Coming Soon, Coaching, and Marion Nestle

Posted by laurel 22 February, 2010

Hello LOHF friends! I hope your week is off to a happy and healthy start. I had a busy but exciting weekend and want to share a few things with you.

Coming Soon…I’m working on lots of new ideas for blog posts including more of my own healthy recipes, healthy travel foods, kid-friendly meals, superfoods, supplements, and much more. Plus, I’m planning to create a survey so I can find out what you, the LOHF readers, would like to read about on my blog. I aim to please! Stay tuned for lots of new content coming soon.

Coaching…As you may or may not know, I’m a certified health counselor and coach. In addition to my own clients, I’m counseling students at the nutrition school where I earned my certification, the Institute for Integrative Nutrition. I met six of my student clients this weekend and am so thankful to be a part of their exciting school year. Although I’ll be supporting them as their counselor and mentor for the coming months, I’m certain each of them will teach me new techniques, provide new insights, and help me grow as a health coach. I’m such a lucky ducky.

Marion Nestle…Last week I attended an awesome lecture hosted by the NY Academy of Sciences. Marion Nestle gave her “What to Eat” lecture downtown and I was so happy to get a seat. Her talk covered everything from confusing food labels to healthy school lunch programs. But my favorite part of the night was the half-hour long Q&A where she honestly and gracefully answered questions from fellow scientists, registered dietitians, health counselors (like me), and other inquiring minds.

One of the attendees asked her what young mothers and fathers can do to try to protect their kids from the powerful food marketing campaigns (for example, the sugar- and chemical-heavy cereals with cartoons on the front of the box). Marion said the two best things parents can do are: 1) talk to kids about food marketing from an early age and 2) turn off the TV commercials. It will always be a challenge, but you can make the decision to educate children and reduce the amount of exposure they have to the advertisements designed to draw them in.

Dr. Nestle is the Paulette Goddard Professor in the Dept. of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health and Professor of Sociology at NYU. If you’re interested in food politics, check out Dr. Nestle’s awesome blog: www.foodpolitics.com. I even got her to autograph my book!