a week half a week. So, again this is what I mean by individual. How much space you have? If you have many people in your household. If you do have a lot of freezer space, are you going to eat it later on as opposed to some people will toss it which you actually don’t want to do so you have to know yourself too.  

Mathea Ford [00:23:26] All right. So, thinking about what we talked about with the meal prep, how can this information be used by the listeners in their day to day life and a lot of the listeners or dietitians and then I know I get a lot of feedback from people that are just looking for nutrition information, healthy nutrition. So, how can dietitians use this in their day to day work when they work with clients?  

Toby Amidor [00:23:48] Well, what I try to do when you’re building for meal prep for a healthy meal prep you do want to keep in mind all the food groups. You want to talk you know wholegrain, fruits, vegetables, lean protein, low and nonfat dairy and of course healthy fats and like I said one of the things I was noticing just from a nutrition perspective is that fruit and dairy tend to be minimized in those main meals especially lunches and dinners. So, to make sure that the snacks or meal prepped compliment whatever new nutrients are not in that dish. So, I have like a delicious poached pear and like a wine sauce that’s in slow cooker and that and the sauce is so good. And that would be a perfect like that would stay basically all week as a snack or a dessert. Either way it could be done. So, I think that’s something that’s important to realize and also the education component in terms of portion control and the right size how to measure everything out. All my meal prep cookbooks actually have measurements for each serving. So, I don’t say like that divided by for a quarter of the recipes a serving I actually say two cups of this, a half a cup of thism one cup of this and that’s how you should build it.  

Mathea Ford [00:25:01] And what about people who are just doing meal prep done it for a long time is there any ways you have that maybe they can add some variety?. Any ideas with that?. If they kind of feel like they’re stuck in a rut?.  

Toby Amidor [00:25:13] Yeah if you’re stuck in a rut I have besides my two meal prep books I have the Easy Five Ingredient Healthy Cookbook and that could be swapped in to for any of the meal prep. You know meal prep recipes don’t have to feed 16. They can feed four, six, eight. It doesn’t. It really is how you use up that meal. And so any of those five ingredient recipes which are so easy to make you know you can find some really fun ones, fun recipes, fun varieties that you like and kind of swap that in.  

Mathea Ford [00:25:43] All right. So, a question I ask everyone that comes on my podcast is because we’d love talking about food is what your favorite food?  

Toby Amidor [00:25:51] I know I have so many. I know I’m always like..  

Mathea Ford [00:25:55] You pick one.  

Toby Amidor [00:25:56] I now I like my steaks but then I also love my pizza. And then I love my ice cream. So.  

Mathea Ford [00:26:03] What’s your favorite kind of steak?  

Toby Amidor [00:26:06] Filet. The filet mignon that’s usually what I order out. Because usually I can find them in a smaller portion as well.  

Mathea Ford [00:26:12] Yeah like six ounce usually.  

Toby Amidor [00:26:14] I’ve even found them four ounces in a steakhouse that was Toby portions I was very happy.  

Mathea Ford [00:26:21] Well great. Toby, thank you so much for being on the podcast today. It was a pleasure to have you on the show. I know you my listeners learned a lot about meal prep and I loved a lot of your tips and ideas that you gave. So, if listeners want to connect with you what’s the best way to do that?.  

Toby Amidor [00:26:36] They can go on my web site. So, it’s Toby T-O-B-Y  Amidor A-M-I-D-O-R nutrition dot com. tobyamidornutrition.com. There’s a link to contact me and there’s also a link to my books and blog and articles and recipes so there’s a ton to poke around and learn about over there.  

Mathea Ford [00:26:55] What type of stuff do you write for Food Network?  

Toby Amidor [00:26:58] I’ve been writing I’m a founding contributor to their Healthy Eats blog. So, I write about a lot of the latest trends. I wrote about the last article that’s live right now that’s the top of the list over there is how I always follow the Mediterranean diet because my family is from the Mediterranean or from Israel. So, I discussed that. Honestly, anything and everything nutrition I talk about over there.  

Mathea Ford [00:27:22] Okay. Well, guys it’s been another great episode of the Nutrition Experts podcast. The podcast that is all about learning more so you can do more with nutrition in your life you’ve just listened to an episode of the nutrition experts podcast. 



https://media.blubrry.com/renaldiethq/p/app.pippa.io/public/streams/5aba77b58bdf7ba53cccc618/episodes/5cce161a6363ed2e7b763f77.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Email | RSS

Filed Under: Blog, Podcast Tagged With: better-nutrition, blogger, food, meal prep, nutrition, recipes, smart meal prep

Nutrition Experts Podcast Episode 52 Food Allergies for Children and More with Carina Venter, RDN, PhD

April 29, 2019 by matheaford Leave a Comment

“I am an Allergy Specialist dietitian, dealing with children and adults diagnosed with food allergies, ranging from Food Protein Enterocolitis Syndrome, Eosinophilic Gastro-intestinal diseases, other non-IgE mediated food allergies and IgE mediated food allergies. I also have a particular interest in the role of nutrition in the prevention, diagnosis and management of allergic diseases.

I obtained my BSc Dietetics degree from the University of the Free State, South Africa. Following from this, I obtained a Post Graduate Diploma in Allergy and a PhD (2007)  from the University of Southampton, United Kingdom.

I have had the wonderful opportunity of working in South Africa, the United Kingdom and in the United States. I am a  registered as a dietitian (RD) in all these countries. I currently work as an Assistant Professor of Pediatrics, Section of Allergy and Immunology at the Children’s Hospital Colorado and University of Colorado Denver School of Medicine. Previously, I was appointed as an Assistant Professor/Dietitian at Cincinnati Children’s Hospital Medical Center.

I have been one of the founder members of this International Network of Dietitians and Nutritionists in Allergy. I am also a member of the American Academy of Asthma, Allergy and Immunology (AAAAI), European Academy of Asthma, Allergy and Clinical Immunology (EAACI), British Society of Allergy and Clinical Immunology (BSACI) and the Allergy Society of South Africa (ALLSA).

I enjoy writing and I have had a number of publications in international journals.  I regularly get invitations to present at in covering a range of topics relating to nutrition and allergic diseases.

One of the highlights of my career has been my appointment to the Expert Panel of the National Institutes for Allergy and Infectious Diseases Peanut Allergy Prevention Guidelines, making me the only dietitian that has had presentation on official US and European food allergy guidelines.

I am forever indebted to the team at the David Hide Asthma and Allergy Centre on the Isle of Wight (UK) who has taught me so much…but I am still learning, every day from amazing colleagues around the world.”

Mathea Ford [00:00:29] Hi there! It’s Mathea. Welcome back to the Nutrition Expert Podcast. The podcast featuring nutrition experts who are leading the way using food starts today right now with our next guest. It’s great to have Carina Venter on the show today. Carina welcome to Nutrition Experts.  

 Carina Venter [00:00:43] Well thank you and thank you for having me. And you know there’s so much misinformation about food allergy out there that I’m quite excited to be part of this podcast to at least try and answer some of the questions or perhaps correct some of the misconceptions out there.  

Mathea Ford [00:00:59] Great! I’m excited to have you on the show and to share your expertise about allergies with my audience because I think it’s one of the things that there’s a lot of information that unless you’ve put it all together it’s probably hard to pass out the right things. So, tell my listeners a little more about you and what you do.  

Carina Venter [00:01:18] So, my official title is Assistant Professor in Allergy and Immunology, Department of Pediatrics at the University of Colorado. But I do consider myself an allergy specialist dietitian and I studied my first degree in dietetics in South Africa where I am originally from. I then moved to the United Kingdom where I did a postgraduate with my PHC in Allergy and Immunology. After that we moved to Cincinnati where I did two and a half years focusing on your eosinophilic esophagitis. A particular type of food allergy and then now located in Denver where we definitely planning to stay for the long term working in the area of food allergy prevention again which really is my passion.  

Mathea Ford [00:02:05] In case the audience didn’t notice you specialize in food allergies. So, what got you interested in that specific area? What made you want to get your degrees in allergens and immunology? That type of stuff.  

Carina Venter [00:02:18] I actually was a dietitian who loved working in nutrition support and you know in intensive care units but it so happened that we moved to the Isle of Wight where my husband got a position as a physical therapist and Allergy Specialist dietitian resigned or she because of an age and they needed to replace her. And so they asked me if I’d be happy you know to cover their food allergy clinics which I very reluctantly agreed to. But as you know my nature is often about the third clinic really not understanding anything the doctor was saying about sensitisation but not Clinical Allergy and Clinical allergy in the absence of sensitization and desensitization. I decided to enroll into the master’s degree in Food Allergy at the University of Southampton and I just totally fell in love with it. I happen to have sisters with many different kinds of food allergies also nieces and nephews with allergies so it’s definitely been something that I’ve seen in my whole family and my own family, experienced in my own family. But once I start to learn more about all the mechanisms involved in an allergy I just totally fell in love and I haven’t never looked back.  

Mathea Ford [00:03:34] So, let’s talk about in general how our food allergies diagnosed? Because I know people sometimes say they have a food allergy sometimes they say they have an intolerance. What is kind of the difference and how are they diagnosed?  

Carina Venter [00:03:47] Broadly speaking there are two types of allergies particularly in terms of food allergy. So, we have the mediated food allergies which we refer to as IgE-mediated food allergies and they normally occur within two hours of eating the food. Normally, it happens quite quickly five to 20 minutes. For these allergies, we do have taste either a skin prick test or we can do a black test the specific IgE test. But these test really should be interpreted by an allergist so I’d say my one crucial measure is I want to get across today is don’t self–diagnose. If you think you’ve got a food allergy you need to get the appropriate testing done and it needs to be done and interpreted by an allergist.  

Carina Venter [00:04:32] Then, we have the non-IgE mediated allergies which are more the delay type. They have very complex names such as eosinophilic esophagitis which is really over time food allergens causing inflammation in the esophagus and the children start having problems with growth faltering, they can’t swallow and they may have abdominal pain really depending on their age. These types of allergy eosinophic esophagitis can only be diagnosed by an endoscopy done by gastroenterologists. So, and some testing may or may not be performed to allergies it’s normally a team approach looking after these kids. So, bottom line for adults again if you think you may have one of these swallowing problems or allergies causing swallowing problems get to see an allergist and a gastroenterologist, get a good diagnosis which they can then manage with diet and medication. The other types of non-IgEfood allergies are called Food Protein Induced Enterocolitis. I’m fascinated by the disease. I see many of these young infants in clinic. I absolutely love dealing with these families and that is really profuse vomiting cause about oh occurring about two hours after eating a typical food. So, things like rice or mango or banana is also caused in some cases by milk or soy milk and the children often end up in the E.R. because they get totally dehydrated and need to get I.V. fluid. So, that’s sort of like the two main non-IgE mediated diseases. Then we get other kinds of non-IgE mediated allergies affecting the gut. Some people call them enteropathies. Some refer to as intolerances but really using the word intolerance in these cases is incorrect because they’re all mediated and caused by the immune system. And so really, we should be talking perhaps about delay type milk allergies or delay type egg allergies supposed to milk intolerances. I don’t actually deal that much with intolerances but the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases or NIAID as we do factory in the United States clearly say that these are foods trigger symptoms which is not mediated by the immune system. That could be perhaps foods causing irritable bowel syndrome or it could be foods causing lactose intolerance. But we don’t typically deal with these cases in an allergy clinic. So, we see the broad spectrum of the immediate and delayed type allergies.  

Mathea Ford [00:07:12] So, you mentioned food protein. I didn’t hear the rest of that food protein type of allergies? What was that?  

Carina Venter [00:07:18] Protein Induced Enterocolitis Syndrome. And we have abbreviation some people call it PIES and some calling FPIES but it’s basically FPIES food protein induced enterocolitis syndrome. It can be very very distressing for mothers. I’m dealing with this you can imagine the first time you give your baby baby drops or the second or even the third time and this child just starts vomiting and just do not stop until eventually you end up in the E.R.. So, a lot of food fear and delayed introduction of foods in these families that we have to deal with and quite understandably so.  

Mathea Ford [00:07:57] So, what are the allergies that in the United States for example that we put on labels that are the most common?  

Carina Venter [00:08:04] So, we have that the eight main allergens in the United States. And now this is going to be a test for me because I always seem to get one or two. But here we go. It’s milk, egg, wheat, soy and then crustacean shellfish. So, not mollusk but good or crustacean shellfish then normal fish and then peanuts and tree nuts. Quite interestingly the list of three nuts is the longest list I’ve ever seen in the world with number of foods or things listed as tree nuts like and that we probably would never eat but one of the problems is that coconut is also on this list of tree nuts. I think the FDA are currently thinking about removing this because we do not see coconut allergies amongst the tree nut allergies in clinic. And so I spend a lot of time explaining to patients that may be allergic to one or two tree nuts or even older tree nuts that even though coconut is clearly indicated as an allergen on food labels. We do not consider it to be a main allergen and they can say if you consume these.  

Mathea Ford [00:09:13] So, how are those diagnosed? Just by go into the allergist or like you said go into the E.R. and then going through a medical kind of… Is it more of an elimination or is it you said mentioned that IgE mediated ones have blood tests but the other ones don’t?  

Carina Venter [00:09:31] The other ones don’t. There is no blood test that’s going to tell you you have eosinophilic esophagitis triggered by milk and there’s no blood test that can tell you that you’ve got this fpies to get by oat. So, it’s basically in terms of eosinophilic disease, we do the endoscopy we confirm that this is what they have. And then we can take either milk or wheat out of the diet. Sometimes we take milk, egg, wheat and soy out or we could do milk, egg, wheat, soy, peanuts and tree nut so its either two foods, four foods or six foods. Some doctors start at the two and then do four and then six if needed some start at six. We clearly have a varied in-depth discussion with families to find out from them as well. Do they want to start with two or perhaps just one in which case it will be milk or do they want to start taking six out? And then we take the foods out about six to eight weeks. We do a repeat endoscopy to see if eosinophils have gone down. We normally count on them in a microscope and if they less than 15 in the area that we can see we call it the high powered field but less than 15 in that area. We say that we’ve got the remission and we’ve got control of the disease and then the difficulty start because then we put the foods back one at a time and again depending on the gastroenterologist and allergist we probably would do an endoscopy six weeks after we put each food back to see if that is the food that’s that’s causing the inflammation or whether it’s perhaps smoke and we treat getting it. Clinically, I just want to say that quite often you know we start putting milk back in the kid’s diet and the endoscopy is booked for six to eight weeks from now but after about three or four days those kids really get on well they start vomiting again not as profusely as the kids with FPIES that they get tummy ache, they lose all appetite. Which case we may not just do an endoscopy straight away we just say “let’s take milk out again you’re clearly highly symptomatic and we’re not going to put the child through the trauma of having six weeks off of food that’s clearly making him unwell.” So, sometimes in a lot of time in allergy you know it’s what the textbooks say and then there’s the clinical common sense and I’d say we definitely work closely with our families to see what’s best. So that’s that eosinophilic disease and then for the FPIES, it’s really just a medical diagnosis. We we ask which food they ate we clearly saw the symptoms we get the report from the E.R. We would not then suggest that they go try the food at home again. Normally, if we are convinced that it was oat or soy or milk we would avoid it for about six months and then we always bring them back and introduce that food in hospital because it is not something you want a mom to do at home and get to keep you know severely ill. We normally put I.V. fluids into the arms of the kids when they come in to get the food reintroduced. And again the six months could be 12 months, it could be three months. It really just depend on each case. So, no black test with a non-IgE ones and for the IgE ones the immediate ones, we have a blood test or skin test but always needs to be interpreted by an allergist. A positive test does not confirm an allergy without having a good history taken by an allergist.  

