Avoiding the Diet-Bias Trap as a Nutritionist
Looking back on my time as a new nutritionist, I saw that I had biases. They were unconscious biases. I still do. We all do. AND I am always working to become more aware of my biases and grow as a practitioner.
The fact is we are human and our practice is influenced by our human experiences.
I am currently postmenopausal and am experiencing menopausal STUFF that motivates my work with clients. Similarly, when I was working on my fertility 20 years ago, I found out that I had food sensitivities. Learning and acting on this was a game changer for me. Due to my own experience I often focused on food sensitivities with clients. I was working with Lyme disease and found that 80% of my patients felt better eating gluten and dairy free. Just that one change. This experience both personally and professionally created a bias in me.
To be a good nutritionist, we want to be self aware. It is good to know our biases and to evaluate them, to challenge ourselves to think about things differently.
What are your biases?
Are there dietary philosophies that we are for or against?
Maybe you despise carnivore?
Maybe you are frustrated with women who undereat on a vegan diet?
Maybe a client comes in eating keto and has breast cancer and you immediately judge that they are on the wrong diet. Take some time to reflect.
Whatever it is. The first step is awareness.
When I was academic director of Maryland University of Integrative Health’s MS in Nutrition program, we launched a course called Redefining Nutrition. I hired Charles Eisenstein to teach that course. He was amazing. The whole purpose of the course was to get developing nutritionists to identify bias. To think outside the box. He had every student write a paper arguing the benefits of a diet completely opposite of their own preference. So someone who ate paleo would argue for vegan. Or someone that ate keto would argue for low fat.
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