Pam Koch, EdD, RD, Executive Director of the Center for Food and Environment at Teachers College, which is a part of Columbia University. She talks about how a nutrition educator can help people actually change their food behaviors.
Q: Could you tell us something about yourself and what a nutrition educator does?
A: I oversee all the programs at the Center for Food and Environment. We develop curriculum to teach school children about food and the food system. We also do some programming that is for children and for families.
Q: What exactly is a nutrition educator?
A: A nutrition educator basically teaches people about healthy eating. A lot of people know about nutrition, but they still don’t change what they eat. They could know a lot of facts about the science of nutrition, but it wouldn’t change what they eat. What a nutrition educator tries to do is to really help people make changes in their eating. We actually try to get them motivated to personally want to make the changes to their eating habits. We also help them learn the skills that they would need to be successful at making these changes.
Q: If I wanted to cook more for my family, how would a nutrition educator help me?
A: We would help you to gain the cooking skills necessary to do this as well as learn what to shop for. We are all making choices in a food environment that is very challenging. So the third big piece would be to figure out how to find better choices that are available in your neighborhood. We would help you learn to “navigate” through that environment to find the healthier things that are there. The Kids Cook Monday (http://www.thekidscookmonday.org) is a great resource for families who want to cook.
Rocky21 August 31, 2024 - 11:13am
I completely agree with Pam Koch when she stresses how important your diet is. Living in America, life is so fast paced and you’re always trying to get from one place to the other. In all this hustle and bustle, I tend to forget that I have to eat. And if I do get a chance to eat, it’s everything but the right foods. I’d rather stop at McDonalds, Burger King, KFC or any other fast-food chain, than choose to eat something healthier at the deli. Before I learned more about the importance of a healthy diet, I tended to choose fast-food because it was cheap, quick, tasted good and it kept me from feeling hungry. However, I learned by reading articles in Men’s Health and then doing a little bit of research on nutrition and health at the library that all that fast-food will make you feel full and happy for a short-period of time, but in the long run, it will cause a life-time of health problems. With this new information, I began to make changes in what I ate. My research showed me that a bad diet could lead to things like high cholesterol, high blood pressure, diabetes, and obesity.For me, cutting fast-food out completely was difficult, but what I did do is change up what I ordered. Instead of ordering items at McDonalds that come with an extra-large drink and large fries I started ordering a side salad and something that was grilled, rather than fried. I found that even little changes are all it takes to get moving in the right direction.Being a student, I found it hard to cook at home all the time so I found this neat deli over on 125th street and St. Nicholas Avenue called Omega Deli, right up the block from my school. The people there are great and the best part is all their meats and vegetables are fresh. I personally like to try something different each time I go so I switch off between cold-cut sandwiches, veggie burgers, and salads. If I ate sandwiches or burgers, the bread would always be whole-wheat and I would make sure whatever I got was not fried. As a student, I was also broke, so I found it to be rather affordable a few times a week. While these new choices weren’t the healthiest of all choices, they certainly were better than before and learned that sometimes it takes baby-steps to reach your goals.