Nourish Education

Nourishing Black Diversity in Nutrition and Dietetics

by Christina
31/01/202130/06/2022

First of all, I’d like to thank all of the amazing registered (and associate) nutritionists and dietitians that shared my tweet and answered the call in support of this month’s campaign! In the Caribbean and North America, we celebrate Black History Month in February. So imagine my surprise when I moved to the U.K to study and realised BHM was October – one of the best months of the year, in case you didn’t know. Despite the differences, I’m taking February to Nourish Diversity in Nutrition & Dietetics. We’ll be interviewing registered nutrition professionals and a few students from all over the world! How exciting!

I am very blessed to come from a majority black country where healthcare is free (although there could be significant improvements). While I was aware of health inequalities and the social determinants of health, learning about it from an ethnicity-based standpoint was very eye-opening.

Is Protein the super-nutrient I should be having more of?

by Christina
22/10/202010/04/2023

I know it can’t just be me that has noticed this, but many common foods and recipes have been pushing the “high-protein” agenda for some time. And why is that? Should we be concerned about not having enough protein in our diet? More importantly, what is protein and do we need to include more in our diets?

Protein is one of the three macronutrients the body needs to produce energy. Each gram of protein provides us with 4 calories of energy. I like to think of proteins as the builder macronutrient because it is one of the most important building blocks for the body. Proteins are made from hundreds of smaller molecules called amino acids, which can combine in a variety of ways to produce:

Muscles
Enzymes
Hormones
Immune cells
Skin
Hair
Nails

Should I avoid Carbs?

by Christina
14/10/202009/03/2022

I always found it confusing when people said stuff like, “oh I have to cut down on bread to lose weight”. From a scientific perspective, bread is not super-charged with anything to cause weight gain. It’s definitely not like the magic bean that Jack had. If anything, bread is one of the most affordable staple foods capable of providing energy and micronutrients that you may not otherwise be getting. So, why do people think it’s making us fat? What about other starchy foods and sweet carbs? Today, we’ll talk a bit about the role of carbohydrates in global diets and hopefully, you’ll be able to determine if it’s the cause of weight gain.

Carbohydrates are one of the macronutrient trio which supplies energy to the body. CHO, or Carbs are a diverse set of molecules which are derived from organic monomers (units) such as glucose, fructose and galactose. Plants are the most diverse sources of carbohydrates because they use carbon dioxide and water to create carbs for energy and structure. Carbohydrates can range from the simplest sweet sugars like those found in fruits, to long, branched chains which taste starchy, such as those in potatoes, ground provisions and starchy foods.