This was my first year attending the Food and Nutrition Conference and Expo (FNCE). Lucky for me, it was in Chicago this year, which is close to where I’m living, since I’m completing my Dietetic Internship at Loyola University-Chicago. FNCE officially ran October 21-24 (Sat-Tue); however, I didn’t attend on Saturday since there weren’t a lot of sessions that day and I have a bit of a commute.
For those who have never been to FNCE–go. Seriously. It was such an incredible experience full of learning, fun, and free food! I think sometimes we feel like qualified nutrition professionals are in the minority of voices about nutrition, but at FNCE there were over 13,000 of us in one building. It’s so inspiring to see how many of us are truly out there, and to hear about all of the amazing things we’re doing across the nation. Yes, it’s expensive, especially if you have to travel across the country (which I was fortunate to not have to do this year), but it is such an incredible, indescribable experience that I believe everyone in food and nutrition should get a taste of at least once. Okay, I’ll step off my soapbox now and launch into my recap of my 3 days at FNCE.
Sunday:
First full day of FNCE! Despite the fact that I don’t have a lot of experience driving in Chicago I managed to make it on time and in one piece. I didn’t even get lost! :P Here’s what I did today:
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8:00am-9:30am: Preparing for the Second Century with a Stronger Focus on Public Health
This session was all about how nutrition needs to be more focused on taking a public health approach moving forward. Instead of exclusively working on the individual level we need to be think more broadly with our work to positively impact the largest number of people we can. They also discussed the new terminology to describe population-based nutrition interventions, and tied everything to the social-ecological model. We wrapped up by doing a case study about sodium. This session was incredibly interesting to me since I have a strong interest in public health (and even minored in it during my undergrad). It was definitely a strong way to start off the day!
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10:00am-11:30am: Influence Redefined-Be the Leader You Were Meant to Be, Monday to Monday
This session was led by a woman who actually isn’t an RDN, but who built a career on public speaking. We learned how to influence others by refining our communication style (and cutting out the “ums” and “likes”). We even practiced this during the session by pairing up and calling each other out anytime we used filler words. This was pretty uncomfortable, but ultimately a good thing to practice. The overall lesson was to be consistent in your brand Monday to Monday. This way, people always know who they’re going to get.
- 11:30am-1:00pm: Lunch break! I wandered all over the expo floor collecting food samples for lunch and exploring all of the different vendors. There are hundreds of companies that come to FNCE, so it was a bit overwhelming to try and navigate. Everyone was handing out free items from reusable grocery bags to wooden spoons! I also ran into one of my past classmates from my undergrad which was really fun. I think that’s something that will be nice about going to FNCE in the future–reconnecting with colleagues and classmates from across the country.
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1:30pm-3:00pm: Minding Your Peas and Qs-Plant Protein and the Quest for Wellness, Quality and Functionality
This session was all about plant-based protein and “pulses”. This was actually my first time being introduced to the word “pulses”. For those like me who are new to this word: “pulses” are legumes that are harvested dry. So lentils and dried beans would be classified as “pulses”. The main points of this session were that plant-based proteins are good sources of protein, highly nutritious, are economically accessible, and contribute to food security.
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3:30pm-5:00pm: Culinary Demonstration-The Inclusive Table-Vegan Meals Omnivores Will Love
I absolutely LOVED this culinary demonstration! I feel like sometimes vegans/vegetarians and omnivores can get kind of contentious about their diets, but this session was all about bringing everyone together through food. We learned a few tricks to make vegan dishes appeal more to omnivores by adding umami flavors (mushrooms, tomatoes, walnuts, nutritional yeast, etc.) and/or textured vegetable proteins to soups or stews to add some “meat like” consistency.
Monday:
Driving to Chicago took a lot longer this morning since people were actually up and about on their way to work, but I still made it without too much hassle. My schedule today:
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8:00am-9:30am: Hot Career Paths in Nutrition-Expert Panel
This session was definitely one of my favorites! We had four amazing women, who built their own careers in nutrition, talk about their journey and share practical tips and inspiration. It was so inspirational and uplifting with the main message of “finding your joy”. Essentially, if you don’t love what you’re doing–do something else. They also talked about the importance of not comparing yourself to others because this just stunts your personal growth. As someone who wants to create their own business in the future, this session was definitely encouraging.
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10:00am-12:00pm: Member Showcase-Why Food is the New Internet-The Future of Food
This was the big event of FNCE, where they announced the award winners for the year. They also announced the honorary academy recipients–one of whom was Michelle Obama! This event was very inspiring as well as we work to “envision a world where people thrive through the transformative power of food and nutrition”. They also mentioned that, as nutrition professionals, “We can work anywhere!”. After the award ceremony, we heard from Kimbal Musk about his work with the farm-to-table movement and innovations in farming. He has helped get learning gardens built at schools where children learn about gardening and assist in maintaining the plants. He even created shipping crate farms that can be in more urban areas. They use artificial sunlight and indoor irrigation systems to grow produce. It was so interesting to hear about what he’s doing to try and increase access to “real” food.
