Nutrition, Food, Travel and More: Day 6: Start of the Malaysian Dietitians' Association Conference

I slept surprisingly well despite not thinking the bed was super comfortable. So glad I was proved wrong!

Breakfast was included with my room, so I made sure to head down and check it out before starting on my work for the day. There were pretty typical options, but it seemed very carb heavy and not a lot of non meat options. In order to get eggs I needed to special order them. It took some time for someone to understand what I wanted, but once we got past that the chef was very accommodating.

Porridge...makes sense since this was under British control for so long.

Toppings for the porridge

Yogurts and fruit cup

Here is what I ended up with on my plate. Like I said, it was super heavy with this carbs. Nothing really sounded or looked good.

But I did get a nice place of eggs!

And I took some fruit too.

After doing my work I felt like I could relax for a little before the conference started. I headed to the pool. Notice the haze? This is big news here. Indonesia is having fires (started illegally by farmers to clear their fields for new planting) and the wind has blown the smog over to Singapore. Malaysia is getting some of it too. Singapore is having their worst pollution/smog every right now. It's really sad. Many people are becoming ill.

After my swim and a shower, I grabbed my poster and headed down to the conference.

In case you missed it, I am in Kuala Lumpur for the Malaysian Dietitians' Association conference. The conference wasn't too far from me in Japan, I was able to register as a student, and the conference was in English...so I couldn't resist.

First things first, I hung my poster. The title is "A Review of the Role and Implications of Herbal Galactagogue Use to Aid in Sustaining Breastfeeding". It was my paper from Complementary and Alternative Medicine last fall.

I think I am just smiling so much because I found stronger tape to hold my poster up!

The conference got started and the first speaker to present was none other than Sylvia Escott-Stump. If you are a dietitian you know exactly who I am talking about. Not only is Sylvia known as a rock star to dietitians and nutrition students alike because she authored the most used nutrition textbook out there, but she is also the immediate past president for the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (although with the new term just starting, she may be 2 past presidents now...I can't remember!).

Here is a picture of Sylvia presenting, but from my angle it is hard to see. I really thought this presentation was fantastic and every time I hear her speak on this topic I learn more and more. She builds on it each time because more and more is known.

If you are not as familiar with nutrigenomics, here is some info from her slides.

The next presenter was Dr. Gary Slater, talking about protein needs for athletes. And yes, that is him pictured with the woman. Yes, that is a woman.

He had some good comics in his slides. I thought this was funny, so I wanted to share. Basically, there may be a need for some for protein powders, but the majority of people are able to get what they need for what they need it for from food sources.

This is interesting. We often cite this as a reason to not over do it on the protein.

But there is an important concept to keep in mind. Eating a lot of protein and a diet high in protein are two different things. People working out that are competitive athletes are likely consuming higher than average calories, so naturally their protein intake goes up (along with fat and carbohydrate). In the end, balance is still there and the % of protein in the diet is not necessarily high even if they eat a lot of grams. On the other hand, if their % of protein intake is actually high, as mentioned below, there can be harm long term.

It was a great start to the conference and I look forward to 2 more great days of presentations.

After the final speaker was tea time and some snacks. I tried the veggie options. These were spicy, but good. They are the Malaysian version of samosas.

This was a vegetarian noodle dish.

For dinner I decided not to stray too much because I had a lot of work to do. I ended up at the (don't laugh) Japanese buffet at the hotel. One reason was because of the half price discount for hotel guests, but the other reason was this view. As the sunset I was able to watch Petronas Towers go from it's daytime look to the twinkle evening look it gets once the lights go down over KL.