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gwynethhadasa

Diversity in Dietetics

Individualized. Age matters. Gender matters. Ethnicity matters. Socioeconomic status matters.


I sat in one session of a diabetic education class and I freaked out. The lesson that day was about carbohydrate counting, spreading out carbohydrate intake throughout the day, and to reduce excess carbohydrate intake by substituting them with higher protein and fat content. The dietitian kept repeating to have apple, or cheese, or yogurt for snacks. She kept condoning Asian and Mexican takeouts. One of the gentleman sitting beside me was from Kenya and we shared a glance. We both knew that this diet to manage diabetes would mean denying our cultural food that centers around cassava/root vegetables, for him, and rice, for me. Frustration was in the air. To be healthy seemed to equal to denying our identities.

 

For the longest time, my exposure to dietitians was not culturally friendly. Examples of healthy food were baked chicken, baked potato, salmon, nuts, and seeds. Mediterranean diet was highly esteemed. I am not condoning them and in fact, I promoted them because research has demonstrated many benefits of those types of food. However, this makes me feel as if other cultures are doomed to chronic illnesses and low health status.


I made a promise to myself that as I am learning about nutrition and health, I have to apply it to non-Caucasian culture. I have to apply the lessons for people who are not in the typical media. Everyone's health, old or young, high income or low income, having many or one resource, Caucasian or not, needs to be addressed. There is a way for everyone to be healthy. Everything in moderation.


My dream is to be a dietitian for the Asian population, my own people. So far, it's a lot on me to educate myself how to do so because no way I am telling them to eat mostly salmon and almonds with potato when we like our rice, noodles, and pork. I'm still only learning the Western, the American diet in my formal education. So I have put many projects/assignments to focus on diversity competence.


For our Foods class, we have to interview an international student about their typical diet at home. I took this opportunity to explore the Latinx culture and interviewed my Brazilian friend. You can go ahead an look at my powerpoint below if you are also curious about what and how people eat in Brazil :)



In Nutrition Counseling & Education class, we had to prepare a 15 minute lecture regarding any topic we wanted. I decided to address the need of diversity competence and the many different ways we could approach food and diet to people from different ethnic backgrounds. The files attached in this post is the handout I created (using Canva, of course, an easy graphic design tool) and the powerpoint that went along with my lecture.


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