Nutrition Science & Dietetics News
An Agent of Change
by Ellie Prather ‘15
Child and Family Studies Major, Health and Wellness Minor
During Summer 2014, I was accepted into the Boston University Summer Study Internship Program in the Public Health and Social Policy Track. This unforgettable opportunity provided me with eight college credits and guided me to my internship placement at Medically Induced Trauma Support Services, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting patients, families and clinicians who have been involved in medical error. The experience exceeded my expectations as I was subjected to such a prominent yet undervalued issue, and was surrounded by inspirational people striving for a safer and more transparent healthcare system.
Having the opportunity to be a member of this team motivated me to be an agent of change. In addition to my incredible internship experience I have been lucky enough to be a research assistant for Project Ethics, a study taking place on campus about the inclusion of adults with intellectual disabilities in research. This has shown me how research unfolds and the amount of work that goes into producing results that could affect people’s lives for the better. As the president and founder of the student organization, Protect Our Breasts, I have had the opportunity to educate my community on breast cancer prevention while strengthening my leadership skills and truly understanding the importance and power of teamwork. This work in conjunction with my Child and Family Studies, and Health and Wellness coursework has showed me first-hand how the education I have been receiving plays out in the real world context. I am grateful for the major and minor that I chose because knowing how children and families function on community, national and global levels, and how health and wellness tie into that has not only been beneficial for me in a professional sense and towards my career outlook but for me personally as a growing individual.
Courses like Child and Families in the Healthcare Setting, and Sport and Human Development opened my eyes to potential careers. Prosocial and Moral Development was another important course for me because it taught me valuable lessons about human nature, inspired me to be a better person and looked at development from an incredibly unique perspective. I thank SU and Falk College for the endless resources and opportunities and look forward to taking the experiences and education with me to implement in my career. Syracuse has formed me into an incredibly motivated individual and I pride myself in how career driven I have become. After graduation, I plan to be working in the field of health improvement, whether that be large scale or community level work.
Food studies, nutrition faculty, students participated in NYC James Beard Empire Feast
Falk College food studies chef instructor, Mary Kiernan, cooked for and participated in the James Beard Empire State Feast Event on Feb. 27 at the James Beard House in NYC. Assisting her and the other team chefs are Falk nutrition students, Rachel Johnson and Kaylah Wicks. The Beard Foundation offers events to educate, inspire, entertain, and foster an appreciation of American cuisine. Preparation for the event included recent test run-throughs at Syracuse University’s Falk College teaching kitchens.
Empathy Matters looking for volunteers
“Treat others the way you want to be treated. We heard this mantra over and over again as little kids, but what we didn’t realize is that we were being taught empathy,” notes Syracuse University biology and nutrition science double major, Robert Swanda. Along with classmates Fareya Zubair and Andrew Sussman, Swanda has created Empathy Matters, a new program through Syracuse University’s Office of Engagement that is currently looking for committed volunteers.
Empathy Matters needs you!
Focused on second-grade students, Syracuse University college students, through playful activities such as puppy therapy, role reversal, and team building, will mentor elementary school-aged children about the basics of empathy. The program will take place at H.W. Smith Elementary School on Tuesdays and Fridays from 1:30 p.m.-3:00 p.m. Transportation will be provided to the school and back courtesy the Mary Ann Shaw Center for Public and Community Service and the Schine Student Center. Please email engagesu@syr.edu with your name and contact information if you are interested.
“Empathy is defined as the ability to put oneself into the mental shoes of another person in order to understand his or her emotions and feelings. In a recent study conducted by a Harvard University psychologist, 80 percent of parents were not teaching their children about empathy. The children began focusing more on themselves, and could not understand why they were hurting other’s feelings. With young students growing up in a society dominated more by technology and less by personal connections, it is crucial to have an understanding of another’s emotions and to show compassion. Empathy is the foundation for success in relationships, school, and the workplace. To create the future leaders of America who will inspire and empower those around them, we must instill empathy in our younger generations,” says Swanda.
