Help feed the hungry. How to make your charitable contributions count.

November 6, 2025November 6, 2025 ~ Green Apple Dietitian ~ Leave a comment

I feel compelled to write about helping the less fortunate in the wake of the SNAP benefits fiasco. Access to food is a fundamental right, no matter race, gender, body size, age, or economic status. There’s no reason on Earth that food should be denied to anyone.

In all the years I’ve been a registered dietitian, food distribution remains a system with many forces that challenge it. There are days when my emotional side doesn’t agree with food service regulations that lead to food waste, despite my education and experience in dining services.

Reasons for food waste include:

Overage: When the amount of food served is less than what the kitchen forecasted. People don’t eat as much as kitchen staff anticipated, there’s poor inventory management, or a lack of proper storage.
A decline in food quality, such as spoilage, increases the risk of food-borne illnesses, which can be serious or deadly for certain segments of our population.
Aesthetics: Ugly edible food that doesn’t meet a retailer’s standards is discarded. How food looks to us is a normal biological defense mechanism against unsafe foods. If it doesn’t look good, we won’t eat it.

Yet my emotions surface when I observe full untouched pans of food getting thrown away minutes after the scheduled meal ends. At the very least, it should be available to the employees as a benefit of employment. Workers’ salaries in food service range from $11 to $19 per hour in the US, the last time I checked, which is abysmal in our current economy. I’m burnt out on hearing about food and staff shortages, while food service employees live in their cars.

I’m not here to claim I know everything about food service operations, but to the casual observer, discarding food always comes off as a stingy way of doing business. I don’t have to tell anyone that we seriously need to do better.

But I digress…

There’s a point when ranting no longer serves its purpose. It’s time to focus on making a difference. Here are some things I learned along the way, which will hopefully make it easier for folks to lend a helping hand. Let’s not become deer in headlights because we don’t know what to do.

How to feed the hungry. Don’t assume. Ask.

Start with the obvious, like donating food at a local grocery store. During the holidays, chances are you’ll see the familiar barrel dropped off by the local food pantry. There might even be a handy list of what foods they are asking for. Grocery stores also offer ready-to-eat meals or prepackaged bags of food for purchase. The hard work is already done.

Feeding America is nationally known. Log on to their website to learn about many aspects of giving. It’s a good place to begin if you’re starting a journey toward helping others.

Become more familiar with your local food bank. Visit their website, call them, and schedule a visit. Volunteers are more than happy to help navigate ways to help and are thankful when charitable people reach out. It’s the best place for the most current information about local people in need.

How to organize yourself and others to give generously

Alone or in a group, you can:

Start a food drive. Visit your local food pantry’s website and fill out an online form to have volunteers drop off one of their food barrels during a designated collection time. Otherwise, you can arrange to drop off donations.
Volunteer with family, friends, or co-workers to fill up food stock boxes, or participate in Meals on Wheels, to feed the elderly in need
Donate money directly on the pantry’s website or purchase items through their Amazon wish list. This is by far the easiest way to contribute, and you can do it periodically throughout the year.

Bust the myths of charitable giving. To make your donation count, don’t:

Assume what you eat will be the same as what everyone else eats. Not everyone has access to a stove, other cooking appliances, or even refrigeration. In lower-income neighborhoods, apartments for rent don’t always come with modern conveniences.
Buy bags of candy because you think that poor children never get to eat any. Yes, all children deserve candy or a cake on their birthday without judgment, but let’s leave that decision to the parents. Aim at acquiring food components that can be prepared and served within their economic environment. Research shows kids do better academically when they receive proper nourishment.
Clean out your pantry of old and expired food to give to charity. If you wouldn’t eat it, don’t expect others to, or to be grateful for food that’s past its expiration date.
Push your healthy eating expectations, which only leads to unhelpful assumptions, by expecting them to choose foods that don’t make sense financially. Help them get access to all foods in every food group.