Mathea Ford [00:12:54] What concerns should the public have about the food allergies? Are they increasing? What is what is going on?  

Carina Venter [00:13:00] Food allergies are definitely increasing. I think you know I’ve published a lot in this area. I think the kind of food allergy and whether that particular food allergy is increasing is country dependent. So, our data in the United Kingdom showed that food allergy tripled in kids born in 199 versus kids born in 1997 but then it seemed to plateau looking at our kids born in 2001. And that’s really the beauty from the Isle of Wight is because we have these cohorts of children that we can follow up over generations. And so that’s data from the United Kingdom. And you know whereas in the States it seems that peanut allergy is still increasing. We’re beginning to see more Sesame allergy in the United Kingdom. We’ve been dealing with Lupin allergy in Europe a lot. Lupin is a beautiful purple flower and they mix the seed of this purple flower and they put it in flour when they make pastries or bread because it makes it light and puffy. So, we’ve been seeing a lot of lupin allergy in Europe when when I worked and lived there and we never saw lupin allergy in the United States when I first arrived here four years ago. But you can now buy bread in the normal bread aisle in King Soopers that’s got Lupin in. So, we are now beginning to think “Are we going to see more Lupin allergies? Should we start testing these kids for Lupin allergies? So.” I definitely it’s increasing but I think it’s very country specific what we should be concerned about. And also interestingly I was in Thailand last week, we read allergy is the biggest problem and we almost never see immediate dark wheat allergy in the United Kingdom. You get one out of a thousand kids. And it’s also probably not one of our main concerns in food allergy clinics and children in the United States even though we see it. So, again very much country specific with wheat allergy rates escalating at the moment in Thailand.  

Carina Venter [00:15:03] So what should the public be concerned about? I think I spent my life telling pregnant women or mothers that they haven’t done anything wrong and there was nothing else they could eat then and there was nothing that they should not have eaten. It clearly lies in the food we eat. Okay? But we we don’t really know whether it’s because we’re eating more ultra processed food. Or perhaps because we eat more barbecued foods. I can tell you all that the immune interactions of eating all these foods but. And when we do mouse models you know we get beautiful data showing perhaps we should eat less burgers but we just don’t have that data in humans. So, I think what I would like to say is this definitely an answer in food but we just don’t know what the answer is. The one answer we definitely have about food and a good friend of mine George just do a bit the LEAP study learning clearly about peanut in the United Kingdom where they clearly showed that introduction of peanut in the first year of life prevent peanut allergy and so of course from that followed the NIAID guidelines of which I was one of the panel members with instructions. If you want to read more about it we will talk about my blog a bit later. But it’s on my blog or on the NIAID website about how to introduce peanuts in the infant’s first year of life. And for parents that’s really concerned they may have another kid with a peanut allergy or they may just be concerned about the allergies will stop. They can always go and see their primary care physician or an allergist that could help facilitate this introduction of peanut. But that’s the one fact we have, he said you give peanuts early in the first year of life and you continue to eat it and you prevent peanut allergy up to the age of five. It doesn’t affect other food allergies. So, you can eat as many peanuts as you like it’s not going to stop you from developing eczema, egg allergy or rhinitis unfortunately. So, I think you know allergen specific, we’ve made a big U-turn. We used to be scared of giving these allergenic foods to young kids. We’re not scared anymore. We actively advocate you know early introduction of peanut and in terms of the other ones we say once you commit to weaning get the allergens in you know. We can set the clock to say fish has to be in by seven months and egg has to be in by 8 but definitely once you start with weaning foods, these foods should not be avoided without any good reasons and as the family eat these foods it should be introduced in the infants’ diet. So, really pregnancy I have no advice at the moment. Breastfeeding I’d say please breastfeed for as long as you can. But I can tell the breastfeeding mom how to change their diet to make a breast milk any better for prevention of allergies. And then we have the early life where we know we need to get the allergens in. But other than the peanut specific data, we don’t have other really good good studies to refer to.  

Mathea Ford [00:18:10] So, what is it that makes introducing peanut early avoid the peanut allergy?  

Carina Venter [00:18:15] So you know I think if I can put it in non immunological forms it’s sort of like just saying to the immune system it is okay. You know it’s not a foreign antigen like you know some other bad that he has to fight. Actually, the same immune system that fights worm infestations causes allergies so it’s really almost like saying to the immune system “it’s okay. You can digest and absorb it. This is not not a worm trying to come and live in your intestines.” But on a more scientific level. And when children have eczema particularly the children with eczema they have a lot of inflammation in their skin. And if they come across that allergen via their skin, the immune cells that drive that reaction is almost always. I want to say causing allergies is perhaps a strong word to say cause but what we are trying. But if you eat the food via the oral route and the allergen gets into your gut, the immune system that’s driving that is more a toleregenic immune system as we call it’s one that says “it’s okay. Let’s digest and absorb.” So, the reason we want to get allergens into children early is because by getting it via the oral route into them rather than via the skin is going to help them to tolerate the food to not be allergic. And that’s this. So, the LEAP study was really done in children with eczema. So, we have good data but when we had to write and I had guidelines it was said that you know huge discussion about it. So, is this relevant for kids with eczema only or are we going to say all kids need to get the allergens in? And pretty much all the guidelines across the world is now in agreement that it’s not just the kids with eczema. Every kids that we see we’d like to get the allergens in and keep it in and particularly in relation to peanut but again on my website I have got very practical guidance on how to feed peanut and then what to do with the allergens. How do we get egg and soy and fish into young infants.  

Mathea Ford [00:20:24] I was going to ask you is avoidance primary way we prevent food allergies but it sounds like that’s not the right way.  

Carina Venter [00:20:30] And actually you know it’s fascinating because when I started my career on the Isle of Wight, in Europe they often refer to it as the mecca of allergy prevention. And of course we did the very first study in the world where we told pregnant and breastfeeding women to avoid or to exclude the allergens from their diet and then not to give the allergens in the first year of life. And that is now almost 30 years ago. So, and it didn’t work. And so you know we’ve come a long way in the allergy world where every now saying we don’t want to avoid we want to eat. And getting back to the pregnant woman as well, as much and the breastfeeding woman the advice is not as clear as say you must eat allergens but we do clearly say don’t avoid. So, we’ve definitely stepped away from don’t avoid anything because you think it will cause allergy. Having said that I say to the pregnant lady that I see “if you absolutely detest peanut and you cannot eat it, the evidence is not good enough to say you must eat peanut. You know it’s okay. If you cannot eat it and you don’t like it, let’s wait until the guidance is strong enough to say you really should be eating peanut.”  

Mathea Ford [00:21:43] So is it normal for a child or a person with one allergy to have multiple allergies?  

Carina Venter [00:21:49] I think that is one of the biggest debates in the world. So, clinically I’d say we see more and more kids with more than one allergy. We are also trying to put a case series together where you know we used to see kids with UE that eosinophilic disease and then we used to see the kids that’s got the advice and then we used to see the kids with the immediate type allergies. Now, we’re beginning to see one child that’s got all three. So, they may have this eosinophilic disease, the inflammation in the esophagus caused by milk. They may have immediate type peanut allergy and they may have this profuse vomiting or FPIES caused by oat. And so not only do we see more and more kids with multiple food allergies we see all these multiple immune reactions with within one child which we don’t think we used to see before. The problem with prevalence data is that and I’ve done that myself you know so now you have a one year old that’s got you know a peanut and egg and a soy and perhaps a wheat allergy and that to publish your data you have to put these kids through blind challenges which means do challenges for every food. So, to really put a kid through 8 challenges just say you can count them once in a paper you know who’s ethically, I don’t think acceptable and so like in my studies I might have done the milk and the egg challenges blind. And so, I had really good data to show this kid has gotten milk and egg allergy. We also put in the paper that we think they’ve got the soy and wheat allergy but because we didn’t bring them in for these blinded challenges. Scientifically it was not good enough. And so, I think this is why we just don’t have good enough studies where we’ve put these poor kids with multiple food allergies through all these very many challenges but clinically definitely, we see more and more kids with more than one allergy and more than one immune mechanism driving all the different ones.  

Mathea Ford [00:23:43] And so why do you think that they have multiple allergies instead of like you said they can get three different kinds of allergies type thing?  

Carina Venter [00:23:52] I think you know you have two things that I’m looking at at the moment and many other people are doing much better work than me is really understanding the microbiome. And you know and how the microbiome is driving this cascade of immune diseases. So, it may again come back to the food we eat. You know that may be affecting the microbiome which is leading to just more like I almost want to say an overactive immune system. And then the other thing also is that clearly you know with this rising allergy seeming in the last 20 years. We know genetically humans haven’t changed but epigenetically, we might have changed. And so again you know in simple terms, proteins and carbohydrates can slightly change your DNA. So, we don’t change your genetics but we do change sort of like let’s say carbohydrates tail so perhaps protein tails that attach themselves to the gene. So, it’s a very simplistic way of saying this. And that has definitely changed over the years. And so that may silence some of your genes or it may actually make some of your genes more active and we think that that once again could be leading to this overactive immune system. There are many things that can affect your epigenetics and your microbiome other than food could be air pollution. Some of my colleagues are actually just looking at the vapors that you inhale from your sofa and how that affects your genetics. Your obesity levels that can affect your epigenetics and it affects the same signals in many ways as the ones causing allergies. So, it’s really where we sit, what we breathe in, what we eat, how active we are, how obese we are. So, there’s this many different factors that that we have to take into account when we try and figure out why do we see more allergies. Why are they more complex and why are they perhaps more severe?  

Mathea Ford [00:25:56] So, thinking about parents of maybe young children wanting to either avoid allergies or prevent food allergies. How do they how do they go about doing that? And I know you mentioned some early introduction stuff. But are there any other ways that you can prevent or avoid food allergies showing up?  

Carina Venter [00:26:18] This is what I would say to the family. I would say to the pregnant women I am hoping that one day I’ll prove just healthy eating in pregnancy helps prevent allergies. And so, I think in terms of pregnancy diet, eat as healthy as you can and if you have morning sickness and you can only eat dry toast for three months then it’s okay you know. But try and get on a healthy diet as soon as you can. I say breastfeed. This is low and little evidence to say that breastfeeding per say prevents allergies but it’s more protective for positive than negative. And we always want moms to breastfeed. And then the other interesting thing is and we don’t have these trials completed or very conclusive data is that we have to moisturize the skin off children because I explained to you that we now have eczema and they come in contact with the allergens it can cause allergies. So, we now say “look after your baby’s skin and let’s moisturize well” and so whether that needs to be creams or emollient or whether just putting some oil on it. You know we’re still studying but definitely look after your baby skin and discuss how to do that with with an allergist or dermatologists in this case and then we say don’t introduce solids before four months but from four months on if the baby’s ready to eat start introducing solid foods when they’ve had one or two foods then that is when we start introducing the peanut. And when we get them established on peanuts. For about two weeks then you can start introducing the other allergens.  

Carina Venter [00:27:54] Getting back to the peanut, for the kids with eczema. We we have sort of strict advice where we say try to get the peanuts in three times a week in a dose of 2 gram of peanut protein and it’s about the heat teaspoon of peanut butter to make it simple but they want the exact dosaging they can again go on the NIAID website or they can go on my webite where I’ve explained that my blog. So, that’s the peanut then we get the allergens in. Something else and I’m actually just I’ve just I’m just writing my paper it’s like right there next to me. We have one study published by Caroline Rogaine from Multicenter, a study in Europe where they showed that diet diversity. So, the more different foods kids eat in the first year of life the less likely they are to develop food allergy in particular in this one study. My data sort of like indicating the same but I still have to go through the interview and my paper needs to get accepted. But so, I also cited appearances. Don’t be scared of food. You know we’ve started weaning now we’re going to we’ve done the allergens that keep the diet varied you know. And once again you know many kids have and as we call it in England fatty eating behavior or in America they call about picky eating. I say “don’t get in the stress because they won’t eat tomato. It’s okay. But if they love food then feed the variety of foods that they like and love you know as often as you can. And don’t forget that sometimes the key test to eat foods up to depending on the paper you look at 13 to 20 times before they will accept the food. So, no keep the spinach for the first time and think this is amazing.” They got all their faces and spit it out but persevere. You know unless you can eat at least 20 times. Don’t give up. So, I think because I like to give parents a positive message about what to give and what to focus on on a more negative side, we could perhaps say don’t give too much commercial baby foods because they sterile so there’s no natural microbial load on the food. You know there’s not such a diverse range of food. We could say don’t give your kids  too much fried foods because our mouse model data show that giving too much fried foods can negatively affect the immune system but rather than giving them a list of what not to do I really try and focus on the good things in life and the things that we know more about and then off to the first year of life you know this is nothing much we know there’s some limited data showing that key to eat a Mediterranean lifestyle diet have less reason asthma but it’s not really being shown for things like eczema food allergy or rhinitis. So, again healthy eating, Mediterranean style eating you know if they love tomatoes feed that to them use olive oil if you can. If they love fish give it to them and they don’t like it keep offering it. Yeah so. So that’s the kind of things that I think families can do. And I’m not an expert in what we call environmental allergens so some people say having a dog is a good thing. But but that’s not my area of expertise so I wouldn’t venture on that.  

Carina Venter [00:31:17] You’re just all about the food? 

Carina Venter [00:31:18] Yes. And I love my dog so I’d like to keep a dog so I let you prove insensitive but like I said it’s not my expertise.  

Mathea Ford [00:31:28] Dogs are good for more than an allergy prevention. So. Yeah.  

Carina Venter [00:31:31] Definitely.  

Mathea Ford [00:31:33] So, you mentioned a little bit but what other research is promising in this area of food allergies that maybe people should be aware of and be on the lookout for?  