New York Times food columnist offers advice to Falk students on food production, consumption and activism
A standing-room-only audience of students, faculty and staff had the chance to hear the insights of Mark Bittman, one of the country’s best-known, most widely respected food writers. Bittman, who was in Syracuse as the featured speaker at the Rosamond Gifford Lecture on November 5, made a special trip to campus to meet with students in Falk College’s food studies and nutrition programs.
The question-and-answer format led by Bittman explored many topics, including how students can work with their faculty to help expand the percentage of locally produced food served on campus, why people who are ‘foodies’ are becoming increasingly active in the labor movement, and the need for reduced marketing of soda, sugary cereals and junk food to children. In discussing the merits of urban agriculture and school gardens, Bittman noted “it is significant to show kids food comes from the ground.”
Bittman told the audience that while people don’t cook as much as they used to, “interest in food and cooking is making a recovery.” His newest book, How to Cook Everything Fast, tackles one of the greatest barriers to cooking—time. He explained to students that even if they aren’t able to cook as much as they’d like, they still need to eat healthy foods that interest them. “It isn’t critical for everyone to cook. But everyone absolutely needs to eat good food,” he added.
Bittman writes for the Opinion section of the New York Times on food policy and cooking, and is a columnist for the New York Times Magazine. A regularly featured guest on the Today Show, he wrote “The Minimalist” column for 13 years, and now a “Minimalist” cooking show is featured on the Cooking Channel. The How to Cook Everything series is highly respected: the first edition of the flagship book How to Cook Everything won both the IACP and James Beard Awards, and How to Cook Everything Vegetarian won the 2008 IACP award. He is also the author of Food Matters, Food Matters Cookbook, Fish, and Leafy Greens.
Syracuse University’s Falk College Highlights Graduate Studies During November 15 Information Session
Faculty, staff, students available to talk about programs, coursework, student life
Syracuse University faculty, staff and current students will welcome potential graduate students interested in the Falk College’s graduate programs in child and family studies, public health, marriage and family therapy, nutrition science, social work andsport management during a special Fall Information Session for graduate studies on Saturday, November 15. The presentation begins at 10:00 a.m. in the Shaffer Art Building, Shemin Auditorium.
Detailed information will be provided on graduate programs in child and family studies (MA, MS, Ph.D.), child and family health (MS), marriage and family therapy (MA), social work (MSW) as well as the dual degree program (MA/MSW) in marriage and family therapy and social work, nutrition science, and sport venue and event management (MS). Details on our newCertificate of Advanced Study (CAS) programs in trauma-informed practice and intercollegiate athletic advising and supportwill be available along with information on other Falk College CAS programs in addiction studies, dietetic internship, and global health.
Admissions staff will be available at the information session to meet with students and provide information on academic programs, scholarships and housing.
Nutrition Students Teach Syracuse Crunch Players About Healthy Eating
Falk College nutrition students recently gave a cooking demo for the AHL Syracuse Crunch at the War Memorial as Part One of a three-part nutrition education series. Students Andy Lai, Megan Mullins, Sarah Skinner and Rachel Mallory taught 15 of the hockey players how to make veggie scrambled eggs, lemon caper chicken, a berry recovery smoothie and roasted sweet potato fries. The students shared cooking tips and provided facts about the importance of nutrition for fueling and recovering from rigorous practice and game schedules. The athletes asked lots of questions and ate all the food. Next, students will take them on a grocery store tour at Wegmans.
