3/29 - Spotlight: Stan Wilfong; Food Rating Apps: Helpful or Harmful?(Part 1); Subscription/Donation Deal; Amazon Store & more
💡Spotlight: Stanley (Stan) Wilfong, MS, RD, LD, FAND
Professor Stan Wilfong serves as Senior Lecturer and Program Coordinator of the Nutrition Sciences Program in the Department of Human Sciences and Design at Baylor University.
Question: You've taught an introduction to dietetics class at Baylor University for over a decade. Would you say that the typical dietetics student has changed? and if so, how?
Answer: “…I have seen a significant change in the students since I started. Most students…want to enter the nutrition profession because of some personal experience that they’ve had…celiac(disease), disordered eating, diabetes, etc. With the explosion of social media and its influencers, there are now many students coming in who are steeped in misinformation. They want to major in nutrition because they feel that they’ve already learned so much from social media and want to learn more about their perception of nutrition. Some students are unteachable because of ideological reasons...However, most students eventually come around as we provide the evidence for evidence-based practice. We do have some students who graduate, but never give up their ideological stances… these are a very small minority of students, but we are seeing more of them than we did previously.
Question: What are some of the career paths for dietitians that you think hold the most promise for those now entering the field?
Answer: “…There are more openings than ever for Sports Dietitians in professional as well as college sports… Orthorexia is becoming more common, thanks to social media and the villainization of various foods/ingredients, so there is more need for CEDRDs. Another important area is Media and Communication. We need more RD voices in all areas of media to communicate sound, evidence-based nutrition messaging. One other area that holds a lot of promise is one that, unfortunately, not a lot of students are interested in, gerontological nutrition….”
Are you an educator or preceptor? Have you seen a change in the attitudes of nutrition students and RD2Be?
⏰Last Chance! March Subscription Donation Deal
Our Special Offer for March ends March 31st …if you become an ANNUAL PAID SUBSCRIBER you’ll get 10% off the annual fee (less than $1/week) AND we’ll donate $5 per new annual subscriber to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics FOUNDATION! So far, we have 8 new annual subscribers for March so we’re donating $40…can we get TWO (2) more and make it $50?
🍪🥖🍝Food Rating Apps…Helpful or Harmful? (Part 1)
Have you ever taken a look at some of the so-called food rating apps? Two in particular that seem to be popular: Yuka and Bobby Approved.
Yuka was devised by a group in France and has a dietitian on staff.
Bobby Approved is from Bobby (Parrish) FlavCity
The videos below are reactions to these apps from dietitian Andy Miller - worth watching. andydoeshealthy.com
Yuka
Bobby Approved
As a dietitian, nutrition professional or just a rational, science-based person; should you be concerned about your patients/clients/friends using these apps? Could they provoke an unnecessarily restrictive diet? Result in orthorexia? Trigger eating disorders? Result in food waste because of discarding foods? Spending more on groceries?
Here’s a comment from someone who uses these apps—you be the judge…we’ll be looking at this more in the next newsletter (April 2nd) for Part 2.
“There’s absolutely no reason to put chemicals, plastics and other additives in our food, except to poison us. Our own government is killing us…When you really think about it, you have no option but to throw out ALL tainted food. We did over a year ago. Threw out an entire pantry of food and replaced it with healthy food. Shopping in a regular grocery store is not an option anymore. I randomly picked up items on the store shelves and every single one of them was bioengineered, GMO or both. There’s no way I‘m letting the government destroy my body and my health.”
⏭Part2 - In the next newsletter (4/2) we’ll be looking more closely at how these apps rate various items. Does their rating make sense? Is the algorithm clear or arbitrary? What could be the downside of using apps like these? Are they sponsored?
🛒Build UP AMAZON Store
We’re getting quite the Amazon Store Front! Some recent lists we’ve added include “Temporary Tattoos”, “Gardening Stuff” and “Mother’s Day for Dietitians”. We do get a really, really small percentage of anything sold in our store (it comes from Amazon, not from you!). Click HERE to see our Amazon Lists/Store Fronts.
3️⃣3 Things You May Have Missed
IFIC: Understanding & Interpreting Food & Health Scientific Studies
2. Article: Medical Experts Debunk the Biggest Myths in Their Field