Carina Venter [00:31:43] I’m not myself involved in these studies but my my boss as I call him Dr. David Fleischer is very involved as on many allergists around the world that I know in what we OIT or oral immunotherapy studies. So, this is this may be a kid with a peanut allergy or a wheat allergy. Having said that I have been involved in some of the trials. So, we will give them grated peanut introduction in the hospital up to a certain dose and then we will ask them to go home and to continue to eat that amount of peanut let’s say for two to four weeks or six months or twelve months depending on the clinical practice in the study then they come into hospital and we give them a little bit higher dose and another little bit higher dose and they go home and they continue eating that. So that over time you can gradually induce tolerance to this food either the egg or the wheat or the peanut. All many private practicing allergists that’s already doing this and then I’m based on most academic centers we are only doing it as part of research studies. We’re not really just bringing kids into clinic and we feed them these allergens because you know there are risks involved in doing this and the majority of children that go through these trials of introduction will have a reaction at some point. But the good thing is that we can get them at least tolerant to a small amount. They may never get to the point where they’re going to eat a handful of peanuts or three Snickers bars but we can get to the point where somebody by accident put peanut containing sauce on their food know. That just taking a bite may not cause a reaction and they don’t have to be concerned about things that says may contain traces of peanuts or may contain traces of smoke. So, that’s a one–time oral immunotherapy where we literally feed them the food. Then the other trials that we are involved in, catch these trials so we place a patch containing peanut allergen. We know most about that but then you know we’re probably going to go towards egg and milk patches as well so that have the allergen on this patch which you put on the shelves. And I think back on. I haven’t actually placed there myself and they wear these for a certain amount of time and they come back and we do a challenge to see how much of the food they can tolerate with the patches in particular they never going to get to the point where they will eat the allergen but the patches can protect them from accidental exposure. So, somebody might have contaminated something and they definitely don’t have to then worry about making traces anymore. Like I said you know the patch trials are mainly we have good data for the peanut. My my boss Dr. Fleischer was first author of the paper in the middle of the American Medical Association about a month ago. And of course, with the patches we have less side effects. So, the kids don’t seem to have the reactions that they have with the oral immunotherapy.  

Carina Venter [00:34:53] How do you choose which one you want? Spend a good two hours with your allergist discussing you know your family circumstances. We look at things like how much support do they do? You know if you have a kid like mine that spends like six hours a day almost in a swimming pool, patches perhaps not the best option. So, we look at this sport. We look at where do you go on vacation. We look at how dedicated you are. Are you going to give that dose of peanuts every every time you’re supposed to? Or are you most suitable for a patch? How scared families are with treating accidental actions which we know we will get with the oral immunotherapy make so with the patch and also what they want at the end of the day. Do they want the key to be able to eat two peanuts? Or are they just concerned about the may contain traces eating food. So, these are really the things that the allergist can talk to you about and then families can make an informed decision. But I say this is the most exciting thing other than the early introduction of peanut you know is these studies showing us that we can change the immune system. The one trial that I am very biased. I love the trial. What they’ve done in Australia where they’ve given the kids peanuts the greatest introduction plus a probiotic and actually really great results. They are now doing a follow up of this study so because again you know perhaps there is a place for thinking can we fix the microbiome and we can fix the allergen intake and that together perhaps it might have a better and quicker effect than just feeding a probiotic or just giving them the allergen. So, in early days but exciting times and I really hope that we will get to the point where one day we can help all children who outgrow their energies to some extent.  

Mathea Ford [00:36:46] I think something that all of that discussion that we do you just kind of brought out about the trials made me think about how difficult is it to live with a food allergy. Is it easier now than it was before? Is it is it just a worry all the time is it?  

Carina Venter [00:37:04] How complicated is it to live with a food allergy that will really depend on on the family you talk to. You know I am when people say to me what what’s the biggest thing you’ve learned in working with food allergy for the past 20 years. As I say I’ve learned that every family has defined their comfort zone. And that comfort zone is very different for every family. I have mothers who would literally not go and feed that baby unless I read the labels of five products which I think is safe and they go home and they feed just those five foods for at least two weeks. And then so I see them regularly and it takes us a long time to get their confidence back to cook again you know adapt their recipes and then I get families where kids would have had a very similar reaction to the one, I was just talking about. But family is not concerned at all. They’re very laid back about it. They’re not concerned. I think you know it’s really up to every family to see how they’re based on to deal with it. But the standard advice we have to give every family is how to read labels, which foods are safe, which foods are good replacement foods. Give them an epinephrine prescription. Teach them how to use it and also teach extended family and friends if if that may be necessary. Just getting back to day to day living with food allergy. I’m not sure necessarily if it’s getting easier. There’s definitely more availability of allergen free foods. And more variety but I think that also leads to more label checking and getting a little bit more confused. We have a classic example yesterday when my husband was shopping and the lady couldn’t read very well and she said to my husband that her son is gluten, has celiac disease but she sees this is egg pasta. And so, can he just read because she thinks this should be fine because it’s made from egg. Well of course egg best still has the wheat in. He took it to the aisle which he could find the gluten free food. So, I think the more you know the more foods they are in the more new products coming out in many ways it could get more confusing. But I have to say that they are now and I don’t really want to mention the brands and number of an allergen free ranges where I can say to my patients if you go on that website every single thing you ordered will be free from all the top eight allergens. And they guarantee that on the website. So, for them at least there’s now some sort of safety haven which I didn’t have 10 years ago. So, I think in some ways easier I think in some ways more difficult. Quite frankly label reading is a nightmare. You know front of pack is not covered by their federal laws so you can put on the front of pack smoke free and then on the back it may say contain two types of milk proteins casein and beta lactic globulin. Legally, they’ve done nothing wrong because all that needs to be correct is the information that on the ingredient list. What you put on the front of back is fine. You know it’s not legally binding so some people may see on a label kosher friendly and think it won’t have milk in or it may say vegan friendly and think they may be no egg or milk in but if you check the ingredients it’s still in there. Another nightmare is I can talk rad labels forever. Peanut oil. So, we say to our patients they can have refined peanut oil but they can’t have their Expeller Pressed or the cold pressed peanut oil. But majority of products when they actually list peanut oil will not actually say which type it is. So, then you have to call that company to find out. So, in many ways getting easier but also still many questions.  

Mathea Ford [00:40:59] Yeah, I didn’t realize that a lot of like food restaurants use peanut oil to fry and that can be a huge issue obviously…  

Carina Venter [00:41:10] But you know I think again if if it was standard let’s say if all restaurants use the unrefined peanut oil like the Expeller Pressed then we could just say to our patients never eat anything in a restaurant that contains peanut oil. But the truth is that the majority of restaurants use that refined peanut oil which is perfectly okay. But it’s more like perhaps when you go to like a gourmet restaurant or go to Asian restaurant where they may be using that cold pressed oil so once again the patient needs to be detective. And like I say to them “always check, always ask. Never put anything in your mouth unless you’ve checked and you’ve asked.” Said that never goes away.  

Mathea Ford [00:41:54] So, thinking about just the general public or the listeners to this show what sort of information, how can they use the information we’ve talked about today in their day to day life? Whether they’re counseling patients or just going about their day.  

 Carina Venter [00:42:10] Okay. So, I’ll first do prevention. They know their management. I think I’ve summarized prevention very little we know about pregnancy, breastfeeding and early life. You know when you do meet parents that still trying to avoid any allergen ever created. And I think you’re in a good place to say now you know people don’t avoid these things anymore. Perhaps you want to go see your allergist or PCP to discuss introduction of allergenic food. I think if you have a friend with a kid with terrible eczema, get them to go see a dermatologist or an allergist because treating eczema early in life is probably one of the most important things we can do. So, that’s that. Then in terms of management I would say if you have a friend or a family member. That has an allergy you’re aware know exactly what they need to avoid ask them. That’s my number one thing always says. Ask them if they avoid things that say may contain traces or produced in a factory. It’s a long discussion but basically every allergy gives different advice and every family makes different decisions. So some people avoid it and some don’t because at least if you then have to buy food for them you have to know which foods to look out for. If you have to cook for somebody with a food allergy you don’t have to sort of like get the sanitizing agency to come and clean your house. You know it’s just good cleaning particularly with a household cleaner can get rid of any allergen if you’ve washed your dishes. Now if some folks in a washing machine or dish washing machine then that’s fine. So just clean your house and remove the allergen so that the person feels safer. If you look off the younger ones with food allergies. I would say it is highly highly important to know how to give the epinephrine and to know what symptoms of food allergy looks like. So, I’m quite active on Twitter and one of the tweets that came out yesterday is that we have to understand how young children communicate they’re having an allergic reaction. And so, some children will just start to act out of character maybe a very chatty playful kid that goes in sitting the corner go very silent all of a sudden. That’s huge change in behavior. We need to be aware of that. Sometimes they sort of like scratching their mouth and try and look like they’re trying to pull their tongue out and they say “this food itches me.” So that’s another sign they may be an allergic reaction. So, important to talk to the mom and the dad. Ask in the past when that reaction how did they present? I think you noticed it’s just being mindful that perhaps especially teenagers they don’t really want to talk about their allergies you know perhaps. They not telling you they’re coming for a sleepover and they can’t have milk and when everybody’s eating pizza, they may just say I’m not hungry or not to eat but deep down they may be absolutely panic stricken that somebody is going to be touching with the cheese. Some children are concerned to that extent or they may be concerned about all the pots of yogurt lying around. So, I do think it is. Ask them what their comfort zone looks like and try and behave within that.  

Mathea Ford [00:45:26] That’s great advice. As for thinking about the teenagers because I have a couple of teenagers. They just don’t want to be different so they don’t want to be called out to be anything different.  

Carina Venter [00:45:36] It’s interesting my daughter has a friend with an almond allergy and for her birthday they went to like something kitchen. You know where they all cook their own food. And she particularly chose this place because they’re very allergen aware. But this girl repeatedly asked her not to make an announcement about that almond allergy and not to tell everybody that she chose that place because of her allergy. And it’s that teenagers can be very very sensitive about that. And the other thing is we actually had in the 20 years I left on the Isle of Wight we had two deaths due to food allergy. But the one was a teenage boy who had a meal from a Chinese restaurant which he used to order from that chain where he lived and just north of London came to the Isle of Wight south of London thinking the ingredients would be the same. Even though the dish in the chain was the same it had some peanut in and he had his girlfriend with him. And when he felt that he starts to react he didn’t want her to see him with the hives and the swollen eyes and lips and he went to hide in the bathroom and died on the way to the hospital. So, once again you know if you have a teenager you’re working with or even a child with a food allergy and all of a sudden they just disappear and lock a door. Get in there because that perhaps just hiding because they don’t want people to see them having the reaction.  

Mathea Ford [00:47:05] All right. So, the question I always ask my guests at the end is what’s your favorite food? We’ve talked about a lot of foods. So, what is your favorite food?  

 Carina Venter [00:47:14] Oh! Spinach.  

Mathea Ford [00:47:18] How do you cook it? Or do you cook it?  

Carina Venter [00:47:21] No you know I think so. I’m South African and the way that we cook spinach is we we cook the spinach with some onion and some potato and then we mash it all up. If you want to go for the very unhealthy version you can put a lot of butter in that with a lot of salt and a lot of pepper. But in my house it would just be the spinach you know with the onion and the potato and you know a little bit of pepper. But it doesn’t mean that I don’t like the ones the way my grandparents used to cook with way too much salt and butter on top as well. But I think all over you know I just I know how awfully simple food. You know I like steak but again chose my South African heritage. I like a good quality steak as well. And it’s good for the iron too.  

Mathea Ford [00:48:12] Great! Well Carina thank you so much for being on the podcast today. It was a pleasure to have you on the show. I know my listeners learned a lot about food allergies and just kind of living with them and what’s coming next. So, if listeners want to connect with you what’s the best way to do that?  

Carina Venter [00:48:27] I am on Twitter. My name and last name the wrong way around. So, I’m @VenterCarina on Twitter because there is already another Carina Venter. And I also have my own blog Carina Ventre online they can immediately just by going on the blog or you know like my kids would say just google head you know say hey and most academics have the e-mails know on display on the Internet. You’re very welcome to e-mail me as well.  

 Mathea Ford [00:48:56] Well guys this has been another great episode of the nutrition experts podcast. The podcast that is all about learning more so you can do more with nutrition in your life. Thank you.  

 Carina Venter [00:49:07] Thank you for having me.  

 

 

 

https://media.blubrry.com/renaldiethq/p/app.pippa.io/public/streams/5aba77b58bdf7ba53cccc618/episodes/5cc3d02752f8fd3d4e4845f9.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Email | RSS

Filed Under: Blog, Podcast Tagged With: Carina Venter, Enteropathies, Eosinophilic Esophagitis, Food Allergies for Children, Food Protein Induced Enterocolitis

Nutrition Experts Podcast Episode 51 Feeding The Hungry and Teaching Life Skills with Carmen Berry, RD, LD, MPH

April 22, 2019 by matheaford Leave a Comment

Carmen Berry, MPH, RD, LD is a registered dietitian and public health professional located in St. Louis, Missouri. From a young age, Carmen has always been interested in food – whether it was eating, cooking for others, trying new restaurants, or experimenting with innovative recipes! Starting in elementary school she attended food preparation classes all the way through college. With a dream of a career where she could help others, she gathered all her strengths and interests and dived into dietetics.

Since graduating with her master’s degree in public health, she is committed to improving the health of her community. Carmen has a strong passion for cooking, nutrition, and helping others with an overall goal of busting the myth that healthy eating is always expensive, time consuming, or tasteless. She currently works for an independent hunger relief organization called Operation Food Search.

Carmen is responsible for leading the nutrition education team to facilitate and build skills and knowledge that lead to sustained healthy eating habits in the community through hands-on cooking classes, interactive grocery store tours, cooking demonstrations, nutrition presentations, and other nutrition education outreach events. She works collaboratively with the entire Operation Food Search organization to ensure all nutrition education efforts align and integrate with the overall strategic goals, metrics, and outcomes.

Prior to joining Operation Food Search, Carmen worked for a corporate food service company and developed the entire nutrition department and implemented various corporate wellness programs throughout the St. Louis area to improve the health status of adults in the workforce.

Mathea Ford [00:00:28] Hi there! It’s Mathea. Welcome back to the Nutrition Experts Podcast. The podcast featuring nutrition experts who are leading the way using food starts today right now with our next guest. It’s great to have Carmen Berry on the show today. Carmen welcome to Nutrition Experts.

Carmen Berry [00:00:44] Thanks for having me. I’m excited to be here.

Mathea Ford [00:00:46] I am so excited to have you on the show and share expertise with my tribe. So, you do something that not a lot of dietitians know about or get to be involved in. So, I would love you to tell my listeners a little more about you and what you do.

Carmen Berry [00:01:01] Sure. So, from a young age I’ve always been interested in food and science. I grew up in a very health conscious and science oriented family which really helped to transform me into who I am today. So, starting in elementary school I really attended food preparation classes all the way through college. So, I can’t ever remember the first class I took but after graduate with a Bachelor’s Degree in Medical Dietetics which in my eyes is like the combination of food and science is like the best career ever. I started working for a food service company. I’ve always had a passion for cooking, nutrition and helping others but I really felt like I was missing something in my life. I wanted to make a positive impact on my community and on the lives of others. So, I decided to pursue higher education so I got my Master’s Degree in Public Health and I started at my current job here at Operation Food Search where I’m committed to improving the health of my community through programs designed to help build long term skills that help families shop for and prepare healthy nutritious meals on a budget.