Marlei Simon ’14 receives scholarship from Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics
The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Foundation awarded Falk College alumna, Marlei Simon ’14, the Ann Selkowitz Litt Memorial Scholarship. Simon graduated with a bachelor in May 2014, double-majoring in nutrition and public policy. As an undergraduate, she was a resident advisor for three years, board member of the Nutrition Education Promotion Association club for three years and a Literacy Corps tutor. Her career aspiration is to lobby for adequate coverage of nutrition therapy, quality food, government funded health and nutrition services. In addition to the Litt Memorial Scholarship, Simon received the William W. Allen Nutrition Scholars Award from the Allen Foundation earlier this year. Her dietetic internship placement is with the Onondaga County Department of Adult and Long Term Care Services
Litt, who passed away in 2007, was a graduate of Syracuse University’s dietetics program and worked as a nutritionist who specialized in helping young people develop normal eating habits and maintain a healthy weight. She spent many years in private practice in the Washington area and was a nutritionist for the Washington Redskins. She also was the author of “The College Student’s Guide to Eating Well on Campus” (2000, 2005), “Fuel for Young Athletes” (2004) and the American Dietetic Association Guide to Private Practice (2004). She served as a spokesman for several media campaigns, including the “Got Milk?” one, appeared on local and national television, and was quoted in numerous newspapers and magazines. She wrote a column for the Washington Parent for 10 years and was the nutrition consultant to Cosmogirl magazine.
Committed to improving the nation’s health and advancing the profession of dietetics through research, education and advocacy, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics was founded in 1917 and is the world’s largest organization of food and nutrition professionals.
Falk professor Jennifer Wilkins updates first U.S. regional food guide to help consumers understand benefits, how-to’s of eating locally
Thanks to farmers’ markets, farm-to-school programs, and community-supported agriculture, locally grown foods are more readily available—and more in demand. People want to know where their food comes from. How is it grown? What steps are involved in its processing? Evidence suggests that plant-based, regionally sourced diets, largely composed of minimally processed foods, can significantly reduce some of the negative environmental impacts of our food choices. Eating locally produced foods also strengthens the market for local farmers.
In 1993 when Jennifer Wilkins, Ph.D., R.D., the Daina E. Falk Endowed Professor of Practice in Nutrition, joined the faculty of the Division of Nutritional Sciences (DNS) at Cornell University, she was interested in local, community-based food systems and the implication of these systems for food choice and diet quality. Noticing the federal dietary guidance system – food guides and dietary guidelines – lacked information on seasonality and local food availability, she came up with the idea of regional dietary guidance. To help consumers select and enjoy diets that were seasonally varied and locally produced, she developed a regional food guide based on the USDA Food Guide Pyramid, the official federal food guide at that time. Working with then-Cornell graduate student, Jennifer Bokaer-Smith, Wilkins was responsible for introducing the first regional food guide in the United States.
The original Northeast Regional Food Guide debuted in 1996 and connected regional food systems with nutrition and dietary guidance. The Northeast Regional Food Guide was accompanied by a set of fact sheets, which provided more information on issues related to local food, food systems and seasonality. In 2011, First Lady Michelle Obama and U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Secretary Tom Vilsack released the federal government’s MyPlate food icon to help consumers build a healthy plate at meal times, with an emphasis on the fruit, vegetable, grains, protein foods, and dairy groups.
To reflect the new federal MyPlate food guide and with support from the New York State Department of Agriculture and Markets, Wilkins recently updated the Northeast Regional Food Guide, working with then-DNS undergraduate project assistant, student Courtney Mayszak, currently a dietetic intern with Wegmans in Rochester, NY. Known today as MyPlate Northeast, the guide promotes healthy eating, sustainability and local food systems, reflecting the latest diet recommendations associated with nutritional well-being. It also proposes that seasonally varied, locally-based diets can foster food systems that are diverse, protective of natural resources, and better able to adapt and mitigate climate change.
Many foods pictured on MyPlate Northeast are available regionally year round, such as milk, yogurt, cheeses, dry beans, nuts, eggs, poultry, fish, meats, breads, cereals, pasta, tortillas, and whole grains. Most fresh fruits and vegetables are available on a seasonal basis, but several, such as hearty root vegetables and apples, store well and maintain their quality for months. Being a local food consumer in the Northeast means choosing more stored, dried, frozen and canned produce in the winter and enjoying our region’s abundant fruits and vegetables fresh during the spring, summer, and fall.