Follow these tips and develop a way to give that will work for you and your budget. It’s time we stop accepting government shutdowns that cause unnecessary delays and do what we can to lift others. Let’s build a society where everyone can reap the benefits of a dignified life.

Links to explore:

U.S. Hunger Relief Organization | Feeding America

Find Your Local Food Bank | Feeding America

Volunteer Opportunities at Your Local Food Bank | Feeding America

Effects of poverty, hunger and homelessness on children and youth

The New York Times Replica Edition

Misfits Market, Imperfect Foods & the Battle Against Food Waste – Consumer Reports

How to defend yourself against Diet Culture during the holidays

October 21, 2025November 2, 2025 ~ Green Apple Dietitian ~ 1 Comment

I was in a big box hardware store yesterday, looking for purple and orange lights to add to my Halloween decorations. In one aisle, an oversized skeleton let out an evil laugh, while in the next aisle, Christmas music was blaring near the leftover Thanksgiving swag on sale at 20% off. I’m not sure how everyone else feels, but I need breathing room between Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas to take it all in.

Now that it’s October, for many folks, their attempts at dieting are all but a memory. In my experience, patients who succeeded in slimming down have realized some weight gain once their hunger soared out of control and the “healthy diet” fell hard against normalized eating patterns.

In starvation mode, the hungry body fights for calories by accelerating cravings for carbohydrates, which are impossible to ignore. With three holidays back-to-back, there are opportunities for delicious and savory foods that aren’t available any other time of the year. But with new insight and introspection, it doesn’t have to be a recipe for disaster.

This year, I followed the diet industry’s yearly cycle and wrote about ways to rise above it.

How to Avoid Plugging Back into the Diet Culture this January

January is over. How is the weight loss diet going?

Right now, advertisers are heavily focused on holiday giving to maximize sales, which will soon be followed by the dieting and exercise industry’s application of pressure to eat less and move more. And the only way you can attain the thin ideal is with (add whatever diet/exercise company here) in your corner. What a perfect time to declare us all as gluttonous for being “too merry” over the holidays. This year, harness your inner strength so you can turn your back on all this nonsense once and for all.

Three ways to build a healthy body image

It won’t be easy. But nothing worthwhile is easy. I’m going to share with you the accumulation of my experiences with patients who struggle with their weight and their relationship with food. I offer a different approach to the holidays to help you find the confidence to eat and nourish your body on your own terms.

Practice body compassion

No matter where your weight falls on the BMI scale, your nutrition needs are unique. Most people parrot nutritional information without much thought. If everyone’s doing it, it must be right. Except that it’s not right when people who are otherwise healthy go to extremes to be in a smaller body, or believe that the only way to better health is to lose weight. Ask yourself how much joy you’ve lost by telling yourself you can’t eat certain foods while limiting yourself during social situations. Body compassion will shield you from a negative body image by avoiding unhealthy comparisons. Focus on what you can change instead of what you can’t change.

Gratefulness: appreciate how your body works and its functions that keep you alive. All the systems in your body work together to keep you going. As humans, we are aware of our own mortality and possess the ability to change the course of our lives in many ways to achieve positive outcomes.
Acceptance: acknowledge the imperfections of your body without harsh judgment. Acknowledge the good things, whether it’s your eyes, your hair, your smile, or your ability to do something most others around you can’t do.
Kindness: Tell yourself that you’re doing your best with what you know right now. As Maya Angelou once said, “Once you know better, do better.” Treat yourself like you would your best friend. Kindness costs nothing.

Tune out the health and wellness chatter. Most of it isn’t worth your time and attention.

Nutrition is a topic everyone has had a lived experience with. It’s not like neurosurgery, where a select few possess the knowledge. Everyone has their list of eat this, not that, but most advice falls within the “I didn’t ask you” category. All the good intentions won’t make it helpful.

Social media makes it extremely difficult to know what advice to trust. Even credentialed health practitioners don’t always share accurate information. They’re experts in their field of practice, but remain severely uneducated in the study of nutrition. I’ve witnessed highly educated practitioners share ideals that were disproven by science long ago. It can be overwhelming, and I sympathize with my patients who come to me looking for clarity.