Mathea Ford [00:02:01] So, that sounds like a great variety of stuff that you do and you sound like you had a change of heart and you really wanted to start working with community. And you’re in St. Louis, Missouri and you talked about Operation Food Search that you work for so can you tell us what that is and what they do?

Carmen Berry [00:02:19] Sure. So, Operation Food Search is an independent hunger relief organization. We’re dedicated to healing hunger and strengthening our community. We work to feed over 200,000 individuals monthly and one third of those are children through a distribution network of more than 300 community partners in Missouri and Illinois counties. So, we’re more than just a food bank. So, we were established in 1981 to tackle the growing problem of hunger in St. Louis. But we have the mission to nourish and educate our neighbors in need to heal the hurt of hunger. Really to accomplish that mission, we’ve expanded our function beyond food distribution to include nutrition education programs which are created to empower families with the skills they need to produce low cost nutritious foods for their families. These impacts thousands of lives every year because hunger is a very real problem in our area and Operation Food Search provides that solution through 3 program focus areas. So, meeting the immediate need which is the food distribution, building nutrition IQ which is that nutrition education and championing change where we work with the Missouri state legislators to be the voice of our community in their capital.

Mathea Ford [00:03:29] So, you said something about a distribution network, so you receive food and then you distribute it out to.. You said you’re more than just a food bank but in that way you’re like a food bank?

Carmen Berry [00:03:41] Yes. So we are a food bank and we receive food from various donor donors. So, it could be like different grocery stores or large food distributors, individual donors like we do a lot of food drives or we give non-perishable food donated here and we distribute it out from our warehouse out to different food pantries or soup kitchens or community shelters in the St. Louis and over in Illinois as well.

Mathea Ford [00:04:06] Where do you get money to pay all the staff and obviously you’re getting the food donated but people are working. So, is it government funded? Is it do you get grants? How does that work?

Carmen Berry [00:04:18] So Operation Food Search is not under the Feeding America umbrella. We are an independent organization. So, we receive money from grants and from private donors.

Mathea Ford [00:04:28] Great! So, you guys are making change in St. Louis and the surrounding area. What is your role at Operation Food Search?

Carmen Berry [00:04:39] So, we talked about those three program focus areas. I am under the the area of building nutrition IQ. So, I am the manager of the Nutrition Education Program so I’m responsible for leading the nutrition education team to facilitate and build skills and knowledge that lead to sustained healthy eating habits in the community. And that’s through hands on cooking classes, interactive grocery store tours, cooking demonstrations, nutrition presentations and other nutrition education outreach events. So, again we’re not just here to provide food for the community but we really provide the education for people to choose healthy and affordable meals so it gives them the long term skills to feed their entire family versus just providing the food.

Mathea Ford [00:05:21] Did they initially start as just a food bank and then develop this additional information based on a realization that it was lacking?

Carmen Berry [00:05:30] Yes. Because the issue that we have seen is that when you just provide food. It’s like that saying I always say it wrong when you give a man a fish eats for a day. If you teach a man to fish eats for a lifetime.

Mathea Ford [00:05:42] That’s close. Yeah. Yeah that sounds close enough.

Carmen Berry [00:05:47] But basically with that saying we didn’t want to keep feeding the line. We want to end the line of hunger. So, our goal is really to eliminate hunger in the St. Louis area and simply providing food will not eliminate hunger. It is providing other resources. We really are looking upstream and providing that nutrition education and sometimes providing things that people don’t even think about. Like resources or affordable housing. Maybe they don’t have a car to drive or they can’t find a job. So, it’s finding them other resources in our community. We partner with a lot of different organizations to provide those resources on top of the nutrition education that we personally provide.

Mathea Ford [00:06:26] Are there other organizations like what you guys do in St. Louis and other large cities in the United States or do you know about them?

Carmen Berry [00:06:33] I don’t know about them. So, we have other food banks here. There’s other hunger relief organizations. I know there’s one here in St. Louis that focuses on people with like HIV and AIDS and provides food and nutrition education for those individuals. We also have another food bank here in St. Louis that provides food under the Feeding America umbrella but there are a lot of food banks across the country that have these innovative programs that we are… We like to think that we’re on the cutting edge. Provide the most innovative program and we definitely have partnered with others to kind of share ideas and get information on what works for them or doesn’t work for them.

Mathea Ford [00:07:16] Can you talk a little bit more specifically about the work you do with teaching low income families how to plan and to shop for food?

Carmen Berry [00:07:26] Our nutrition education team does a lot of one time events and we call these ou nutrition and wellness services. So, we do a cooking demonstrations which can be elaborate as a whole step by step presentation. I’m preparing a recipe. Sometimes it’s just as simple as providing nutrition education like a discussion and a recipe sampling. But we also do one time interactive cooking classes which empowers participants with the skills and confidence they need to make healthy delicious and affordable meals at home. So, they’re really learning hands on how to prepare a recipe or two and they learn meal preparation techniques all hands on. We do nutrition presentations where we simply just talk about nutrition topics. Maybe it’s getting picky eaters to eat fruits and vegetables or one of our dietitians might talk about how to manage a chronic disease but we don’t provide food samples with those. We also do food pantry focused education so we offer free of charge to our community food partners which again are food pantries, soup kitchens, shelters. We provide onsite cooking demonstrations, recipe samplings, nutrition lessons, nutrition education materials. These are all free of charge and really tailored to their particular site. Lastly, we do which is one of the main programs is other Cooking Matters program which is under the National Organization Share Our Strength which works to end childhood hunger in the United States.

Mathea Ford [00:08:51] So, can you talk a little bit more about what the Cooking Matters program is?

Carmen Berry [00:08:55] Operation Food Search is the Missouri affiliate for the program. We partner with other organizations across the state to teach classes so we kind of facilitate with them. But here in St. Louis, I have a trained staff of four staff members to which are dietitians to lead classes here in the St. Louis area. So, we teach both cooking classes and grocery store tours which is called Cooking Matters at the Store. So, the thought process with this is that kids need good food to grow up healthy and Cooking Matters is helping to end childhood hunger by inspiring families to make healthy affordable food choices. So, these programs teach parents and caregivers with a limited food budget to shop for and cook healthy meals. So, there’s two programs under this umbrella. It’s a hands on cooking courses which is a six week in-depth hands on course and Cooking Matters at the Store because families on a tight budget report that the cost of healthy groceries is the biggest barrier to making healthy meals at home. So, we teach them how to shop for healthy foods in their grocery store.

Mathea Ford [00:09:59] So, do you guys have any measures? Obviously, you do grants so you do a lot of measurements I’m sure in reporting. But do you have any measure of the impact of your Cooking Matters program with your community?

Carmen Berry [00:10:11] Sure. So we do a pre and post surveys for all of our six week classes and the Cooking Matters at the Store one time tours. But the Cooking Matters completed a long term impact study on the six week program and found that families are cooking meals more often at home as well as making their meals healthier and more budget friendly. Families are also eating healthier which puts them at lower risk for diet related diseases like obesity, diabetes, heart disease and cancer. They found that three months after the course, families are eating more fruit and six months after the course they’re eating more vegetables. When they are shopping families are purchasing low sodium options,, low fat dairy lean protein and whole grains and they’re more confident that they’ll be able to afford enough food because they learned how to plan meals how to shop with the list and how to find those low cost healthy items using unit pricing. And this was all the long term study was looking at six week or six months after they completed the six week course.

Mathea Ford [00:11:11] When I grew up my family sat around a table and ate dinner and talked and I did that with my children now. But I actually even have started teaching them how to just cook simple things or whatever but I imagine that that’s a little bit of a challenge in a low income household especially if they’re working. Mom and dad maybe working shifts, maybe a single mother, you know different ages of kids coming home at different times. So, do you help them with that type of challenge to get them to cook together?

Carmen Berry [00:11:41] The Cooking Matters focuses is different curriculum. There’s adults, there’s families courses and parents courses in the families course actually learning together. So, the kids and the parents are in a class together and they’re learning how to prepare healthy foods at home together so like they’ll have the kids maybe grate the carrot put into the tacos or grate the cheese and then the parent is interacting with the kids so they’re both learning together how to make healthy meals to eat at home. And there is a way bigger impact when you’re talking to the entire family vs. just talking to the kids or just talking to one person.

Mathea Ford [00:12:20] When I saw something on the news the other day that was encouraging for me because I have a 13 year old teen who’s a very picky eater and they said that when they learn eating healthy or whatever they learn you know in the six to 10 year old range. Even if they stray away from it, a lot of times in adulthood they go back to those healthier choices. So, the rebellious teen years so it’s good to start young and get them used to eating those foods. I know my kids eat a variety of fruits and vegetables just because I think they were exposed to them at a young age.

Carmen Berry [00:12:57] Yes I can definitely say. Like my parents like when I was growing up they were very into healthy eating and that had a huge impact on my interest and knowledge about healthy eating. But I used to hate Brussel sprouts and I love Brussel sprouts because I remember they used to make them all the time but they were just like boil them. Not great. But now when they’re like roasted in the oven they’re delicious and sometimes it’s just having the kids and even the parents tried variations of vegetables or fruits so they never thought they liked and then they realize that they do like it and sometimes it’s even teaching the parents how to hide produce into foods. It’s like I was saying about the having the kids grate the carrot that we actually put that into Taco meat and it kind of disappears because you have it simmering with the tomatoes and the sauce and the seasonings and when it’s grated like on a box grater it just disappears into the meat but they’re getting all those nutrients, all the fiber.

Mathea Ford [00:13:49] That’s a wonderful idea. Let’s talk back to about the foods that your organization distributes. What types of foods do you typically distribute?

Carmen Berry [00:13:59] So, we collect and distribute over three million dollars worth of food on a monthly basis to our various community partners. So, again that’s both in Missouri and Illinois. Over half of the food that we distribute includes fresh items and we’re. Our goal is to include more and more of these fresh items as fresh produce, dairy, it’s meat, it’s freshly packaged foods and we also distribute non-perishable food items and some non food items too like personal care items and winter coats because when somebody is food insecure they might not have their budget to purchase toilet paper for the whole month or sanitary products. So, we are providing them with other resources that they need. So, again we’re a food bank so we don’t distribute directly to the community but through our partnership of our community food partners.

Mathea Ford [00:14:47] So, how much food does a person get? And does it vary based on you know like how many family members they have or their income?

Carmen Berry [00:14:55] It definitely varies on the family members they have. And this is up to our food pantries. So, we typically do not have necessarily a say in what the food pantry distributes and not all of our pantries have enough cooler space or freezer space to even be able to distribute fresh produce or frozen meats. So, there might be solely focused on the non-perishable food items like canned goods and box pastas. So, it really varies on the food pantry itself and we are trying to find those partners in the community that have the space and have the capacity to be open multiple times so we can be able to distribute those fresh healthy items because again we’re trying to end hunger and having a pantry that’s open once a month on a Wednesday afternoon might not be ending hunger.

Mathea Ford [00:15:45] So, then do you work with your partner agencies to help find where you need to teach these courses to do the Cooking Matters? Do you distribute information through them?

Carmen Berry [00:15:55] We actually are kind of doing a grassroots method of trying to get to our community food partners. So, here at Operation Food Search so we do distributions out of our warehouse. So, that’s where the different community food partners come and pick up food from us. So, they come here Monday through Thursday and four times a month one of our nutrition education team members is actually out in the warehouse doing a cooking demonstration. So, when the food pantries are coming to pick up their food items we are out there featuring a recipe, utilizing ingredients being distributed that day. So, we’re encouraging the food pantries to take what they learn and bring it back to the clients in their food pantry so they pick up recipe cards and flyers to kind of distribute with the food item. Sometimes they receive some unique produce like a daikon radish or eggplants people don’t know how to prepare. So, we are out there showing them that it’s delicious and easy. And here’s a recipe.

Mathea Ford [00:16:58] So, what are some of the limitations related to food and cooking in this population that people might not realize?

Carmen Berry [00:17:07] So, it was pretty eye opening for me. So, even as a dietitian like we learn a lot about food insecurity. But coming into this role I still have a lot to learn. I came from a for profit company worked in food service but some of the big limitations that we run into is that people don’t have the adequate equipment so maybe it’s cooking equipment like bowls and spoons. But it also could be their larger equipment like maybe their stove isn’t working or their refrigerator is broken so they can’t store perishable food items. And then also it could be things like simple cooking skills that many people think are common knowledge that people don’t know how to properly cut a bell pepper or an onion. They don’t know how to measure ingredients or follow a recipe. So, it’s providing those simple cooking skills that people you think people know but really don’t.

Mathea Ford [00:18:01] That makes a lot of sense as far as the adequate equipment because they may be having things repaired if it’s their responsibility then obviously you pick between what is most important and maybe they have a microwave too so they decide to use the microwave for a little while or something.

Carmen Berry [00:18:19] Sometimes they’re sharing a kitchen space with other families and maybe this other family has the kitchen they’ll use and they’re in a bedroom in the basement or they’re like in temporary housing and they don’t have the proper equipment. There’s a lot of different factors that could go into it. And there’s also kind of unique limitation that we run into. So, we currently teach a lot of kids and teens classes in after school programs. And one of the major limitations we kind of run into during these classes is the fact that we’re not reaching the parents or educating the children, educating the teens so they enjoy learning about healthy eating. They can try these unique fruits and vegetables and make healthy food but then they go home and they’re being served by fast food or processed junk foods so they might not have a say in what food they’re purchased at the store or prepared at home which they kind of makes our nutrition education an intervention not as impactful. So, when the caregivers or the head of the household is educated on healthy eating they may have more of an impact on the entire family since they’re the ones that are grocery shopping, preparing the meals, providing the food. So, we’re trying to have a goal in our department is to reach more of the adults and teach the families or parents focus classes. So then the head of the household is learning these tasks and can kind of impact the entire family.

Mathea Ford [00:19:41] How do you come up with the recipes that you make for these food pantry recipients or probably some days it’s like Iron Chef. Here’s five different random ingredients, go ahead and make something but how do you come up with the right kind of recipes that they can use that is flexible enough you know obviously with different equipment?

