I'm NOT the food police!

I’m a Registered Dietitian (RD), and people have been known to flee in horror if they spot me in the grocery store, but I’m definitely NOT the food police! I grew up in a steak and potatoes family, where the steak was so big it covered the entire dinner plate, with an additional, small plate for the potato. My grandmother had a special candy drawer in her cupboards that was just for us grandkids. So how did I become an RD? Here’s my story:

Food was something we worked for when I was a kid. I helped weed my grandparents’ gardens, even the dreaded green beans, which never seemed to stop growing. We picked strawberries and blueberries together, and then spent the rest of the day freezing the berries or making jam. We canned tomatoes, froze corn and peas, and stocked the big chest freezer in the basement completely full. Food was family, hard work, delicious, and lots of fun.

I didn’t even know there were such creatures as Registered Dietitians until I was in the Army. Food took on a whole new meaning when I was presented with C-rats for meals. Somewhere along the line the new topic of wellness came up, and I decided I wanted to trade in my military dogtags for an RD’s tools:  measuring cups and spoons, and plastic food models.

Now I’m married with two teenage boys, who’ve grown up in spite of my food and eating experiments with them. I never made them finish everything on their plates, banishing the starving children in Africa or China from our family’s vocabulary. They’ve been known to eat half of a chocolate-chip cookie, leaving the rest for later. At the end of the summer I have to clean all the odds and ends of uneaten ice cream cones out of the freezer; more of the foods they weren’t hungry enough to finish. How many adults do you know who eat just half of a cookie? If we stop eating when we’re full, guess what? We don’t become overweight!

I’ve never been a short-order cook at home, figuring that it’s difficult enough to put one dinner on the table, so I’m not going to mess around cooking something different for each person. They haven’t starved to death because they refused to try the fresh shrimp and sugar snap peas for dinner (although my then 3-year son told me he’d be awake all night, he was so hungry. I told him to make sure and not wake me up, and I’d see him at breakfast); and now shrimp and sugar snaps are some of their favorites.

My husband likes to tease me by listing his version of the food pyramid:  the French fry group, the beer group, the cookie group (you can find the real Food Pyramid here:  www.foodpyramid.gov). But when it’s his turn to prepare dinner, he makes sure there’s at least one vegetable, fruit for dessert, and skim milk to drink. Sometimes people in the grocery store, when they’re not making U-turns to go in the other direction so I don’t look into their carts, look in my shopping cart to see what the RD purchases. They approve of the whole grain bread, fresh fruit and vegetables, and skinless chicken. But they’re often amazed at the cookies (not low-fat or low-sugar; just regular cookies), canned fruit (canned in its own juice), and breakfast cereals (no glow-in-the-dark colors, but they definitely contain sugar). Remember, I’m NOT the food police, and just because good nutrition is my business it doesn’t mean we can’t enjoy a chocolate éclair every now and then.

According to Brian Wansink, a Cornell University professor, we routinely make over 200 food decisions per day (http://eab.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/39/1/106). Wansink notes that the food ‘gatekeeper’, or person primarily in charge of cooking, makes over 70% of the food decisions for the entire household (www.mindlesseating.org) I guess that makes me the nutrition gatekeeper (which sounds much nicer than the food police, thank you very much) for my family.

Here are my nutrition gatekeeper rules:

-         We drink skim milk or water with meals. That’s it – no soda, no juice, no coffee.

-         Meals are eaten sitting at the dining room table, not watching TV, on the couch, or in the bedroom.

-         Snacks at home are healthy:  fruit, cereal and milk, sandwiches, yogurt. Chips and candy are reserved for eating outside the home.

-         Everybody eats breakfast before they leave the house. As my youngest son told his kindergarten class, if you don’t eat breakfast, your brain won’t work. He’s right.

-         Beverage rules:  water quenches your thirst and it’s free so that’s what you drink when you’re thirsty. Fruit is a better choice than juice, even 100% juice. Sports drinks are for sports or any activity where you get hot and sweaty, like mowing the lawn or weeding the garden. We don’t keep soda at home – there’s always water.

The interesting thing is, I learned about half of these rules going to school to become an RD. The rest I learned from my mother and grandmothers, nutrition gatekeepers themselves in their day. Choosing primarily healthy foods isn’t rocket science, and it doesn’t have to taste bad, cost a lot of money, or leave you hungry. Tell me about your nutrition gatekeeper rules, and how you developed them. I can’t wait to hear your stories!

Lynn Grieger, Registered Dietitian (NOT food police)

www.LynnGrieger.com