I’m in the process of moving the contents of this blog to a new hosting service so I won’t be posting anything new for a couple of days. The new blog will look and feel much like this one but the writing and publishing features will make it easier for me to post, store and retrieve information. I hope, in turn, you will find it easier to read, seek and find.
Addendum: more details, my new address, and tips for navigating the new site to come later this week.
Posted in Healthy Eating
Here’s a link to an article that connects two of my favourite blogging topics that I usually write about separately: nutrition for stroke prevention and local eating.
Posted in Healthy Eating, Stroke, Sustainability
Earlier today I provided some last-minute nutrition counseling to a stroke patient and wife as “they were heading out the door.” OK, I admit for effect I’m exaggerating the time pressure, but this morning I really did get one of those typical phone calls from the nursing unit: “Mr. X is being discharged today and he and his wife want to talk to a dietitian before he goes home.” I immediately thought, “This is the perfect opportunity to test some of the education checklists and resources we are developing and compiling for our stroke program.” So, rather than use our department’s heart-health focused materials that, although very good, may not be completely up-to-date and also are not targeted to stroke patients, I decided to put together a customized nutrition and secondary stroke prevention resource package. Continue reading
Posted in Healthy Eating, Stroke
This week, thanks to Alex Steffan’s Worldchanging post, I discovered a real gem to help broaden and deepen my nutrition knowledge and take it well beyond its usual geographic and professional interest boundaries. The Weblog is:
Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog
A good place to begin exploring the blog is on the About page. Then, as dietitians, we probably will want to check out the posts in the Nutrition, Organic Agriculture, Cooking, Fruits & Nuts, Vegetables, and Nibbles.
I’m working my way through the nutrition archive today. Here is a sample of well-written posts on various topics:
Food is good
Kids eat more if fruit and veg are home-grown
School gardens
Heirlooms are better for you
I have uploaded another Cochrane review on nutrition for neurosciences patients. This one is Nutritional Support for Head-Injured Patients.
The reviewers concluded:
…[T]here have been few trials into nutritional support following head injury, which makes it hard for the clinician to make an evidence-based decision about nutritional support in head-injured patients. Overall the quality of the trials was poor (page 8).
Posted in Healthy Eating
Kudos to Vancouver Coastal Health for creating this Web page that explains food security and provides links to resources such as farmers’ markets in Vancouver and the rest of BC, community gardens and community kitchens in Vancouver, and food action reports from Bella Bella to Richmond and places in-between.
Posted in Food Security, Healthy Eating, Sustainability
I was walking past the patient and family lounge at work today when a magazine cover caught my eye: a photo of a hot-fudge sundae in an Erlenmeyer flask with the caption “The Science of Appetite: Why we’re hardwired to crave the wrong things–and what new research says we can do about it.” Because this was on the cover of Time (as opposed to the National Enquirer) I thought it would be worthwhile to peruse the article, especially after I read the first sentence, “Somewhere in your brain, there’s a cupcake circuit”!
You can read the article online here: The Science of Appetite.
The online version has the same text as the print version but lacks some of the photos and side-bars. I will post some of the missing content (e.g., what makes us eat more) later today.
Addendum: I found this photo on Flickr. It doesn’t depict the science of appetite so much as the joy of eating. Guilt-free eating. I wanted to share because it made me happy and may make you smile, too.
Photo credit: A New Ice Cream Shop Opened by Sister 72 . Used under this Creative Commons license.
Posted in Healthy Eating, Research
Soon after publishing the previous post, I went to the Nutrition Action Healthletter website seeking ideas for another Nutrition Month topic and ran into Serendipity and Synchronicity. I call them “friends” because they’ve helped me on occasion when I’ve been struggling for inspiration. I was looking for a new subject, but why not write two posts in a row on stroke?
The March cover story, Stroke: How to Avoid a Brain Attack, is freely available to everyone (subscribers and nonsubscribers) as a PDF download.
The article presents up-to-date, critically-reviewed, science-based and practical information and tools dietitians can use with clients or for themselves:
Posted in Healthy Eating, Stroke
(Note: NMP = Nutrition Month Post)
Because I work on a neurosciences unit, you might — and should — expect me to have extensive resources on nutrition and stroke. Yes and no. Because I work on an acute care neurosciences unit, once again I confess to having a surplus of articles on treatment topics (e.g., enteral feeding, dysphagia) but a rather sparse and dated collection on prevention. So I will use the impetus of Nutrition Month to update my inventory of online education materials.
I’m starting with the Heart and Stroke Foundation of Canada’s Web site. This month the home page highlights these nutrition features applicable to stroke-prevention as well as heart-health promotion:
Here are links to a few pages I’ve saved for future reference:
Posted in Canada's Food Guide, Healthy Eating, Stroke
Today I’ve added Liz Pearson’s website to the sidebar.
“Liz’s approach to healthy eating is sane and sensible. She communicates timely, relevant nutrition research, while emphasizing the need for fun food (like chocolate!) in moderation.”
dietitian online 