Carmen Berry [00:20:01] So, we do a lot of what we call recipe frameworks where you can really use whatever produce you have and kind of make your own dish. But we also when we’re coming up with a kind of specific recipes we always look for ingredients in their whole form. So, whether it’s like carrots like you buy the whole carrots instead of the shredded carrots. You buy a whole block of cheese instead of shredded cheese because this is all keeping it low cost. We try to use easy to find ingredients because sometimes people live in a food desert and they might not have access to a grocery store that has all these bountiful ingredients. So, we try to find that easy to find ingredients that maybe a corner store will have or a limited grocery store would contain. We try to use ingredients that could be used in multiple meals and snacks. So, if a recipe calls for a half of a eggplant I don’t know that we would want to be able to use the ingredients and other meals. So we try to use those common ingredients that they could utilize in different forms. We use dried herbs and spices instead of fresh. They last longer, they’re less expensive and we also limit the number of ingredients in our recipes. So, then they don’t have to buy 20 different ingredients to make one pasta dish. When you can make it just as tasty dish with five ingredients. We also again try to make it nutritious. So, a variety of colors and forms of fruits and vegetables whole grains. We limit added sugars, limit sodium and saturated fat and we use multiple food groups. We also limit the use of special equipment. Not everybody has blenders or food processors. And finally we try to make it quick to prepare and easy and simple to follow and understand.

Mathea Ford [00:21:42] Sounds like it’s a challenge in itself to kind of get on with all those things but…

Carmen Berry [00:21:47] It’s a fun challenge.

Mathea Ford [00:21:49] Yeah!

Carmen Berry [00:21:49] It’s when we get random ingredients, we’re kind of work as a team to kind of find recipes that we think people would like and we know what kind of population we’re serving. So, I keep that in mind too it’s like we’re tailoring a recipe to the population we’re serving. It’s not always possible like if we’re going to get daikon radish and we have a whole palate of it. We don’t know what people can do with it. We try to find easy and delicious recipes.

Mathea Ford [00:22:16] You mentioned food deserts and I know what those are but maybe you could help explain to the listeners kind of what that means.

Carmen Berry [00:22:23] Yeah. So food desert is an area in the community where there is not enough access to healthy and affordable foods. So, whether it is grocery stores or restaurants like some areas of St. Louis that literally have no food available anywhere except maybe like a gas station or a corner market and then others we call them almost food swamps where all that’s found are gas stations and fast food restaurants. So, there is no healthy food items available. So, a food desert is one where there is no food and a food swamp is where there’s a lot of unhealthy food.

Mathea Ford [00:23:02] I think I learned something a couple of years ago. I went to a Red Cross event and they were talking about food deserts and something that had never occurred to me was that some people do all their grocery shopping in a place like a dollar store. So, like a Dollar General or a Family Dollar, they have food and you know they may not always have. They usually don’t even have fresh foods, fresh fruits and vegetables. I think that’s something that we forget to ask people kind of where are you shopping? Are you shopping at Wal-Mart or are you shopping here? Because like you said they may not always have access to a variety of options.

Carmen Berry [00:23:43] Yeah because somebody could say that they go grocery shopping once a week but it depends where they’re shopping. So, we try to always ask and a lot of our six week classes where we really get to know the participants is where they’re in class for six weeks. We try to find out where they’re shopping. We try to tailor the recipes in those six weeks and foods that they can find in the grocery store or the shop that they’re used to shopping in. So, while we would love to teach them about quinoa and all these different beans and fresh fruits and vegetables if they can’t purchase those items there’s no point in providing that education that’s telling them and showing them how easy it is to find healthy food almost anywhere.

Mathea Ford [00:24:23] That brings up my next question. How can you encourage healthy eating with the limited budget? Because I know if you’re getting food from a food pantry you probably have an extremely limited budget. So, what kind of skills do you work with people and teach them to eat healthy even with a limited budget?

Carmen Berry [00:24:40] So, one of the lessons that’s really seemed to help a lot of adults stick to their budget for the week and plan healthy meals for the whole family is meal planning. So, we talk about shopping in our own pantry first. So, it’s really looking to see what you already have at home first and writing that down. Maybe it’s then looking through sales so looking in the newspaper the sales section of the paper and it’s sitting down and making your menu for the week. So, maybe you saw that a whole chickens on sale and you have some brown rice and some beans in your pantry so that it’s sitting down and thinking how can I utilize these ingredients in a couple different forms? So, maybe one night will be like a stir fry. So, using some of the chicken with some vegetables and the brown rice and the next night could be soup and you have like beans and chicken vegetables and maybe even rice in there. So, it’s really sitting down and making that menu for the week. And then you make your list of needed items for the store and you use unit pricing when you’re at the grocery store to find the lowest cost item. Recently, in one of the last classes I taught somebody who explained that they love the taste of freshly grated cheese from a block. And she decided that that extra step of grating the cheese herself was beneficial for both her wallet and her taste buds. It was not something that she normally did so it simply is providing the little bits of useful tips like take a whole bowl lot of cheese which costs less per ounce and find the already shredded cheese and ingredient yourself.

Mathea Ford [00:26:10] Those are great tips shopping in your own pantry first. I do that and when I forget I usually regret it because then I’m going to start like “oh! I don’t think I have mustard” and somehow I end up with three bottles of mustard in the pantry.

Carmen Berry [00:26:22] Yes that will happen to the rest of us.

Mathea Ford [00:26:26] So, thinking about our listeners who are dietitians or health care practitioners or everybody else. How would you recommend they use kind of what we talked about? Can they find local food pantries? Can they work with food pantries? What should they do in their everyday work to implement some of the things we talked about?

Carmen Berry [00:26:47] So, I definitely recommend volunteering. So, kind of seeing what’s going on in your community and volunteering where possible. So, we love having volunteers and a lot of our Cooking Matters classes and here in our warehouse. They really make more of an impact than just us teaching alone. And some of our food pantries don’t have dietitians on staff. Most of them don’t have dietitians on staff and even just going and volunteering a couple times you can be there during distribution and have an impact on the people that are picking up food. And it could just be simply as providing nutrition education or providing a free sample of what was being distributed that day that can make a lot of impact in the community. That’s really going to where the pantry is in assisting there.

Mathea Ford [00:27:36] And I think it also gives you a better understanding of what some people struggle with. And like you said it’s a challenge sometimes to come up with these recipes but it’s also it can be a good challenge for say if you love to cook or love to kind of create you can have a challenge and come up with something great.

Carmen Berry [00:27:54] Definitely. And sometimes we call them almost like dumpster meals where we just take whatever ingredients are in the fridge and throw them together like you basically put anything you want in a stir fry or in a soup or a pasta and it’ll turn out delicious. So, a lot of times people think they have to have this set recipe. It’s really just having the conversation of you don’t need a set recipe you just use this framework of mixing a whole grain pasta with a sauce and whatever vegetables you have.

Mathea Ford [00:28:23] I read a book called How to Cook Without a Book and it talks a lot about that type of stuff just how to make a general salad, how to make a dinner salad, you know those types of things. So, that’s a great book. So, speaking of food we’ve talked a lot about food. What is your favorite food?

Carmen Berry [00:28:42] It is a hard question to answer. So, as most dietitians I love all food and I love cooking. So, I guess right now I have enjoyed really making these I call them chickpea salads for lunch at work. So, some of those go to again these are usually dumpster meals or more it’s a chickpea tuna salad. So, I use a can chickpeas I’ll drain and rinse it and add in canned tuna, chopped up onion, capers and sometimes whatever vegetable I have and mix it together with some vinegar and olive oil salt and pepper and it is delicious. Another one I do is I’ll mix chickpeas and quinoa and a bunch of vegetables in a bowl and just eat it like that. My favorite go to meals.

Mathea Ford [00:29:25] I love hummus but I love chickpeas more in a salad just like an ideal meal. I love finding them. Yeah. So, Carmen thank you so much for being on the podcast today. It was a pleasure to have you on the show. I know my listeners have learned a lot about just food banks in general but also kind of what an involvement a dietitian can have in the lives of others by volunteering as well or finding one to work for. So, if listeners want to connect with you what’s the best way to do that?

Carmen Berry [00:29:57] So you go on our website operationfoodsearch.org. My e-mails on there. All the different programs that Operation Food Search does it’s all on there. Not probably the best way to contact me if you want more information or just kind of learn more about food insecurity here in St. Louis and what Operation Food search does to kind of tackle that problem.

Mathea Ford [00:30:19] Well guys this has been another great episode of the Nutrition Experts Podcast. The podcast that is all about learning more. You can do more with nutrition in your life.

https://media.blubrry.com/renaldiethq/p/app.pippa.io/public/streams/5aba77b58bdf7ba53cccc618/episodes/5cba4efdff4ee06c324268d0.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Email | RSS

Filed Under: Blog, Podcast Tagged With: Carmen Berry, Cooking Matters, Cooking Matters at the Store, Dumpster Meals, Feed the Hungry, Food Desert, Food Swamp, Healthy Eating with a Limited Budget, Operation Food Search, Teaching Life Skills

Nutrition Experts Podcast Episode 50 What Not To Do When You Want To Lose Weight with Elissa Lueckemeyer, RDN, LD

April 15, 2019 by matheaford Leave a Comment

Elissa Lueckemeyer RDN, LD is a registered dietitian and owner of Food 4 Success, LLC Nutrition Consulting in New Braunfels, Texas. She has a passion for spreading credible nutrition knowledge and helping individuals improve their relationship with food for long-term results. Elissa enjoys being a wife, a mom, and creating educational online courses, blog articles, and recipes. She is also a really messy cook.

Mathea Ford [00:00:29] Hi there! It’s Mathea. Welcome back to the Nutrition Experts Podcast. The podcast featuring nutrition experts who are leading the way using food starts today right now with our next guest. It’s great to have Elissa Lueckemeyer on the show today. Elissa welcome to Nutrition Experts.

Elissa Lueckemeyer [00:00:44] Thank you. Thank you so much for having me today.

Mathea Ford [00:00:46] I’m excited to have you on the show and share your expertise with my tribe. So, let’s start with letting you tell my listeners a little more about you and what you do.

Elissa Lueckemeyer [00:00:55] So, I am a Registered Dietitian in New Braunfels, Texas and I am the owner of Food for Success LLC Nutrition Consulting and I formed that in 2015 and I seek clients all different kinds a lot of diabetes and weight loss, geriatrics, cancer, digestive issues. And it’s been an adventure it’s been really interesting. I started out in clinical so I’ve used that experience to kind of help me along with providing counseling and I graduated from Texas State University and before that I was in Oklahoma for a little while pursuing a ballet career but due to injury kind of switched over to dietetics because that always interested me. I’ve just found my passion in private practice. It’s been really fun and it’s always interesting and you learn a lot yourself. So, it’s been a been a lot of fun so far.

Mathea Ford [00:01:55] I always loved the outpatient private practice side as a clinical dietitian because you could continue to work with people instead of like in the hospital you see them maybe once maybe twice and help them kind of get started. But the out in the outpatient you get to kind of follow and see the progress that they can make. So, that makes you really think it makes it fun.

Elissa Lueckemeyer [00:02:18] Oh definitely! I know when you’re in that hospital setting people aren’t always in the best mood to hear dietary advice at that time. So, outpatient you can really get them when they’re feeling better and more open to new information and it’s just so rewarding to see people have good results with their health in their labs and what’s on the scale. So, I really do like it too.

Mathea Ford [00:02:43] I know you said you see a lot of diabetes, weight loss and I think we all do deal with that in all different kind of realms but you probably have some opinions about you know and feedback about what most people are doing wrong when it comes to things like diets or weight loss. So, when people come in to your office, I don’t necessarily want to say you know they’re bad but the people are not bad. They’re just they’ve gotten bad advice maybe. So what do you see as that sort of things that are tripping people up?

Elissa Lueckemeyer [00:03:16] So, yes I think probably one of the most common things that I see is people just focusing on carbs because as everyone probably is aware it’s all over the media. Low carb this note you know carbs make you fat. The Keto diet, Paleo, Whole 30 and even some of my clients come in and their doctors have told them they need to eat. I’ve even heard them say “don’t eat any carbs or you need to get on the keto diet.” And it just sets up a lot of anxiety and fear when it comes to eating carbs how much should I be eating and when I do eat I feel guilt about eating this maybe I really want this slice of pizza but I’m not gonna let myself have it because I can’t eat any carbs. And unfortunately the trend that I see in one of the reasons why they end up in my office is because the guilt just builds up over time and they feel deprived and they end up just kind of going overboard in the end and kind of have that mindset that “I know I’m not supposed to have it but I’m having it so I might as well have a whole pizza” that kind of thing and it’s really an unhealthy way to kind of look at your food and it’s definitely not very enjoyable and they’re not having the results that they want, they’re not losing the weight, they’re not having the improvement in their numbers. I like to have them at my office and we focus more on balance and portion control and that makes a big difference when when we can kind of get to that point where we talk about healthy carbohydrates and how to incorporate them in the diet properly. It just makes a world of difference and they’ll be like “wow! This was much more food than I thought that I could be eating but I’m still having results” and it’s really nice to see that when they they can get to that point.

Mathea Ford [00:05:15] So, how do you think the carbs that we eat in our diet got a bad rap?

Elissa Lueckemeyer [00:05:20] Oh! I think it’s just kind of the the trendy thing right now I know like in the 90’s and the 80s it was everything low fat. You know fat was the bad guy. And now it’s kind of switched to carbs and I get that because you know a lot of the processed foods and fast foods are very carb heavy. And we have the diabetes epidemic. Yeah! It’s very understandable how that carb fear kind of came around and unfortunately it seems like now though that it’s kind of gone to the opposite extreme that well they’re bad in excess so we need to just not have them at all. I like to remind my clients that you know whole grains, fruits, vegetables those are all carbohydrates and we definitely need those in our diet for numerous reasons. It’s just finding the right portions of those and how they can fit into a balanced diet.

Mathea Ford [00:06:17] So, you mentioned balanced diet. Do you have a particular diet that you recommend with your patients or how do you work with them to eat healthier?

Elissa Lueckemeyer [00:06:26] I wouldn’t say I’m a non diet dietitian because I do believe there are some instances where they may need a certain type of diet but for weight loss I really don’t like diets. I like to think of it more as behavior change lifestyle approaches learning how to improve your relationship with food mindful eating intuitive eating. That’s how I really approach it more and finding balance that no food group is bad that we all need them for different reasons. It’s just finding what’s right for that person as far as the portions of everything.

Mathea Ford [00:07:08] When you talk to somebody kind of where do they start and then where do you lead them to?

Elissa Lueckemeyer [00:07:15] Usually what happens and it’s kind of surprising actually you would think that someone coming into it see a dietitian you know they’re eating too much of everything. And actually a lot of my clients when they come in I find out that they’re actually not eating enough and they’re not getting enough calories and that can slow your metabolism down and make it very difficult to achieve the health goals that they want to achieve. So, what I often do is we form like a meal plan. I teach them carbohydrate portioning and including healthy sources of carbs we go over that and we just kind of structure their meals and what the right amount of carbs from them for them. And once we get that kind of established, we can move on to the other macro nutrients, proteins, healthy fats but I find that once they get the idea of the right amount of carbs for for them and it’s actually usually a lot more than they were allowing themselves to have they find that they’re more satisfied, they’re happier, they’re not hangry, hungry and angry all the time and they actually will lose weight because in addition to exercise of course they are not finding these cravings that are so tempting for them to succumb to and they feel overall happier and more energy for our workouts and it really does make a difference.

