Nutrition Month 2018 - Unlock the Potential of Food

Nutrition-Month-Thumb.jpg

I’m so excited to be part of this year’s Dietitians of Canada Nutrition Month Campaign. We are celebrating Nutrition Month 2018 by helping Canadians unlock the potential of food to fuel, discover, prevent, heal and bring us together.Along with my fellow dietitian colleagues, I will help illustrate that food has the potential to:

  • Fuel: Stay energized by planning nutritious snacks into your day.

  • Discover: Foster healthy eating habits in children by teaching them to shop and cook.

  • Prevent: Understand how food can help prevent chronic diseases like type 2 diabetes and heart disease.

  • Heal: Learn how food can promote healing and how dietitians work in health care teams to make a difference.

  • Bring us together: Enjoy the benefits of bringing families and friends together with food.

As you know, in my practice I help to support our amazing production team to develop and prepare nutritious meals for home delivery, but there are so many dietitians who work in other diverse areas of nutrition too! Did you know that you can find dietitians working in many places, including hospitals, grocery stores, community health centres, universities, rehabilitation facilities, seniors’ residences and long-term care settings?

We all have one thing in common: We love food – it unites us all! Whether we are counselling a patient recovering from a heart attack, teaching a cooking class or taking students through a tour of a grocery store, we are all passionate about the potential of food and its connection to health. You will learn so much this month about the amazing potential of food!

At Calgary Meals on Wheels, we are in a unique position to help support the potential of food to both prevent and to heal. Not only is our food healthy, nutritious and ready to eat, but it is delivered to you by our caring and dedicated volunteers. Bringing our community together with food! Life throws curve balls, and there can be times when both grocery shopping and cooking become challenging, and sometimes impossible to achieve. Our home-delivered meals can be a perfect short or longer time solution to help jump that barrier to accessing food and thus leveraging foods incredible fueling ability for our bodies and minds.

To make Nutrition Month come alive, I would like to share tips and recipes, throughout the month, to help you unlock the potential of food!

For today, I would like to share this recipe with a fresh twist on guacamole. Delicious spread on a sandwich or wrap or served with an assortment of fresh vegetables, sliced whole grain baguette or homemade oven-toasted tortilla chips:  https://www.dietitians.ca/Downloads/Public/NM2018-Recipe-08MintBasilGuacamole-EN.aspx

Happy Nutrition Month, everyone!This post was inspired by Dietitians of Canada’s Nutrition Month campaign. Learn more at www.nutritionmonth2018.ca

Kim Jeffery has been a Registered Dietitian for 25 years and is a member of the College of Dietitians of Alberta. For the past 7 years Kim has used her expertise to help ensure the meals produced at Calgary Meals on Wheels are nutritious and healthy for our clients.