This week I collected 24-hour dietary recalls from high school students for our research project, continued working at the food pantry, and led a Lunch Bunch session at the high school with another intern!
To catch up with my previous research experience, check out:
DI: Week 2 – Bariatrics, Research, and Mental Health First-Aid
DI: Week 4 – Research, Bariatrics, and Food Pantry Fun
To catch up with my previous food pantry experience, check out:
DI: Week 4 – Research, Bariatrics, and Food Pantry Fun
DI: Week 5 – Wellness Committee, Food Pantry, and a Seminar
My week looked like this:
Monday:
I started my week back at the high school to continue data collection for our research project. Just a reminder: our research project is looking at health disparities among low-income high school students. Today, we conducted 24-hour dietary recalls with the students using a computer program. Basically, us interns read the prompts on the computer screen to the students and typed their responses into the program. Since we all practiced using the program before doing these recalls, we were able to input the student’s information much faster than they could. We recorded everything these students ate and drank on Sunday, which took some time, since the average person doesn’t remember everything they ate over the last 24-hours. :P I was very impressed that the students seemed very interested and were trying their best to remember all of the details we needed. Each of us did about eight 24-hour recalls over the course of the day.
Tuesday:
At the food pantry! Today, was our first Cooking Matters class about heart health. This is a six week program that clients at the pantry can sign up for that teaches them about healthy cooking for heart health. They get some nutrition education, learn cooking skills, and then receive a bag of groceries with all the ingredients they’ll need to reproduce the meal we made at their home. We had five participants who were very involved and responsive to the class which was awesome! I started off the class by getting them talking about what “eating well” means to them. Then, another intern explained MyPlate before we all headed into the kitchen to prepare our meal. The food pantry actually has a professional chef who volunteered to teach the cooking skills for most of the classes in our six-week series. It was very cool to get to learn some cooking tips from him! One that was especially relevant to a heart health class was to wait to add salt to soups until the very end of cooking. Salt doesn’t boil off, so if you add it at the beginning the soup might taste too salty by the end. We all prepared a Greek Salad and Tuscan White Bean Soup together–they were very yummy!
Wednesday:
I was back at the high school today (can you tell that I bounce all over the place, yet?). This time, I was helping teach at the high school’s Lunch Bunch program. Lunch Bunch is a lunch-and-learn program offered twice a week to students. On Tuesdays, the nursing students from Loyola lead it, and on Wednesdays the Loyola dietetic interns (us) lead. We are responsible for planning the menus for both the nursing days and the DI days. My menus were served this week–the nursing students prepared spicy buffalo chicken wraps on Tuesday and we prepared a farro Greek salad today. Another intern wrote the lesson plan that she and I taught during the lunch sessions. We taught the students about pesticides, GMOs and organic produce and how to best protect themselves from pesticide exposure (thoroughly washing fruits and vegetables). We led six sessions with varying numbers of students in each lunch period (anywhere from 1 to 9). The students seemed really interested, asked good questions, and all of them loved the salad (which was surprising since there was, *gasp*, kale in it). At my night class, we talked about breastfeeding and had a guest speaker who is a lactation consultant at WIC. It was very interesting to learn from her and gain a better understanding of the nutritional benefits of breastfeeding for infants. I’ll be starting my WIC rotation in a couple of weeks, so I’m sure I’ll learn more about it then too.
Thursday:
Back to the food pantry! I put the finishing touches on the handout I made to explain the American Academy of Pediatrics’ juice recommendations. My preceptor reviewed it, and she absolutely loved it! I’m very proud that my hard work on this handout received such positive feedback from my preceptor. One of the other interns at the food pantry and I then divided the nutrition education sections for next week’s Cooking Matters class. This class will cover new recipes, and more nutrition education and information about heart health. We assigned each of the three of us to sections, and studied the lessons to prepare.
Friday:
I made some copies of handouts at the food pantry, including the juice handout I just created. I also updated the produce list that we hang on the wall during distribution. This list includes the produce items that we have enough of in the pantry for every client to get. This week we had a lot of bell peppers, bananas, apples, oranges, potatoes, and tomatoes. I left early today because I’ll be working at distribution on Saturday.
Saturday:
Distribution day! We had 30 minutes to set up the nutrition education table with all of our handouts, water, some items we need to move out of the pantry, and our food demo materials. One of the other interns, at the pantry made, cranberry pumpkin muffins for the food demonstration. We handed out samples of these muffins as well which the clients really enjoyed. During distribution, I handed out raisins, dried lentils, cranberry sauce, and cranberry pumpkin samples. I also helped answer nutrition questions and distribute handouts to the clients. It was very cool to watch distribution happen because it’s the only time we actually see the clients we serve.
Sunday:
After a six-day work week, I was glad to have a day off. I have my first exam on Wednesday night, however, so I spent my time off doing a lot of studying and preparing for the week.
Next week, I’ll be finishing my rotation at the food pantry, leading my Lunch Bunch lesson on calcium, and attending a seminar on the microbiome. Until then!