Mathea Ford [00:08:43] So, you mentioned meal planning, you have any tips or guides for the audience about how you plan your meals?

Elissa Lueckemeyer [00:08:50] I will sit down on usually on a Sunday and I won’t say I plan all my meals out because I’ll be realistic, I’m a mom of a four year old and an almost two year old so that doesn’t always happen but I’ll get my dinners going. I’ll plan out the week just with the dinners usually when I’m going to maybe make a bigger batch or something and maybe use leftovers for the next day and then from there I’ll formulate my grocery list from those dinners that I plan and maybe plan out my snacks or my kids lunches. What we’re going to do there. And then I will hit the grocery store or maybe do an online order if you have the luxury of that that’s always really nice and then go from there. I usually maybe cook the biggest meal on Sunday night so I’m kind of ready to go on Monday. Maybe do some prepping that is the most helpful and kind of staying on track during the week and it’s okay that if you have certain weeks things are just not working out and you may need to go out to eat one day if you’re planning ahead you’re still usually making better choices if you can get that kind of all scheduled beforehand.

Mathea Ford [00:10:03] So, you don’t necessarily plan like breakfast and lunch? You always just try to focus on having that dinner meal and then do you have some staples that you keep in the pantry to be able to have breakfast some lunch type foods?

Elissa Lueckemeyer [00:10:14] I do. So, I always make sure I got my whole grains on hand, oatmeal and my rices things like that to throw together for maybe some pro teen veggie bowls and green bowls that kind of thing and my kids are definitely creatures of habit. They like either their eggs or yogurt in the morning with some cereal so I always have that on hand. Lunches I will say and this is a challenge for a lot of people and sometimes a challenge for myself too. At my grocery store they’re having some kind of a few pre-prepared meals where they’ll have like shredded chicken ready to go and I can throw that and lots of things in. But you can do that yourself at home too. Definitely just cook a big chicken chop it up and it’s ready to go for lunches and things like that. Yeah! I do like veggie case ideas. Those are really easy to throw together. Spinach, cheese, quesadillas things like that. A lot of minds pretty much kid focused right now.

Mathea Ford [00:11:17] Yeah that makes sense. My kids love the chicken like chopped chicken tacos or chicken salad sandwiches or anything like that. So, I see what you mean with the cooking old chicken. I’ve just started using it in instapot. So, we’ve made a few things in insta pot and then shredded the pork or the chicken and that seems to be good to last couple days. So.

Elissa Lueckemeyer [00:11:39] Crockpot has become my dinner time hero for sure.

Mathea Ford [00:11:45] Yeah! It’s just nice and convenient and if you can make it healthy. So, basically you encourage people to kind of move not only to a more balanced diet but also more to home cooking right? So not so much eating out?

Elissa Lueckemeyer [00:11:58] Definitely! I’ve had people ask me like if there is one thing that I can do to start eating healthier live a healthier lifestyle it’s family meals. I think it just all boils down to having a family meal. And taking your time, enjoying the meal, enjoying the company and just really savoring that time. And even if your food choices aren’t perfectly images of healthy food that you would see on Instagram or something if you’re still cooking that food from home you are just much more likely to have a more nutritious meal than something you would probably get out. I encourage people to atleast start there.

Mathea Ford [00:12:41] And where do you go to look for recipes you usually have like a bunch of cookbooks or do you go look online?

Elissa Lueckemeyer [00:12:47] I do a lot of Pinterest and there’s just some amazing dietitian bloggers out there I’ll get their recipes from. I’m actually a big Better Homes and Gardens cookbook fan. Not all of their recipes are like perfect health images but I do my own little tweaking and stuff like that. They have some really good recipes in there and I actually recommend anyone who’s thinking about starting to cook more. That’s a great start is the Better Homes and Gardens cookbook. So, that’s a great place to start. Pinterest, Better Homes and Gardens. I know Google and everything can get really overwhelming but you know if you have a protein in mind that you want to play with you type that in and Pinterest and it’ll it’ll hook you up with all sorts of good stuff.

Mathea Ford [00:13:36] Yeah I like the idea of making boards throughout the week and then you have ones you do and then the next week you still have more for later and Pinterest is a great idea. I love that. What other things should people do to try to eat healthier? I know you mentioned eating at home, cooking at home, having home family meals.

Elissa Lueckemeyer [00:13:55] A lot of it I think comes down to portion control if there’s a lot of confusion on that. This is where seeing a dietitian can be extremely investment worthy to really get that down and find out what’s right for you. But other suggestions definitely would be you know besides cooking at home is kind of just take a look at your fruit and vegetable intake. How much of that are you getting a day? I know they like to preach that five a day rule but even if you aren’t at the five servings of fruit and/or vegetables a day and just kind of take a look at that and say “you know I’m hungry for a snack maybe I could squeeze in a piece of fruit there.” That can make a huge difference just doing the lower calorie fruits and vegetables in your diet. And I know that their carbs but they’re good carbs and they’re doing lots of good things for your gut. So, I’m just kind of sliding those in being more active too. I know that we’re talking about diet here but they really go hand-in-hand and you got to eat well and play hard and sleep good. That’s kind of the 3 keys to really good health.

Mathea Ford [00:15:13] So you mentioned portion control. Do you have any guides for people who are listening that might be wondering like how do I know what is a portion?

Elissa Lueckemeyer [00:15:24] The American Diabetes Association has a great great resources on carb counting things like that to get you started. You can get information about dietary exchanges there and then also the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics has some resources too, the American Heart Association has some resources on diet and a lot of great recipes too by the way. That’s another good source. That’s probably a good start. I just want to encourage people to make sure that when they are looking up this information to make sure that they’re finding it from a reputable source because there’s a lot of misinformation out there as everyone’s probably already aware. Things that end and maybe .org web sites like that maybe more reputable like American Heart Association diabetes.org things like that as opposed to some other websites.

Mathea Ford [00:16:20] Well, definitely you can look at the about page on a website and see if the person who’s writing it is a dietitian or a knowledgeable expert. Are there foods that you encourage people to avoid when they’re trying to lose weight? You know I know I don’t like to do No foods like none of this, none of that. You know absolutes.

Elissa Lueckemeyer [00:16:41] Well, kind of like you say I like to think all foods can fit and I like to practice mindful intuitive eating practices and all that is is just really learning how to enjoy your food if you have kind of more of an indulgent item you really sit and enjoy it. You practice enjoying it without guilt because the guilt is just a terrible motivator to do better. I like to say that all foods can fit but of course you know you want to make more often good choices and so I like to just say try to avoid foods out of a like food mix if this out of a box because that tends to be a lot of excess sodium and fan stuff whenever you can make from home from scratch instead. That’s always better. An example of that is like maybe a box of instant potatoes you can make mashed potatoes at home and it’ll be ten times less sodium than what you find in there. So, I tend to say you know avoid a lot of the highly processed foods and try to switch more to recipe investigations and things like that to kind of find out what you can make at home too.

Mathea Ford [00:17:57] So, how do you help people who are like “I don’t cook. I don’t have time to cook.” What do you say to those? Because I’m sure you get it a lot.

Elissa Lueckemeyer [00:18:04] I have some resources for them to find some very beginner cooking classes. And also I tell them just experiment. If you have a recipe in front of you and you just play with it. Follow the instructions exactly. You can put together something you would actually be surprised. Aside from those who may not be able to cook there’s a lot of people that don’t have time to cook either. And we just kind of talk about strategies for time saving measures, batch cooking things like that, finding easy recipes and then we also talk about for those who just you know they have to eat out, get food to go, we find healthier options at those restaurants. Sometimes it might be come combining appetizer items, salads and soups and things like that to get a little creative there and asking for dressings on the side so you can control that gravy is on the side.

Elissa Lueckemeyer [00:19:05] So, there are ways around it where you can eat a pretty healthy diet depending on your grocery store too. There’s a lot of pre prepared meals there that you can just literally throw it in your oven and you have a healthy meal. It just kind of depends on what area you’re from and what resources you have there. But I definitely encourage everyone if they don’t know how to cook maybe try out just a beginning cooking class and give it a shot because it can just make a world of difference in your health.

Mathea Ford [00:19:37] Yeah I like the idea of time shifting. So, if you’re like you don’t have time after for me for example I come home from work at 5:00. The kids are home everybody’s hungry and then I don’t want to spend another hour cooking food. You know you mentioned batch cooking, you can cook some stuff ahead. You can assemble things ahead when you have more time maybe on the weekends you pre chop your veggies you do that kind of thing and if your kids get a little older teach them how to put something in the oven to cook or whatever and I like that idea because we think I don’t have time in that moment when I get home to cook for another hour because I’m already tired vs. what can you do to you know before that to make it work. And I also love the idea of looking at the menu and doing the appetizers because we always just look straight at. Well, maybe people look at appetizers for before their meal but you don’t necessarily think of appetizer as a meal. But there’s probably a thousand calories in an appetizer. You’ll want to add that on top of the other food. And I know a lot of restaurants now especially if they’re national have the calorie counts. Whether you’re counting calories at least it gives you a check to say “oh! I didn’t realize that when you really had that much calories. Maybe I should get a smaller portion.” So I love those ideas. Those are great.

Elissa Lueckemeyer [00:20:58] Oh! And like with crockpot cooking too. If you don’t really know how to cook very well. They have lots of dump recipes on Pinterest where we literally you just get the ingredients and you dump them in the pot and you close the lid and you forget about it for eight hours. So, that’s another solution too.

Mathea Ford [00:21:17] Obviously, you want to put some effort into your health if you’re trying to lose weight you’re doing it for the right reasons. There’s going to have to be some effort. You’re going to have to change. You have to become a different type of person than you are today to change. You have to change some habits. And like you mentioned eat a little slower eat family meals cook a little bit. I love those ideas. I think the thing that I struggle with as a dietitian is the fact that our society is just getting more overweight. We’re having more health problems and I’m chipping away at it over here with a little bit at a time one person or two persons or group classes at a time. But why do you think that’s happening?

Elissa Lueckemeyer [00:21:57] Our fast paced society is one of the biggest culprits. Just we have so much on our plate, high stress levels which produces more cortisol which makes us all heavier. You know not having time for family meals, a lot of times eating on the go maybe choosing options that aren’t the best just out of convenience because we don’t have the time to really put into our health. I really think that’s one of the biggest problems. I think if everyone in a perfect world had time to cook meals for themselves, haave the family dinners. We would all be a lot healthier and a lot less stressed out. But unfortunately I know that’s just kind of a dream at this point for everyone. But we all have lives, we all have kids we’re trying to rush around and it gets really hard. But I think it comes to a point or you know you just have to sometimes prioritize you and your family’s health and make time for some of these family meals and make time to kind of read labels and go to the grocery store and do your research and it’s not a very satisfying answer, it’s not a very Instagram kind of sexy answer. You know it’s not a one solution but it’s really what it comes down to is just finding balance in your life, having time to eat with your family or just have at least time to cook something healthy for yourself.

Elissa Lueckemeyer [00:23:33] Much easier said than done but I really do think that’s what it comes down to. It kind of always reminds me of that book. It’s an older book that French women don’t get fat and the whole philosophy is you know over in Europe they make a whole ordeal about eating. They take their time, they really enjoy the food, they practice mindful eating even though some of the foods over there are really rich in lots of full fat cream and things like that but because they have a slower paced lifestyle they tend to be a lot healthier. Not to mention they walk a lot more than we probably do but they’re just less stressed out they’re happier and they just seem overall healthier. So, I think that’s what we need to strive for over here.

Mathea Ford [00:24:18] I love those thoughts because I think when people are going for those right now it’s the carbohydrate fear diets, the Keto, the Paleo like you mentioned Whole 30. That’s a quick fix. It might give them results to cut out carbs because carbs are truly sugar. I mean not all carbs are sugar but a lot of the carbs we eat in our diet are from refined sugars or refined and processed foods and changing that you know cutting those out not necessarily completely but getting back to cooking your food and knowing what goes into it is a great thing. When I grew up we had family dinners and so I insist my family has family dinners so we all sit down and have dinner and my father lives with us. He’s like stressed for last like eight or nine years and when he came to live with us I said the “one of the conditions is that you have to always because he had lived. He lived by himself for most of his life. He said You have to come out and eat dinner with us every night. You have to be part of the family because at dinner we talk about ‘what did you do today? What did you..? How was your grades? How was school? Do you have homework? What are we doing this weekend?'” It’s more than a meal. You know it’s community. So, I think if we switch the way we think about it and not necessarily think about it as having to cook a meal and think of it as having family time together time to feed into that is definitely a benefit. So, I love that you encourage family dinners. So, what do you think this carbohydrate fear in cutting out carbohydrates? I know like you mentioned in the 80s and 90s we switched out where we hated all fat. So. Then we added a bunch of refined carbohydrate and made it okay to eat. What does this do into our health? You know when we cut out entire food groups like carbohydrates?

Elissa Lueckemeyer [00:26:11] It’s funny because it’s so easy to say or give dietary advice and just tell someone “oh! Just cut this out and you’ll be fine.” That’s a very easy thing to follow. Well, not easy but it’s easy instructions to follow. It’s way way more difficult to tell someone and not definitely not as catchy or salesy to say. Well, just we need to find a balanced diet that’s definitely much much harder to figure out. I think what they kind of the convenience and ease knowing in the back of your mind “Oh! I just need to stay away from anything that has carbohydrates.” I think that’s why it’s become so catchy and and everything it’s just kind of easy to just look for that one thing. But unfortunately what happens is you have to fill that void with something and so that’s usually like what the Keto die and stuff that’s mostly fat. And I know that there’s still ongoing research about keto and its long term effects on health. But I will say personally what I see coming into my office is that people that are trying to accomplish really low carb diets they don’t have the best cholesterol numbers. And I know there are some studies that even suggest keto can be helpful in cholesterol but I personally haven’t seen that myself yet. There’s just not enough known about the long term implications of Keto. And since they’re eating such a high fat diet you know their cholesterol goes up. And they were coming to me for help on “Okay, my cholesterol is high now. I’ve lost some weight but my cholesterol is high what do I need to do now?” And that’s when I say “Okay. It’s time to bring back the fiber to get your cholesterol down and let’s find that healthy balance.” And fortunately when you eliminate a food group there’s going to be a void there and you have to think about well what you’re filling that void with? And like you said in the 80s and 90s we fill that void with refined carbs and now we’re kind of doing the opposite. But what we’re trying to find is a healthy balance of good food, complex carbs and so it’s definitely frustrating for a lot of people. And it’s frustrating as a dietitian too because you just want to help people find a good balance and some of these fad diets just kind of get in the way of that because it’s an easy sounding solution.

