FNCE Day 2

Monday, the second full day of FNCE started with the American Overseas Dietetic Association breakfast at Aura Restaurant in the nearby Seaport Hotel.  I was excited to meet more AODA members, especially because I am the Nominating Committee Chair.  For those of you who may not know, there are many dietitians living all over the world, some military, some military spouses like me, other spouses abroad with their significant others for various jobs, and then even some foreign RDs who have been educated in the US or equivalent.  We have members in over 70 countries, which is amazing and I was privileged to meet some of these fantastic RDs, and even dine with some of them here at this breakfast.

Here is the menu.  The eggs Benedict have meat, so that was out, and grilled tomatoes sounded good, but I didn’t want to find myself too hungry during the first session of the day, so I went with strawberry pancakes.

These lovely muffins and croissants were on the table, but I did not taste any.  I was too busy socializing with great dietitians, including Gloria Tsang, who is super nice and my guess is somewhere along the lines you have been on her website.  I was also lucky enough to meet one of my UMUC online coworkers, Ronnie.  I shadowed her online classroom over the summer in preparation for my own course.  All of the great leadership team members from AODA are so wonderful and nice and so involved in dietetics overseas.

After all the talking, I was able to sit down and enjoy my pancakes before quickly heading off to the conference.

These were the tomatoes, which Ronnie enjoyed.

The first session that I attended for the day was an Open Discussion on Innovations in Practice and Education.  Other than being involved in education, the real reason I attended this session was to talk with my former professors from undergrad, Jane and Martine.  Jane teaches now with the University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey in their Clinical Doctorate degree in Nutrition (DCN), which is an online program.  Martine is still at Cedar Crest College and she is doing wonderful things there.  The biggest news I think was that they now have an internship there.  That is a huge deal because there was only 1 internship in the entire area at the time I graduated.

Other programs are using a variety of technology and new concepts in their training of future dietetics professionals.  Some of my favorites were the use of podcasts and then the Sodexo Distance Internship which uses internet meeting sites to have students working together in real time.

On my way to the next presentation, I stopped by the member interest group and dietetic practice group show case.  I am already a member of the Public Health and Community Nutrition Practice Group, as well as the Nutrition Entrepreneurs Dietetic Practice Group, but I saw the benefit in joining two others.  I have a Certificate of Training in Adult Weight Management and most of my work involved some kind of weight management counseling, so I thought to stay in the loop I would join the Weight Management Dietetic Practice Group.  I also thought that the Vegetarian Nutrition Dietetic Practice Group would be beneficial so I can stay up to date on the research in this area, so I joined this group too.  I am thinking I should draw the line there for now, although there are many other interesting groups out there.

I picked these dried cranberries up from the Hunger and Environmental Nutrition Dietetic Practice Group.  I think they have a wonderful group, but it just does not apply to me right now, so I held off on joining.  I did grab the cranberries because I LOVE dried cranberries.

The next presentation I was really looking forward to.  This was The Great Fat Debate: Is There Validity in the Age-Old Dietary Guidelines.  The first presenter was Dr. Walter Willett, who created the Healthy Eating Pyramid and is the author of Eat, Drink and Be Healthy.  He is a leader in nutritional epidemiology and is at Harvard.  If you haven’t read his book, I highly recommend it.  Basically, his views are to not eliminate fat from the diet, but to include it from those known heart healthy sources.  It was really just a review of his boo, which I have read and I just really wanted to hear him speak.  The other presenters included Dr. Mozaffarian, Alice Lichtenstein and Dr. Lewis Kuller.  Each speaker brought something to the discussion.  I liked the format where there was a debate among presenters.  I admit I had to get up and stretch and found myself in the back of the room about half way through and it was a bit harder to follow what was going on from that far back.  I wish I had stayed but it was tough sitting for 2 hours straight.

As soon as the meeting let out I met up with a fellow blogger and Las Vegas resident, whom you might recognize below.  We headed over to the expo floor and met up with yet another great blogger.  Recognize these two?

From left to right: Jessie from The Happiness in Health, who I adore and is just so sweet in all of her comments, and just as sweet, if not more in person.  If you have never checked out her blog, you MUST.  She is on her way to becoming an RD and I know she will be fabulous at whatever career path she chooses. In the middle is Kristen from The Eating RD.  I know Kristen a little from back in Las Vegas before I moved overseas.  She is super sweet and probably one of the nicest people you will ever meet.  I love her passion and dedication to all that she does.  It was also really cool to vote at the ADA booth with her for the picture for a future journal cover because I was voting for her picture which made it to the finals.  Good luck Kristen!  Oh, and on the end, well, that would be me.  I am a tad shorter than the other lovely ladies, but that is OK.