“In the future, fact sheets and other resource materials will be developed to accompany MyPlate Northeast. These may include a quiz or game to help consumers assess how seasonal and local their current diets are. As the USDA updates its Dietary Guidelines for Americans every five years, it may also eventually revise MyPlate. This will be an opportunity to once again update MyPlate Northeast. As we learn more about the energy and other resource costs of individual food choices, this will help inform the development of regional dietary guidance,” notes Wilkins.
Dr. Wilkins joined Falk College in August 2014 from the Division of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell University where she had been an Extension faculty member for 21 years and where she retains a visiting scholar appointment. Her professional portfolio includes directing statewide outreach for the Farmers’ Market Nutrition Program, developing the New York State Farm to School Outreach Program, and serving as community coordinator for the Cornell Dietetic Internship. She was one of eight individuals selected nationally for the Kellogg Foundation Food and Society Policy Fellowship from 2004-2006. Her monthly nutrition, food policy and food system column, The Food Citizen, appeared for six years in the Albany Times Union. For several years she taught short courses in food systems, policy, diet and nutrition and Mediterranean diets as a visiting professor at the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Pollenzo and Parma, Italy. In 2009 she coined the term ‘civic dietetics’ to describe the emergence of integration of food system awareness into professional dietetics practice.
Her applied research includes exploration of interests and practices related to local food procurement among school food service professionals and the implications of farm-to-cafeteria programs on transaction costs and institutional procurement strategies, children’s diets, and small and mid-size farms; economic impact of institutional procurement on local agricultural; influences of Community Supported Agriculture (CSA) participation on food preferences, diet composition and food skill development particularly among low income families; conceptualization and interest in of local and seasonal foods; influence of food consumption patterns on per capita land, water, and energy requirements, and; roles of dietary guidance and consumer food choice in addressing sustainability issues, including climate change.
A Rewarding Summer
Farming is one of the most important professions
by Christina LiPuma
Nutrition Major, Class of 2016
As a college student from April to September I’m always bombarded with the same question: What are you up to this summer? I love seeing the expressions on people’s faces when I tell them I work on a farm. People have some pretty wild interpretations of the term ‘farmer’ so it always requires further explanation. I work at Stults Farm, a family-owned berry farm in Plainsboro N.J., a suburb of Princeton.
In this post I’ll go through what a typical day of work for me in June is.
It’s 5:50 a.m. when I roll into the dusty parking lot at the farm. Work doesn’t start till 6 but Mrs. Stults always says, ‘If you’re on time, you’re late, and if you’re five minutes early you’re on time.’ The other pickers arrive sleepy-eyed and bundled in sweatshirts. June is strawberry season, and picking strawberries is a family affair – all the Stults plus four to eight hired workers pick side by side.
We head out to the fields piled into three John Deer Gators – golf cart-like utility vehicles – with more than 20 flats, each containing 8 quart-sized containers that we pick directly into. Mrs. Stults gives us directions on where to pick and we begin. The berries at Stults truly aren’t mass-produced. I find berries of all shapes and sizes. As long as the berries are ripe and not rotting or covered in mud, I pick them. The girls sometimes chat about college and movies and boys as we move down the endless rows of berries, but mostly we work in silence, which is actually quite peaceful once you get good at picking.
After an hour or two the sun heats up the fields and we all pull off our sweatshirts. There are only two ways to pick strawberries: bent over, which kills your back, or squatting down, which kills your thighs – both ways kill your hamstrings. One interesting thing about working at Stults, though, is that there are no time standards, but we all understand that we are costing the farm money if we slack off, and we have too much pride in what we do to be the weakest link that day, so we all work hard.
After two to three hours of picking strawberries, we return to the barn to exchange the full flats for white buckets and cool off before heading out to the pea field. Bent over our row we rip pea pods off the fragile plants and throw them into the buckets until we reach our goal and can return to the barn. At this point we’re exhausted, sweaty and covered in mud, and Mrs. Stults usually calls it a day.