Mathea Ford [00:28:37] Like you mentioned it’s not a change. It’s not changing your lifestyle, changing what you’re doing so it’s hard to make it last long term if you’re seeing it as “I’m going to cut up carbs now and then when I lose weight I can eat all the carbs I want” not the game.

Elissa Lueckemeyer [00:28:51] Yes. So I always ask you know for people that are wanting to attempt Keto or anything and I ask them you know “do you think this is long term maintainable? Can you go on for the next several months, years without eating a handful of blueberries because that’s going to throw you out of ketosis? So, that is just not really the case and when you do plan on stopping this super low carb diet what are you going to do then? How are you going to be eating then?” We want to prevent yoyo dieting. That’s just so harmful to our metabolism makes it so difficult to lose weight in the future. So, I’m definitely all for finding an improved relationship with food for long term results.

Mathea Ford [00:29:38] So, thinking about our listeners and people who are gathering this information. What advice do you have for them to implement what we’ve talked about in their day to day life? They might be dietitians talking to patients or they might be patients who are interested in nutrition information.

Elissa Lueckemeyer [00:29:55] I just like to remind them when they are really looking at going super low carb is just reminding them all the benefits that carbohydrates have and a lot of people when they think carbs you know their mind kind of goes to pizza, donuts you know breads and stuff like that. But carbs are fruits and vegetables and whole grains and thinking about the benefits that those do to our body. I mean there’s more information even coming out about the gut microbiome and all the beneficial fiber and what that’s doing to our gut and they’re finding that’s more and more linked to our brain health. So. I could go on and on and on about the benefits of carbs. So, I think it’s just important for people to understand that they are not as bad as the media makes them out to be it’s just finding high quality ones. And that bread is not the devil. And if you’re eating whole grain bread and the right portions. That is okay. So, I’m here saying that you have permission to have bread. So, you know just eliminating foods like that can just set up a lot of disordered eating patterns and guilt. And that’s not what we want. So, just again reminding people the benefits of carbs and not feeling like they have to go crazy on carbs on the other hand. But following things like them My Plate model for for portion control that’s a good starting guideline. You know half your plates fruits and vegetables, a quarter grains and a quarter protein if you can kind of start thinking of your plate as that kind of balance vs. “No. I can’t have any kind of carbs at all.” I think that’s a really good start.

Mathea Ford [00:31:40] I love that advice. So, I always ask my guests what is your favorite food?

Elissa Lueckemeyer [00:31:48] Oh man! I am an expensive date. I like a lobster. That’s my favorite food. I love lobster. All seafood pretty much. I’m from the coast so I love fish and shrimp and all the shellfish that luckily I don’t have that allergy. So and I will tell anyone out there that is not a seafood fan. If you’re not a seafood fan get really really fresh seafood a try because that makes all the difference in the world. I get it straight out of the water and eat it because I have a husband that hated seafood before I met him and I took him to a restaurant down on the coast where we got fresh stuff and I converted him. He really likes it now.

Mathea Ford [00:32:34] Yeah! Here in Oklahoma we don’t get too much fresh seafood. So, it’s harder but always when we go to like Alabama or Florida for vacation, we always eat a lot of seafood just because it’s fresh, it’s right there. Well, Elissa thank you so much for being on the podcast today. It was a pleasure to have you on the show. I know my listeners learned a lot about just rethinking the way that their way of eating is what I want to say I don’t want to say diet. I want to say way of eating. So, if listeners want to connect with you what’s the best way to do that?

Elissa Lueckemeyer [00:33:05] So, first thank you so much for having me on this show. This is an awesome opportunity. You can reach me on my website is food4success.com and you can also e-mail me at elissa@food4success.com. I’m also on Facebook. Same name Food 4 Success LLC, you can find me there I’m always posting stuff fun actually post a lot about carbs on there and I post recipes and things like that as well and on my website you can find my blog you can find our Food 4 Success e-learning platform that where we’re growing. Yeah! I encourage you to reach out I’d be happy to answer any questions.

Mathea Ford [00:33:49] So great! Well guys this has been another great episode of the Nutrition Experts Podcast. The podcast that is all about learning more so you can do more with nutrition in your life.

 

https://media.blubrry.com/renaldiethq/p/app.pippa.io/public/streams/5aba77b58bdf7ba53cccc618/episodes/5cb08cab3b4498fc106c6020.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Email | RSS

Filed Under: Blog, Podcast Tagged With: Balanced Diet, Elissa Lueckemeyer, Family Dinner, Family Meal, Home Cooking, Intuitive Eating, Meal Planning, Mindful Eating, Portion Control, Weight Loss, Yoyo Dieting

Nutrition Experts Podcast Episode 49 The Diet Culture Says That Something Is Wrong With You with Aileen Birkitt, RD, LD

April 8, 2019 by matheaford Leave a Comment

  • Became a registered dietitian in 2002 as a second career
  • Owned a private practice nutrition counseling office in Basking Ridge, NJ 3/09-11/18
  • Moved to Rhode Island and opened up a private practice 1/19
  • Experienced former Dietitian for 5 years in the Eating Disorders Unit at Robert Wood Johnson-Somerset Medical Center in New Jersey. This facility has inpatient and outpatient (PHP, IOP) eating disorders programs
  • Specializes in Eating Disorders, also counsels many individuals and families on how to eat and live a healthier life; utlilizing evidence based guidelines.
  • Independent contractor for ComPsych Corporation and Excel Body Fitness, where she presents workshops on healthy eating to corporate employees as part of their employee assistance program.
  • Member of The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics
  • Member of IAEDP- International Association of Eating Disorders Professionals
  • practices HAES (Health at Every Size) counseling, LGBTQ friendly

Mathea Ford: [00:00:28] Hi there! It’s Mathea. Welcome back to the Nutrition Experts Podcast. The podcast featuring nutrition experts who are leading the way using food starts today right now with our next guest. It’s great to have Ailleen Birkitt on the show today. Ailleen, welcome to the Nutrition Experts.

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:00:46] Hi. Thank you so much for having me here. I’m very excited to be here today.

Mathea Ford: [00:00:50] I’m excited to have you on the show and share your expertise with my tribe. Let’s start by letting you tell my listeners a little more about you and what you do.

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:01:00] Sure. I’m a Registered Dietitian and licensed dietitian currently in the state of Rhode Island where I have my own private practice called Nutrition 4 You LLC. I did become a registered dietitian in 2002. Opened up my own private practice in New Jersey in Basking Ridge, New Jersey in March of 2009. I was there until November of 2018 where we had a family move for my husband’s job relocation and I’m now in Rhode Island and I have an office in North Kingstown, Rhode Island where I see a bunch of different patients. I do specialize in eating disorders. I’ll see people with diabetes, pre-diabetes, high cholesterol, high triglycerides, weight management and like I said all the picky eating, the whole span of also the whole span of eating disorders.

Mathea Ford: [00:01:54] You mentioned that you specialize in eating disorders. Have you worked a lot with people with eating disorders?

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:02:00] Yes I have. I worked as a per diem dietitian at Robert Wood Johnson Barnabas Hospital in Somerville, New Jersey which is an excellent program for people with eating disorders and there they have inpatients, outpatient so there is a partial hospitalization program and IOP. So, I have seen the whole realm of eating disorders starting from inpatient and the cool thing about that program is that you do get to see people progressed. It’s the same therapist, same dietitian, psychiatrist every step of the program.

Mathea Ford: [00:02:39] What is your experience working with young adults? Because I I guess I associate eating disorders with younger people and body image.

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:02:49] A lot of people think that it is only something that afflicts adolescents but also we did see people that were much older. You know it’s definitely more prevalent with adolescents. I’d say like 1 percent are female adolescents suffer from this but honestly like 30 million people suffer from anorexia, bulimia and binge eating disorder. So it kind of all different lifespans. Another interesting thing too is there are males that have eating disorders that doesn’t always get noticed or mentioned a lot. It does typically get to be considered like an adolescent female disease.

Mathea Ford: [00:03:32] So, what’s your experience kind of with young adults and how they view body image and how it gets distorted and I guess in an eating disorder?

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:03:41] What I find a lot with young adults is they are like a lot of us very prone to images with social media. And in today’s day and age they’re on all sorts of social media all the time seeing a lot of images and other people you know just saying this is the way you’re supposed to look. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of misinformation out there too about how to get there. So, yeah. And I say misinformation because a lot of it is not healthy. And so a lot of times I feel like they’re kind of seeing maybe not the right things. I try to work with them and always have an eating disorder should also be working with a therapist in conjunction for treatment and you know we work together to try to make sure that they are kind of staying away from some of that negative information and kind of going to more body positive information. And I do find a lot of times that adolescents will be who come in say that they’re comparing themselves to others a lot it seems to be a common thing.

Mathea Ford: [00:04:42] But is it an eating disorder they kind of have a difference? I don’t know that called dysmorphia like they don’t see themselves the same way in the mirror that we see them as a physical person. Can you talk a little bit about that?

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:04:57] Sure absolutely. That is very common where they will you know see something completely different than in themselves and what we see. So, there’s a lot of tactics we can use you know just really trying to work with them on kind of self-worth, giving them affirmations does kind of start to feel better about their body. Some things that have been done are putting a lot of times a lot of things happen when they look in the mirror too. I’ve come to find where sometimes a recommendation is just put some post it notes on the mirror saying “you’re awesome! You rock! You’re not being judged by just what they see in the mirror.” We also try to educate them that there is this kind of like an eating disorder voice. A lot of people with these orders know it as Ed as soon as we give it a name which seems to help to say well if Ed’s saying that you look a certain way in the mirror just talk back to Ed and that can help sometimes too. Talking back to that negative voice.

Mathea Ford: [00:05:59] So, the voice you’re talking about is basically the voice that saying “you’re fat! Your hips are too big!” You’re not whatever else it would say. So, when they hear those messages you encourage them to just talk back and what kind of things would they say back to that voice just “that’s not true” or?

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:06:15] Yeah! Yeah! Something like you know “Be quiet.!” They can yell at it if they want. Yeah, whatever works for the person. Another cool thing sometimes they can do is take an index card and say “well, what are all these thoughts that come up in your head?” And they’ll write it down and I’ll say take on the back of it. Write a better response. Like for instance, “you’re fat and ugly.” I will say “No, you’re beautiful the way you are.” You know it’s just something to you know because if you do over time you can train the brain to start to talk back you know it’s work it’s definitely a lot of work and it does take a lot of time and that’s why they should also be working with a therapist on some of these issues.

Mathea Ford: [00:06:55] Yeah I had a guest recently that we were talking about brain changing those thoughts and those processes and how reality. Yes but your brain you know you do have these inner commentary going on so identifying that is important whether you have an eating disorder or not if you have some sort of negative inner voice that’s going to hold you back a little I would think. So, can we talk a little bit about what since I’m sure you work a lot of with people with eating disorders on healthy body image versus an unhealthy one can you talk about what is the difference?

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:07:31] There’s something called Health At Every Size. It’s a movement going on right now. It’s kind of accepting where you are right now which is extremely hard to do vs. an unhealthy body image is that really giving into that inner voice “you’re fat! You’re ugly! You shouldn’t eat.” I mean it’s amazing the things that this voice will say. It’s just unfortunate. So, that you know try tried to tell people that that these voices are these thoughts are not truths seems to be kind of sometimes those phrases can really help people. And that’s a big one that I like that not every thought that goes through your head is a truth.

Mathea Ford: [00:08:10] Just like everything on the Internet is not true right?

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:08:12] Right! Right. And sometimes people will just you know say “I feel bloated today. So, I must be fat” and I say “wait a second. Do you hear what you just said? ‘I feel’ is that truth? You know what I mean?” So kind of working a lot with that. And a lot of things you know just telling them too about the media how altered. It’s so amazing how altered so many of the images are to look a certain way.

Mathea Ford: [00:08:38] What was kind of an eye opener to me I guess is when we went out to Vegas one time and they have the costumes for the performers and stuff. Even in a hard rock cafe they have the costumes that these performers wear and they’re so small like their size 4, size 2, whatever. But looking at them on TV or whatever you know I wouldn’t necessarily think they were that small. But you’re right kind of visually what you see and having that process is just really made me realize that the size that I thought they were that I you know they may be shorter than I thought they were they may be taller than I thought they were but just kind of that reality of “oh wow!” That’s actually the costume that they wore so that’s just kind of reminds me a little bit of what you were just saying.

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:09:30] Coz Marilyn Monroe was a size 10 and that was acceptable at the time and and just how things have changed over the years where with you know people just you know in the media just keep wanting you to get smaller and smaller. It’s just not right. And I think now I feel like things are changing a lot. I feel like some people are kind of calling that out. I know there’s I think of the which there there’s a magazine that just kind of said they’re not going to alter all the images anymore as a women’s magazine. I don’t want to say the wrong one I can’t think of which one it is but so certain things are beginning to happen. I think you know people are starting to call it out a little bit more so I’m happy about that.

Mathea Ford: [00:10:15] Yeah and then on the opposite side you have all these Instagram filters and waves of apps that can shrink your waist and make your eyes look bigger and your head kind of rearranged in that altered image that then is presented as factual. I can see how it can mess with your mind a little bit. What types of things do you use with your clients to implement the Health at Every Size mentality?

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:10:42] I always tell people not to… I don’t I don’t think people should be weighing themselves because that instantly makes people not happy about their size. Like right away. I mean you wake up and you get on the scale it’s like I’ll just say it’s just a number. But what a downer like for because of that one thing like the whole day is shot. Do you don’t I mean. Yeah. And so if I do need to weigh somebody I tried to focus on weight except if somebody had been suffering with anorexia nervosa they’re an outpatient treatment they really need to be monitored. Of course they’re going to need to see what their weight is fairly frequently but I’ll do a like a blitz a blind weight like they will turn the other way and they won’t see it. So, I try to keep the focus just in general off of the number on the scale. And when people come in you know we just talk about things that we can just make you feel better. “How are you eating right now? I’ll kind of have them give me like a dietary recall and just tell me what they had to eat yesterday. What’s a typical day?” And then I try to just kind of see where there might be gaps and talk about how to eat and then you know with a focus on feeling better and if anybody exercises you know is it just because “oh! I got to exercise, I’ve got a burn” or is you know trying to focus on something enjoyable for the body. I think those are all kind of things that go along with the Health at Every Size.

Mathea Ford: [00:12:10] So, back to like eating disorders. How common are they? I know you mentioned you said 1 percent of females. Did you mention in an age range or?

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:12:22] It was adolescence.

Mathea Ford: [00:12:24] Okay. Is there a group that is more inclined to that diagnosis outside of teenage girls or women, young women?

