National Nutrition Month

March is National Nutrition Month, and March 10th is National Registered Dietitian Day.  This is the time of year when dietetic interns get lots and lots of projects assigned to them by their program directors.  Projects such as display boards, volunteering at soup kitchens, healthy cooking demos, and teaching girl scouts about trying new foods. (That's just a smattering of what we did last year at WVUH)  Seeing as how I am no longer an intern, I'm focusing my efforts on 2 different projects at the hospital.  This friday I've organized a 'planting day' where employees can plant herb seeds to grow and hopefully use in their home cooking.  This goes along with this years NNM theme of "From the Ground Up".  At the end of the month we are having a healthy cook off.  Recipes must include at least one fruit or vegetable and be low in fat, cholesterol, and sodium.  Unfortunately, I've only received two entries so far...

Besides hospitals you will find dietitians in WIC clinics, school lunch programs, college health clinics, working as personal nutrition consultants (example: me), weight loss and eating disorder clinics, lobbyists, doing research for health/medicine/new food products,  spas and resorts, sports teams, out-patient diabetes centers,  TV spokes persons, the list goes on and on.

My favorite part about being an RD is teaching people about food and how changing their diet will improve their health.  My least favorite part are the walls people put up and the massive resistance people have when it comes to actually taking our advice.  So for the next month, thank a dietitian for all the hard work they do.  I promise it will make their day!