Most advice on social media is shared without much thought about the consequences to the viewers. It becomes proliferated by all the clueless and rigid opinions in the comment section. It’s important to know that health practitioners who truly care about your health are not spending time spreading misinformation on social media. They’re in hospitals and clinics working hard to help patients make sense of it all. If you know that social media marketing strives to evoke strong emotions to get a reaction, you’re already halfway there. Here are three ways to navigate nutrition’s complicated landscape.

Match the expertise with the advice.
If a famous actress is selling a weight loss program, chances are it’s a lived experience that worked for them, but would require a complete overhaul of your current lifestyle. It can be hard to tell if what you’re hearing is coming from someone who’s currently struggling with their own issues.
Avoid getting pulled in by generalizations
Savvy marketing uses sound bites to pull buyers in. Notice how many times you hear the words, “all natural, clinically proven, FDA cleared, and lose weight and keep it off.” They create a convincing veil of legitimacy to make a sale by counting on the fact that most people aren’t science experts. But you don’t have to be an expert if you understand what’s behind their tactics.
Be skeptical of any nutritional advice from friends or loved ones. People who care about us often believe they’re helping when they comment on something they see as wrong. They want to fix it. Weight gain is almost always viewed negatively and criticized without understanding the true cause. Weight loss is celebrated even if it happens unintentionally. Health advice given without proper training and experience shouldn’t be taken seriously, regardless of good intentions.

Ask yourself how you can be more flexible

The holidays can trigger individuals with rigid eating habits, picky eaters, and patients with eating disorders. Selecting foods only for perceived health benefits is limiting and promotes anxiety around eating. Rigidity should never justify restricting a meal when your thoughts tell you there are no good options. Food is all around us, but unless you’re financially unfortunate, there is no lack of nutritious food. Start with these ways to increase flexibility around foods from any source.

Focus on healthy eating behavior, not the health of specific foods. The efficacy of nutrition is found in pairing many foods together. Health is in variety. Eating one type of food while forgoing many others only leads to vitamin and mineral deficiencies.
If a food is new to you, try a small sample. The best way to know if you will like an unfamiliar food is to use all your senses. Judging a food by looks won’t give you enough information. You won’t know what you could be missing out on.
Be curious about any anxiety related to uncertainties around food. Be mindful of any fear related to certain foods and why. Find a qualified practitioner if you suspect or have a history of an eating disorder.

The power to be as you are

While practicing compassion and tuning out the noise of unsound advice, you will find the flexibility you need to be present during the holidays. You’ll no longer be lured in by the “new year, new you” dogma. Balancing a mix of self-care while going with the flow can keep you strong enough to push away the diet culture’s insistence that you need to fix yourself. You’ll gain the power and confidence to believe that you are worthy of being and looking just as you are.

Type 2 Diabetes. When family history makes a healthy lifestyle ALMOST irrelevant.

March 23, 2025 ~ Green Apple Dietitian ~ Leave a comment

I’ve known for a while that diabetes was always a few steps behind lurking in the background. Eventually, it will catch up. Why? Family history. With five family members who have the disease, I understood a long time ago that membership in this club wouldn’t be optional. During my last physical, the doctor focused on abnormal lab values indicating diabetes could still be a reality. But of all the diseases I could end up with, diabetes is a disease that can be more or less of a burden based on the choices I make.

For most of my life, I did a decent job taking care of myself, but I also did two of the best things anyone can do for their health, quit smoking cigarettes and drinking alcohol. These habits in tandem make any effort toward a healthful lifestyle useless.

As a teen, taking up smoking was a window to the in-crowd and a way to rebel. What I felt was a symbol of freedom would’ve been a severe detriment to my health if I continued. Luckily, there were enough people around who reinforced the harmful effects of smoking. After a while, I stopped smoking altogether.