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:12:32] Point five to three point seven percent of women suffer from eating disorders. There are 30 million people which is a huge number that suffer from anorexia nervosa, bulimia or binge eating disorder. So, I think that’s pretty alarming number and that’s just the reported numbers that we know about. You know what I mean? There’s some that probably aren’t even reported in that.

Mathea Ford: [00:12:56] So, can you talk about what each of those is anorexia and bulimia and binge eating disorder?

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:13:02] Sure doesn’t. There’s a whole bunch of criteria for each one but anorexia nervosa is people are restricting and they’re usually you know usually end up being very underweight their ideal body. They’re way below their ideal body weight. So, kind of to work a lot with them on very slowly at first re-incorporating food. For it to really be a binge and binge eating disorder it’s going to be a unusually large amount of the food item that somebody eats like more than just a normal serving and then there’s a lot of guilt after eating that. So, three point five percent are women that have this and 2 percent are men. So, that is one of the higher eating disorders that men would have would be the binge eating disorder it’s much you know fairly more common in men and some of the other eating disorders.

Mathea Ford: [00:13:53] So, they don’t necessarily with the binge eating they don’t necessarily do anything to throw up or over exercise or anything it’s more just the eating and the feeling and the guilty?

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:14:03] Right for the criteria. Now though it’s the bulimia where there’s a purging aspect. So, there’s the binge you know the binge eating and then also the purging or vomiting sometimes purging. You know we always assume it means vomiting but sometimes it can mean exercising to compensate for calories eaten.

Mathea Ford: [00:14:23] All of this kind of you know talking about Health at Every Size and body image. I know that there may be 30 million people out there with eating disorders but there’s a whole lot of more people a whole lot more people who are dieting so to speak or you know doing this where they eat right for a little while and then they go back to a normal whatever they go back to eating carbs or whatever happened. So, what part of the diet culture is troubling for you as a dietitian?

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:14:57] The thing is it’s not just the diet culture too just the beauty products culture. People are if they feel like they’re always trying to make us feel like something’s wrong because otherwise how would they make money. I think it’s huge for people to just gain an awareness of this because it’s been around for so long. And I think a lot of us just take it for granted that’s there. But if you really stop and think like when you turn on the TV there’s a commercial, infomercial as well you know there’s something wrong with your face so you need this product. Well, same thing happens with food and dieting supplement industry is huge I mean if you take this year to perform better. They’re always trying to make us feel bad with what we have rather than you know it wouldn’t make money if everybody was just kind of celebrating how we are as we are. But it’s just so rampant. It’s everywhere. You can’t go. I mean you know the grocery store aisle you’re looking at a magazine like the captions and headlines this diet, that diet, anti aging you know we we can’t even it’s not even okay to age you know.

Mathea Ford: [00:16:07] Yeah it’s not okay age and to get wrinkles. You’ve got to start using Vitamin C and vitamin A on your face.

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:16:13] Right! Right. So, it’s just I think just really having that awareness that a lot of you know most of it is really a moneymaking thing. And you know if we can just be a little bit more aware that that’s what’s going on I think it would help. I guess it doesn’t sell the cover to say you know celebrate your aging naturally and don’t go on a diet. Right?

Mathea Ford: [00:16:36] Obviously, there are health problems with some with being overweight and stuff. So, yes there may be a little bit but I understand what you’re saying about you know people who are 20 pounds overweight they’re giving this impression that you need to still just lose this weight to be this perfect size or like you said when you’re in your 40s you need to start using anti aging creams so you don’t look like you’re 60 when you’re 60 with wrinkles.

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:17:04] Right.

Mathea Ford: [00:17:05] I guess I never really thought much about it but that is the way they sell that something wrong with you so you need to change. So, how do you combat that in your clients or even just in regular people hard. How do you mean how do you combat that besides just being aware of it?

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:17:21] Well, I do have like a little checklist like I’m a big handouts person all the time so when I see you in my office always like “here’s a handout about X. I think it really helps like little reminders.” I do have a thing to kind of decipher like what’s junk media that can be called and you know it doesn’t sound too good to be true. “Is it telling you you have to have this product and everything will be better? Are there a lot of should or shouldnt’s?” Those are big things. So, just so that when somebody has that and they see things they can maybe look at that paper and say “oh! Wait this person. I don’t even know who they are and they’re saying I should go on this diet and I should only eat carrots or I shouldn’t eat carrots.” I mean it’s all sorts of things out there.

Mathea Ford: [00:18:02] A lot of this diet culture is promoting fad diets or what dietitians call fad diets. You know eat like you said eat only carrots or eat only cabbage soup or do these certain things. Are there any good things about fad diets?

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:18:18] I don’t think there are any good things about fad diets. I I believe more in working with someone to eat in a way that they can do for their lifestyle. The thing that the fad diets is yes, a lot of people will lose weight in six months and sometimes it’s rapid. Some of this just water weight but as far as research and things we there’s not a lot of research saying beyond that that’s six months at this weight stays off in most cases people gain it back and then even gain back more. When you have these fad diets, usually there’s something that’s restricted. For instance, a big one takes carbs. Okay. So, yes if you cut things out you know the weight does go down but the problem with fad diets is people are going to go off them probably if they’re not sustainable. And then when you go off it’s like “oh my oh my gosh! I haven’t had carbs in so long” and then next thing you know these things that were forbidden are suddenly very appealing. And then there comes a weight gain I believe more in sustainable eating and just kind of showing people what does a what is a healthy plate look like? What should be on your plate for meals? You know in about three to four hours after your meal. It’s a good idea to have a snack. So, just ways to eat that they can take with them for the lifetime. It’s not just a quickly come lose weight and then you’re on your way.

Mathea Ford: [00:19:35] I think sometimes that people don’t understand it’s not just a weight loss. You know there are health components to carbs, fiber, vitamins especially in whole grains. And sometimes you know missing out on those things even though we may take a supplement to replace it it’s just not the same as the whole food is and allowing that may have consequences later. So, and the yoyo thing too. It’s just really hard on your body.

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:20:08] Just to kind of talk that a little more. There are certain things kind of. They have the diet name but they’re not really a fad diet. There’s been a lot of research showing that the Mediterranean they say diet but I still think of it as a way I’d rather clip Mediterranean way of eating. I like that term better. You know focusing on you know fish and olive oil and nuts and whole grains like is it really. There’s research. That’s a great way for heart health to eat. And there’s another thing called the DASH diet which is for lowering blood pressure. It’s dietary approaches to stop hypertension which focuses alone lots of fruits and vegetables and then lower sodium. And that has been shown to reduce blood pressure and improve heart health in some people. But those are not really a diet in the sense that they’re excluding you know “oh you can never have this! You can never have that!” They’re just kind of incorporating healthy things in the eating.

Mathea Ford: [00:21:03] So, thinking about overall just the diet culture, eating disorders that type of stuff. What’s the solution to improving how we eat?

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:21:11] Make sure of all the components in a meal. You know some carbohydrates and protein, some fat, fruits, vegetables, dairy, eating every three to four hours is really important. So, you never go to long. When you go too long without eating then you end up ravenous and probably not eating like a regular portion size that you would want. And then sometimes that creates the old guilt cycle or binge cycle. So, there’s a lot to that. So, it’s really regular eating, incorporating these components. I talked about three meals a day plus one to two snacks a day.

Mathea Ford: [00:21:46] We all know kind of that’s the right thing to do and I think even the word is out in the media as well. It’s just not a fast solution. It’s a time it’s over time. So, why aren’t people doing you know the eating that right way?

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:22:03] Kind of like what you just said there’s all these fast what seem to be fast solutions that keep coming out. And I think people just kind of grab on to that because you know a lot of times I think it’s because the maybe the person telling it looks so great and “oh! I did this look at me” and so I think a lot of it is media perpetuated. You know if more people could focus. I like to teach a lot about intuitive and mindful eating which is kind of eat when you’re hungry stop when you’re full. We get really away from that with all the diets. It takes us away from our natural hunger and fullness and then we’re following kind of this other plan. So, trying to get back in touch with that. And then really paying attention to what and when we’re eating I think is huge.

Mathea Ford: [00:22:47] Yeah. They just go ahead.

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:22:49] Oh I just think a lot of the stuff we’re told to do you know may not be or to follow might not be working. And I think focusing on some of these other things. Yeah I see. It’s just tremendous. And it gets people more in touch with their body and were kind of at peace with food.

Mathea Ford: [00:23:06] You know this morning just this morning at breakfast my daughter she ate her we had some sausage and chips and applesauce and she ate about half for applesauce and then she said she ate or sausage in the applesauce and she said “oh! I’m done.” And so my son says “if that was ice cream would you finish it?” You could have two stomachs like a regular stomach and then an ice cream stomach. And she said “no, I wouldn’t.” And the truth is is that she does whenever we have like ice cream she gets a smaller bowl. She doesn’t eat as much. Just you know not out of any sort of desire to lose weight but more of a desire to just eat what she has in her bowl and not throw it away. But I said “okay, fine. You don’t have to eat the rest of your applesauce if you’re full you’re not hungry we’ll stick it in the fridge for a snack later whatever.” That just what you’re talking about just reminds me that it starts at a young age. That message that I got the message when I was growing up that I needed to clean off my plate because there wasn’t that much food. We were low income and we didn’t have a lot of money and so if you didn’t need all your food you may not get food later. So, it’s a little different for my kids because it’s always been like not about you have to clean your plate. It’s about don’t come back five minutes later for the Cheetos thing. So, you a little help here but listening to the messages your body gives you. How would you recommend like dietitians when they’re counseling their patients or people who are listening to this podcast. How could they implement kind of what we talked about today as far as eating healthier diet culture all that type of stuff?

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:24:51] Okay. I think by educating their patients on some of the things I talked about about where look at the message who’s saying it? Where’s it coming from? What is their degree? You know is it a dietitian or you know? Because it could be MSRD which is a dietitian with a master’s you know that the RD there would be a great source for nutrition information. Checking where they’re finding their information. Well, people kind of come in and say “oh! I found this out on the web. Should I be doing it?” Well, where did you find it out? You know is it a reputable source the information? So, kind of deciphering that and then also I think working with people to get in touch with their more mindful eating like “well, are you pay attention to when you’re eating? What times a day eating?” Certain things like that. That makes sense.

Mathea Ford: [00:25:46] Yeah. I always when I thought a lot about patients. I would always pay attention in the supermarket to what the fad diets were that were on the magazines just because I knew I was going to get asked about that kind of knowing a little bit.

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:25:59] Yeah! Yeah sure. It just kind of having that knowledge. Also one other thing I want to bring up is with the you know educating patients for dietitians out there with the fad diets and things, just recognizing that you know it’s a fad diet if there’s a list of good foods and bad foods like I said the should and shouldn’t just really being aware of that because I believe it’s very important to teach patients that all foods fit and you hear that a lot from dietitians. But I do think it’s really important because once you label it as bad there comes the guilt and there comes the food that you want to eat. Kind of like what you were saying with your daughter you’re offering I can this slick small portion size bowl you’re offering ice cream. You know you’re these things are around. They’re not like completely prohibited. I think it’s important to teach you to learn to work with all the things that are out there and how do you incorporate them into your daily eating.

Mathea Ford: [00:26:54] So, are there any signs for a parent if they have a teenage boy or girl but like you mentioned it’s more common in teenage girls that they might notice in their daughters or sons that might trigger them to think that they’re starting to have some of these issues with food?

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:27:12] Yeah! Certainly, and of course if they notice any weight loss hopefully they’re going to their physicians you know for for checkups. Sometimes, if you find like hidden food around like in the bedroom that you know that’s another kind of thing just to be aware of. The problem is too low though sometimes these are hidden so well it’s hard to know. I think just having a dialogue too with the kids keep checking in on them and having family dinners and talking together is going to be extremely helpful.

Mathea Ford: [00:27:47] Yeah! I had a cousin when I was growing up that had anorexia and I mean by the time it was clear to everybody in the family that she had it and it was pretty significant. But yeah it’s the signs like the good foods, bad foods like I can’t eat certain things you know are being like you said a picky eater but there’s something between a picky eater and I want to eat it but I can’t eat it.

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:28:11] Sometimes when someone starts to restrict and restrict and then restricts meat you know it can be a sign. And it is something that we as dietitians who focus on eating disorders look out for we ask why. Well, you know is a for ethical reasons or sometimes it is eating disorder just saying “hey! Its another thing that you can restrict to help you lose weight.” I’m not and I’m not saying that that that is a weight loss mechanism it’s not but that’s sometimes with the eating disorder mind will think. When you start to see someone who all of a sudden starts to avoid a lot of foods gradually that’s another sign of a potential eating disorder. Like we’re talking and not someone who’s always been picky there is a difference where you just suddenly start to see these changes where they were eating that always enjoyed it and suddenly “now, I don’t want that.” You know you’ve got to kind of find out. And you can and I’d say referring them to a therapist, a dietitian are you know excellent ways to work on on those issues.

Mathea Ford: [00:29:11] Yes, speaking of foods I always ask my guests “What is your favorite foods?” So, tell us what your favorite food is.

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:29:20] Its definitely eggplant parmesan.

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:29:23] Oh really!

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:29:23] Over pasta. Yes.

Mathea Ford: [00:29:27] So, I was looking at some eggplant parmesan recipes the other day and they mentioned slicing up the eggplant and then salting it to get the extra moisture out. Is that something that you do or?

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:29:39] Yeah absolutely. I try to slice it really thin and get the moisture out. Yep.

Mathea Ford: [00:29:44] Yes it does.

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:29:45] So, typically if I go to an Italian restaurant that is if that’s on the menu that’s what I’m getting.

Mathea Ford: [00:29:53] Ailleen, I’ve loved talking to you today. Thank you so much for being on the podcast. It’s a pleasure having you on the show. I know my listeners learned a lot about this diet culture eating disorders. And if listeners want to connect with you what’s the best way to do that?

Ailleen Birkitt: [00:30:08] Well I have a website. It’s www.nutrition4uLLC.com. I’m also on Facebook. Same thing nutrition4uLLC and also on Instagram as @nutrition4uLLC. So, there are lots of ways and I encourage you to check it out.

Mathea Ford: [00:30:31] Well guys this has been another great episode of the Nutrition Experts Podcast. The podcast that it’s all about learning more so you can do more with nutrition in your life.

I give credit to the The National Eating Disorder Association, where I got all my data (%s, #s etc. ) That is also a great resource for information about Eating Disorders.  www.nationaleatingdisorders.org

https://media.blubrry.com/renaldiethq/p/app.pippa.io/public/streams/5aba77b58bdf7ba53cccc618/episodes/5ca56dfff386f6a024fa76c4.mp3

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | Email | RSS

Filed Under: Blog, Podcast Tagged With: Ailleen Birkitt, Anorexia, Binge Eating Disorder, Bulimia, Dysmorphia, Eating Disorders, Health at Every Size, The Diet Culture

Next Page »

Copyright © 2021 · Wellness Pro on Genesis Framework · WordPress · Log in