Then we headed to the expo floor and I took some time to see more products.  While there, I had the chance to meet another great RD blogger, Kristen, The Swanky Dietitian.  This was really neat because I never had the chance to meet her before I left Vegas, and she is a Vegas RD too.  In fact, she worked right across the street from my office, and I never even knew it.

Here are some more product reviews.  First up is Oikos Yogurt, which is made by Stonyfield Farms.  How can you go wrong with this Greek yogurt.  I selected the caramel to try and it was really good.  I happen to be a fan of caramel so I almost always pick this flavor no matter what the food.

Next up was one of my favorites, Laughing Cow.  I love the light Babybel cheeses, which mind you are very different in the European version, which I have bought locally on the island, although I think I prefer the US version.  They also had the spreadable wedges there to sample and I was in heaven because they had their new flavors.  Too bad we do not get these in the commissary on base.

Here I am with the Laughing Cow.

After an exhausting time on the expo floor, I headed to my last session of the day.  This was titled Impacting Health Disparities through Evidenced Based Practice and was presented by Diane Longstreet and Yvonne Greer.  The premise of this session was to demonstrate how the evidence based strategies we have can work to reduce chronic disease risk and health disparities.  I am really interested in health disparities because of my learning in the field of public health.  Health disparities are gaps between health care availability, risk and rates of disease between minorities and the non-minority, which in the US would be Caucasian or white individuals, and more so with the male gender as females do count as a minority.  These presenters pulled information from the American Dietetic Association Evidence Analysis Library which is where support comes from for nutritional guidelines and actual nutrition practice.  Nutrition is an evidence based science and should be practiced as such, so this library is very valuable in sorting through the literature and what is currently, or for that matter, not currently supported by actual evidence.  After reviewing some of these guidelines and how they can be applied to reduce health disparities, the idea is to find how dietitians can next use this analysis in practice.  This review of the literature that they presented here was in fact a study that they completed to review available data.  The conclusion is that we need this evidence based analysis and that more information needs to be collected and shared so that we have proof when programs work.

As soon as this session let out, I headed up to the Public Health and Community Nutrition Practice Group Awards Reception.  I got up there pretty quickly because my session let out about 5 minutes early and the room was just upstairs.  This meant I actually got some food and a place to stand with a table.  Look at all my goodies.  I shared these with my friend Aurora.

These little smoked salmon and cream bites were really good.

This was the darn coolest thing ever for the veggie cup.  This was a little “syringe” filled with ranch and you just squeeze it on your veggies.

We made sure not to eat too much because we really wanted to head to dinner.  If I didn’t mention this already, I stayed at the Marriott Copley and there was not one, but 2 malls attached.  As Holly mentioned in my comments the other day, I had a small mall incident that I should fess up to, so I will admit it, I have a shopping problem.  With no mall on the island, although they have a new 8 store mall type place now near by but this is not the same, I really just went a little crazy.  It was like a chemical dependency issue and I just could not control myself.  I did some serious shopping at White House Black Market and then went to Express to return a pair of jeans I had bought online.  In Express I tried on 3 pairs of jeans in hopes of liking 1 pair that I could exchange for.  Uh oh, I liked all 3, and then it was buy 1 get 1 half off, so I wound up with 3 new pairs.  Yes, that constitutes as a shopping problem.  For some reason the jeans at Express just really fit me well, even with all different styles and cuts.  At that point I panicked and had no real idea what to do with all the clothes I bought, but I got lucky and there was a USPS in the mall.  Jackpot!  I had 15 minutes until they closed and I packed everything up and shipped it off.

Well, the mall story brings me to dinner.  I heard a lot of good things about Wagamama, and there was one in the mall by my hotel, so we went there for dinner. 

To start, Aurora’s coworker ordered calamari for the table.

We all ordered the combo meals (pure wagamama) , and upgraded our beers to the large size.  It was really good.

The combo meal came with some veggie dumplings.

Then came the main course.  I had the yasai yaki soba, which was fantastic.  Aurora had this too, but she had hers in the meat version.

Aurora’s coworker ordered the moyashi soba, which was a ramen soup.

Can you believe we even had room for dessert.  This is the coconut ice cream.

Aurora was so kind and bought me a piece of chocolate cake, which was good, but by the time I was done, I was downright stuffed.

After that I headed back to my room and got started on my packing.  Since this is a really long post, I will save that for my final FNCE post.

QUESTIONS:  Have you ever met up with any bloggers?  Do you like Oikos?  Have you ever heard of Wagamama?