dietitian online

As I sow veggie seeds in containers on my balcony (yes, I am very late putting in the garden) and begin reading The 100 Mile-Diet, I find myself thinking a lot about sustainability. Today, when I did a Google search on “Vancouver Food Policy Organization”, I found this page of resources on the City of Vancouver web site. The information is well-organized in a quick-and-easy-to-read list. 

This post likely has a small audience–I’m not sure if I have any local readers–but if you  live or work in Vancouver and are interested in local sustainability and food security concerns, you may want to browse the entire list. Here is a sampling of what you’ll find: 

REPORT & RESOURCES

• Second Annual Food Policy Progress Report, February 15, 2007
• 2,010 Garden Plots by 2010, May 30, 2006
• Vancouver Food Charter, January 2007
• Backgrounder on the Food Charter, January 2007
• The Vancouver Food Assessment Report - Summary
• City of Vancouver Edible Landscaping Brochure  March 2006
• Evergreen Foundation. Growing Healthy Food on Canada’s School Grounds. March 2006.

FOOD SECURITY WEB SITES (external links)

• 100 Mile Diet - Local eating reduces food miles!
• Community Kitchens: Building Community Around Food
• Slow Food Vancouver

Free and Low-Cost Meals and Groceries in Vancouver

• Listing of FREE Meal Programs
• Listing of LOW-COST Meal Programs
• Listing of Low-Cost Sources of Food

On days like today, when I read informative, interesting writing on other web sites and struggle to come up with something original and articulate for this blog, I realize I would soon starve if I had to earn my living as a professional writer!

But fortunately for both of us, I’m not writing this blog so you will read my words about topics. Instead, I  hope you will go to some of the sites I link to and read posts by others, who, although they may not all be dietitians, do know a lot about complex food issues, such as sustainability.

And so I’ve added this category to the blogroll (see right side of this page, near the bottom). I admit to (1) not knowing very much about sustainability and (2) feeling overwhelmed by the desire to “do the right thing” for the environment when making food choices. I’ve selected these web sites and specific pages within sites as starting points to help me learn more about food system sustainability:

100 Mile Diet :: The latest
FarmFolk/City Folk
Treehugger :: Food + Health
UBC Farm

I tried Gliffy Online for the first time this morning to create a simple flowchart and I definitely will be playing with using it for important work again. What I like about Gliffy:

- free basic account (you can purchase a premium version)
- easy-to-use (if you’ve had some experience using Word or Powerpoint drawing tools)
- web-based (so you can you use it from any computer connected to the Internet)
- social (you can collaborate on diagrams and share work with colleagues).

The FAQs about Gliffy Online are here.

Today at a Stroke Care Improvement meeting I shared some of the stroke resources I’ve been gathering during the past two months. Now would be a good time to take stock and collect all the previously published links in one post. The list is a work-in-progress and will grow.

Although the resources are not nutrition-specific, they all contain some nutrition elements such as diet modifications to reduce stroke risk factors (primary and secondary prevention) or manage deficits (e.g, dysphagia) during acute stroke treatment and rehabilitation.

THE LIST:

Practices and Standards Working Group, The Canadian Stroke Strategy. Canadian Best Practice Recommendations for Stroke Care: 2006.
Best Practices and Standards Working Group, The Canadian Stroke Strategy. Best Practices and Standards Environmental Scan Report.

Heart and Stroke Foundation home page.

Heart and Stroke Foundation of Ontario, Ontario Stroke System. Best Practice Guidelines.

National Stroke Foundation, Australia. National Clinical Guidelines for Acute Stroke Management.

National Stroke Foundation, Australia. National Clinical Guidelines for Stroke Rehabilitation and Recovery.

National Stroke Foundation, Australia. Stroke Care Pathway: A Resource for Health Professionals.

Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network. Management of patients with stroke: Identification and management of dysphagia. September 2004.

Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network. Management of patients with stroke: Rehabilitation, prevention and management of complications, and discharge planning. November 2002.

Teasell R, Foley N. Evidence-based review of stroke rehabilitation: Managing the stroke rehabilitation triage process.

The next time you write a paper or article requiring citations, you may want to try this web tool for building a bibliography: BibMe. 

I haven’t used it yet, but think I will try it out soon for a bibliography of best nutrition practices in stroke care.

Have you checked out MD Consult recently? Ever? If you haven’t, you may want to do so. The site recently enhanced its user interface and search features. I like the changes and find searching and reading results quicker and easier to process.

So far today, I have used MD Consult to find background information on vitamin B12 deficiency and central venous catheters, topics pertinent to the nutritional assessment of two of my patients.  One of the best features is My Folder, which you can set up easily. You can then save articles to your folder so you don’t have to repeat searches.

Yesterday evening I trekked to UBC Robson Square to listen to an engaging, inspiring and humourous Talk-of-the-Town with the authors of:

The 100-Mile Diet

I’m willing to bet it was one the best after-dinner conversations in downtown Vancouver last night. I’m really, really looking forward to reading the book. I didn’t take any notes during the Talk, which I regret, but I’m going to try to recall or at least paraphrase some of the best quotes and share them here later.

What I really want to find is the source of the pumpkin-flavoured honey that the authors, Alisa Smith and JB MacKinnon, raved about!

Sorry for the short notice but I just found out about this event recently. I’m sharing it here in case you are in the Vancouver area and free this evening.

Local authors Alisa Smith and JB MacKinnon, who wrote about their attempt to feed themselves on food grown and produced within 100 miles of Vancouver in their book The 100 Mile Diet, will be speaking at Talk-of-the-Town on Monday, May 14 , 7:30 - 9:00 PM, UBC Robson Square, 800 Robson Street, Vancouver.

More details about tonight’s talk are on this web page: http://www.communityaffairs.ubc.ca/talkofthetown/2007/smithmackinnon.html

I was updating my stroke resources on Connotea this morning and discovered another SIGN resource: Management of Patients with Stroke: Rehabilitation, Prevention and Management of Complications, and Discharge Planning.

You can also view the two PDF documents on these blog pages:

• Management of Patient with Stroke: Rehabilitation, Prevention and Management of Complications, and Discharge-Planning (full guideline)
• Management of Patient with Stroke: Rehabilitation, Prevention and Management of Complications, and Discharge-Planning (quick guide)

That’s not a typo (”E” instead of “A”) in the title. ESPEN is the European Society for Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism. If you are a dietitian practicing in Canada or the US, you are probably more familiar with resources from A.S.P.E.N., the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition.

Access to these ESPEN resources is free and does not require membership.  I quickly scanned  some guidelines relevant to my area of practice and the resources seem to be high quality and useful so I’m adding them to my toolkit in the sidebar.

Link to ESPEN guidelines and position papers