HEALTHY FOOD IS EVERYWHERE

If you've been listening to popular nutrition advice, you may not have gotten the whole story, and you could be missing out on lots of foods you love. It's time to fill in the gaps.

-  YOLANDE CLARK-JACKSON

Depending on who you are and where you're from, nutrition advice can feel helpful—or make you think everything you've ever eaten is wrong. Eating well can mean something different to each of us, and the foods you grew up enjoying play a huge role in determining what you want to eat. When nutrition advice makes your favorite foods seem like the enemy or excludes your heritage altogether, you may start to think you’re the problem. But no: Experts say biases are baked into popular nutrition advice— and getting past them can bring everyone a whole new understanding of food.

PUTTING DIVERSITY ON THE TABLE

Nutrition advice has to come from somewhere, so we turn to experts. However, 80% of registered dietitians in the USS. are white and only 3% are Black, according to the Commission on Dietetic Registration. This can affect perspective and messaging. The top-down effect contributes to a very narrow definition of what healthy’ means. The lack of nuance affects policy-making and, on an individual level, sends the message that to be healthy you must look and eat like white women,” says Laura Iu, R.D., owner of Laura Iu Nutrition in New York City.

Food scientist and nutrition expert Kera Nyemb-Diop, Ph.D., recalls having been one of two Black students in a human nutrition course in which a professor described African food as gross.” In addition to the comment being inappropriate, she says, she felt that it was uninformed—there’s huge diversity in foods from the continent of Africa. And what’s said in classrooms, she points out, can have a deep impact on perceptions of cultural foods.