The same sort of pattern goes for the months to follow but with different produce. Raspberries ripen after strawberries, then blueberries, then blackberries, with green beans and tomatoes overlapping all of them. Occasionally we get assigned odd jobs like weeding or planting in the green house. I love the variety.
Actually, I love just about everything about my job. The people who work there make me smile every morning. As time goes on you get used to the stress berry-picking puts on your body and it’s really nice that you can immediately see your work paying off as the flats of berries you picked pile up in the barn. Every day is interesting, whether it be because you find enormous spiders the size of your hand or enormous blueberries on the row that almost never bears fruit. I love working on the farm and being close to the land. It takes a special type of person to run a farm. You have to be hard-working and honest but also a crop-savvy business person. In my opinion, farming is the most important profession because, as it has been pointed out by many, no farms equals no food and without a steady food supply, no other job could exist.
The Mediterranean Diet
Professor, students travel to Italy to study and explore benefits of the Mediterranean diet
by Tanya Horacek, Ph.D., R.D.
Professor of Nutrition
Department of Public Health, Food Studies and Nutrition
What is the Mediterranean diet and why do people eat this way? How many ways can we really define the Mediterranean diet, based upon regional and cultural differences? This year, we had a great group of 16 women and two men experience one of the most renowned cuisines in the world. Through class discussions, we investigated the historic, geographic, and socio-economic underpinnings of the Mediterranean diet. We critiqued the health benefits and the implications of following a Mediterranean diet. We discussed the current dietary habits of people surrounding the Mediterranean to determine just how closely the Mediterranean diet is being followed.
Once in Italy, we experienced the current Mediterranean diet from farm to table by exploring small artisan producers for cheese, olive oil and pasta. We explored the significance of local/regional production not only from a food system but also from a legislative and labeling perspective. We worked in the fields, shopped for the freshest ingredients and cooked authentic Italian meals.
Immediately upon arrival we were transported to the agriturismo La Ginestra. Here we did extensive walking tours, worked at the agriturismo in the vineyards and learned about beekeeping and making honey. We also made pizza using an antique grain wheat in a wood-fired oven. We visited a small demonstration sustainable garden in Montespertoli. We then spent the day cooking with our Italian chef friend Jacopo at his home. We made a fantastic meal of spinach ravioli, chicken cacciatore, costini and tiramisu. We went to Pisa for a quick look at the learning tower – then on to a 1.5 hour bike ride (cut back from 2.5 hours) in a national park. We visited Corzano and Paterno for a detailed look at the cheese making process and a tasting of their famous pecorini cheese. We visited a small organic vineyard- Podere Paglieri for a tour, lunch and olive oil tasting. Finally, before heading into Florence, we had a lesson and tour of small pasta factory – Pastaficio Fabbri in Strada in Chianti. In Florence, we toured the city and did a fantastic tourist tour “Taste of Florence,” stopping at 10 sites for lessons and a sampling. We shopped at the small farmer’s market Sant’ Ambroggio and cooked with Jacopo at the new kitchens at Villa Rosa. We had a guided tour of the Uffizi museum.
The students loved the trip and had this to say about it:
“I loved that we immersed ourselves in the homemade cooking process and that we got a sense of the community.”
“Every activity taught me something about Mediterranean food and culture especially in Italy.”
“I really enjoyed the farm aspect…I learned how society relies on the resources available and how the farmers pull it all together.”
Tanya M. Horacek Ph.D., R.D. led the class and trip. Dr. Horacek is a Professor in the department of Public Health, Food Studies and Nutrition at Falk College. She teaches upper level/graduate applied dietetics classes. Her current research involves the development and validation of a healthy campus environmental audit and randomized treatment control trials using a non-diet approach to weight management. She has a variety of other research projects include eating competence, green eating, participatory program planning, and the effectiveness of lifestyles-oriented nutrition counseling/education. She is passionate about helping students fit a study abroad experience into their program of study. She has broadened her area of study/teaching to include sustainability and a global cultural experience via the Mediterranean Food Culture class. She spent the Fall 2009 semester living and teaching in Florence and continues to study Italian.
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