My previous life was devoted to physical health and wellness. Thorughout my lifetime, I have researched numerous diets and a plethora of nutrition information. The most profound work I found was in the 1980's when I was a teenager and seeing a nutritionist, Dr. H.L. Newbold. Dr. Newbold was a huge supporter of the fact that a person's diet should reflect their ancestry. In other words, if you are a descendant of Jamaica, for example, your diet should consist heavily of fresh fruits, nuts, berries, and fish because that is what naturally grows there and what people from that region of the world traditionally eat. That makes total sense to me!

Now that I am focused on using traditional methods to heal Historical Trauma, food comes into play again. Anthropologist Jon Holtzman (2009) identified important cultural themes related to memory and food; he noted that food is an avenue for historical connections to nostalgia, family and ethnic identity. When we examine the American Indian experience, a component of historical trauma stems from governmental control of food sources and food preparation and other food-related traditions. Traditional foods were symbols of ethnic identity and changes to food practices stripped American Indians further of an aspect of their cultural identity (Wesley-Esquimaux & Smolewski, 2004). Additionally, for some Native-Americans, like people from the Gila River Indian Community, the loss of their traditional foods has caused them to have one of the highest rates of diabetes in the world at 50% of the population. 

With this in mind, I found this article extremely interesting. What are your thoughts?

"While nutrition is a science, food is personal, and healthy eating is a little bit different for everyone. There are so many factors that shape the way we eat—taste preferences, goals, schedules, food availability—and a person's cultural background has a huge impact on their relationship with food. The role of a registered dietitian is to counsel others on nutrition, so it's important that R.D.s be sensitive both to individual preferences and cultural differences when giving nutrition advice.

The thing is, when it comes to diversity, the nutrition field is lacking: Seventy-eight percent of all dietitians in the U.S. identify as white, according to the Commission of Dietetic Registration. There's also a lack of culturally diverse nutrition advice, both in official nutrition resources and in the media. Because of this, it's especially important that dietitians work to understand their clients' backgrounds and values around food, and that they give nutrition advice that's culturally sensitive and relevant.

To shed a little more light on a topic that's complicated and has so many implications, SELF asked seven registered dietitians from various cultural and ethnic backgrounds about the intersection of food and culture, why diversity in the nutrition field is so important, and how they work to give culturally sensitive nutrition advice in their own practices."

{To read more of this article by Christine Byrne click the link https://www.self.com/story/cul...ive-nutrition-advice}