- 12:00pm-1:00pm: Back at the expo! I swear, you could spend an entire day just at the expo and still not see everything. Once again, I ate food samples for lunch (unless you have a lot of food allergies, don’t bother bringing lunch, there’s so many free food samples). I also collected more free items from vendors like an apron and a mason jar for overnight oats! I ran into another past classmate from my undergrad which was really fun as well.
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1:30pm-3:00pm: Optimizing Your Online Presence Using Search Engine Optimization
Since I currently have my own blog and hope to use social media to build my own private practice, I really wanted to learn how to do this (I’m just making it up as I go along right now). I had previously heard about search engine optimization (SEO), but I didn’t really know anything about it. Using descriptive and catchy titles, writing about trending topics, and listening to your readers were all tips mentioned to boost your placement in search results on Google. The social media side is a bit more overwhelming since every site has different prime publishing times and popular features. The overall message was to focus on posting quality content over quantity, and to be consistent about when you post. Using videos, relevant hashtags, and responding to comments were also very useful tips. While it feels pretty overwhelming right now, I’m excited to start implementing some of what I learned with this blog!
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3:30pm-5:00pm: Challenges in Understanding the Causes and Consequences of Obesity
This session went a bit against the grain, in my opinion, and shook up some people’s perspectives on obesity. The speaker started by mentioning that the biggest negative consequence of obesity is prejudice and discrimination. He went on to talk about how there is such a thing as “healthy” obesity. It all depends on where a person’s body fat is stored. Some people with obesity experience negative metabolic consequences as a result of this while others don’t. He also talked about how obesity is much more complicated than just thinking about a calories in-calories out approach. This was really refreshing because I do think that sometimes people get stuck in the mindset that obesity is simply caused by eating too much and not exercising. This may be true in some cases, but it’s not true in all cases. What I really got out of this is that, regardless of weight, people deserve respect and shouldn’t be pigeon-holed based on our immediate assumptions about them. As he pointed out: there are people who meet the criteria for obesity who experience no ill-health effects as a result of it. Basically, obesity is a lot more complicated than most people believe, and we need to do a lot more research to understand what’s really happening.
Tuesday:
It was raining again this morning and traffic was very bad (plus I somehow set my alarm clock incorrectly last night–oops!), so I ended up missing the morning session that I wanted to go to. :( Luckily, all of the sessions are recorded, so I’ll be able to watch it in a couple of weeks once the recordings are released to FNCE attendees!
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9:45am-11:15am: Body Composition-Growing Beyond BMI
This session was all about the advantages and disadvantages to all of the current methods for assessing body composition. It stressed the importance of using body composition over BMI since BMI does not differentiate between fat and lean mass. Currently, however, a lot of the more accurate methods to determine body composition are expensive which is part of the reason why BMI is still so prevalent.
- 11:15am-1:00pm: Expo time! I was only going to hang out at the expo for a little while today since I’ve gone for the past two days. I ran into one of the interns I worked with at the food pantry, however, so we ended up going around and taking a lot of fun pictures together! The highlight for me was getting to go in a makeshift cranberry bog–it was so much fun! Since it was the last day of the expo and vendors were trying to get rid of everything they brought we were able to pick up a lot of free stuff again.
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1:00pm-1:30pm: Weight Stigma in Healthcare, Communities and Policy-Issues and Opportunities
Since we spent so long at the expo, we were only able to pop in for the end of this session, but it was still very illuminating. The speakers talked about how obesity is stigmatized both in healthcare and society as a whole. They mentioned how it’s more important to look at behaviors rather than making assumptions about a person based on the size of their body. Another interesting point brought up was that public health efforts to address obesity have a tendency to focus strictly on prevention. While this is important, over 30% of Americans are currently living with obesity, so efforts need to be made to assist them as well.
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2:00pm-3:30pm: Closing Session-The Future of the Mind
It was very bittersweet to be attending the closing session…I had such a blast at FNCE that I never wanted it to end! We all had the opportunity to hear from Dr. Michio Kaku, who’s a world-renowned physicist and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller The Future of the Mind. He centered his talk around concepts he wrote about in his books. His speech blew my mind. He talked about all kinds of future technological advances and how this will transform the world as we know it. His speech essentially sounded like a sci-fi movie, except he was citing things that are actually being worked on today! From contact lenses that give you any information you may need just by blinking to growing human organs, he went on and on about all of these amazing things that are currently in the works. If you have any interest in this kind of stuff, I would highly recommend looking into his books. It’s kind of trippy to think about, but so very cool!
In a nutshell (pun intended), that’s my FNCE experience recap! If you went to FNCE this year, what were your favorite moments? I also collected a lot of free things (see pic below). I think my favorite is the algae oil–it sounds weird, but has a really nice, light flavor and tons of healthy fats. What was your favorite FNCE Expo item?
It was so amazing to be in the presence of thousands of incredible nutrition professionals. I hope to see everyone again at FNCE 2018 (when I’ll hopefully be an RDN)! Until then!
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