Episode 45: Best Practices for Dietitians Working with Food Insecure Clients

Laura Poland podcast guest

About the Podcast

In this episode, Clancy speaks with dietitian Laura Poland about food marketing, approachable meal planning, having empathy for clients, and reducing clients’ guilt surrounding their food choices.

About Laura Poland

As a dietitian for over 28 years, Laura has worked in a variety of settings, but by far, her favorite area of focus is weight management and Type 2 Diabetes. The past 2 years, she worked at Children’s Hunger Alliance and has increased her passion to work with people to instill a healthy relationship with food early in the lifespan. Now in her private practice, Dietitian In Your Kitchen, she uses a non-diet approach to create a healthy lifestyle. She strives to assist each client to focus on one habit at a time. On the side, she makes time for her podcast, The Secret Life of Dietitians, exploring all the hot topics in nutrition.

Discussion Takeaways

  • Laura’s goal within her private practice is to help people feel comfortable in their kitchen.
  • Meal planning reduces stress when it’s time to decide what you want to eat, helps you make a well-balanced meal easily, and gives you a little flexibility when you have only so many food resources on hand.
  • Dietitians can teach their clients to eat well, while not having guilt when eating foods that they see as “bad-for-you”. All foods fit into a healthful diet and lifestyle.
  • Food marketing sometimes creates “halo effect” around certain foods by overestimating the healthfulness of a food based on a single claim, such as being low in calories or low in fat.
  • There is no real definition for “clean eating”. But, marketers use this term all the time.
  • When dietitians create meal plans for clients, they can provide recipe variations or shortcuts that make recipes more approachable for clients.
  • Some food marketing promote meaningless claims used to raise the price on food.
  • Even though a prepared food can come from a box, what’s inside might have the same nutrition as the item prepared from scratch.
  • As dietitians, we’re expected to listen and understand a problem before trying to solve it. But, nutrition professionals bring their own biases and judgements that need recognized.
  • Get involved with the public health realm, regardless of your background. All voices need heard. You never know what you could bring to the table.

#1 tip to improve access to healthy food

Seeing a dietitian isn’t about figuring out the best diet for you. It’s about making a lifestyle change, slowly forming habits and reshaping behaviors, one at a time.

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Each week on the Food Dignity® Podcast, the Food Dignity® Movement’s Clancy Harrison hosts a wide variety of hunger experts and other people making changes on the frontlines. Join us as we dive deep into conversations that will change the way you think about food insecurity.

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