The best way to describe my alcohol intake was problematic binge drinking. Like many of us, having a few made socializing easier. I abstained from alcohol use during the week, but I wasn’t a person who could stop after having just one. Luckily again, someone close to me nudged me toward better health. I stopped drinking altogether.

Alcohol abuse puts patients at risk for diabetes. I’ve met patients in my practice with a history of alcohol use disorders and a prediabetes/diabetes diagnosis. Most of them were admitted with a metformin prescription and were confused as to why their bodies became insulin-resistant after they stopped drinking. One patient believed it was a punishment for their detrimental habits.

The World Health Organization published its views this year on the unhealthy effects of alcohol and the National Cancer Institute maintains ethanol and ethyl alcohol as carcinogens that contribute to many types of cancer. Click on the links above to read more.

Did alcohol use increase my risk? I don’t know for sure, but heredity on the other hand isn’t something I can change. My mother was diagnosed with diabetes over 10 years ago and her brother and sister also around the same period. My father died of complications related to the disease. In 2018, my brother lost his toes to gangrene from uncontrolled hyperglycemia.

Becoming a dietitian helped me support my mom in many ways and I learned more by observing her experiences. I remember going with her to her first appointment with the diabetes educator when she said, “I want to control my diabetes.” A phrase she kept true to this day by keeping her appointments and doing what her practitioners recommended. She’s been a positive role model for me as she rose to the challenge of necessary lifestyle changes. I’m proud of her for it.

There isn’t a clear path to heredity when it comes to diabetes, but does this mean I shouldn’t care for my health since I probably won’t prevent it? I can’t say what the future will bring if I become insulin-resistant enough to start treatment, but the life I’ve lived so far has put me ahead of the game. Diabetes complications can range from neuropathy, heart disease, renal disease, and gangrene, but this doesn’t have to be my story or anyone else’s.

Knowledge and insight are my best defense against this disease. As my journey unfolds my experience with diabetes will give me an edge to help patients who are motivated to maintain their health.

When to see your physician

Insulin resistance is when the body doesn’t digest glucose properly, it overstays its welcome in the blood. When the insulin in your body isn’t stimulating liver, muscle, and brain glucose metabolism to remove it from the blood, elevated blood glucose levels eventually affect the heart, blood vessels, and kidneys.

If you’re at risk of developing diabetes, there are a cluster of three symptoms to discuss with your doctor, like increased:

HUNGER: when meals aren’t satisfying or there are perpetual cravings for sugary foods
THIRST: unable to quench thirst even after drinking adequate amounts of fluid
URINATION: are you always in the bathroom?

Other symptoms include fatigue, blurred vision, slow-healing wounds, and weight loss. Have you lost significant weight recently but are unsure why? Unexplained weight loss related to hyperglycemia isn’t healthy. Along with the other symptoms, it signals that your body isn’t producing enough insulin or metabolizing insulin appropriately.

If you have any combination of these symptoms, make an appointment with your doctor, don’t wait.

Counting Carbs

Since the 1920s, tracking carbohydrate intake with insulin or other diabetes medications has been the gold standard for managing hyperglycemia for patients with type 1 diabetes. However, researchers continue to explore the efficacy of tracking for T2DM. Recently the medical community has been moving away from it. The American Diabetes Association offers a diabetes plate approach similar to MyPlate. More recently patients informed me that their endocrinologists don’t emphasize medical nutrition therapy while using glucose meters and insulin pumps. My RD brain thinks they should’ve been referred to a registered dietitian diabetes educator. In my experience, MNT should be tailored to the individual. Some patients are more willing than others to utilize education, while others want to be told what to eat.

Avoiding carbs altogether is never the right way to go. Even with hyperglycemia the body still needs adequate carbohydrates. Your muscles and brain need them to function. Avoid listening to negative messages about carbs and learn why the body needs them. Arm yourself with education from trusted sources. Avoid Clickbait websites offering cures using vitamin supplements or other unproven remedies. There’s no cure for diabetes and spending too much time looking for one is a sure-fire way to miss out on healthy successful management.

Get enough fat in your diet

I’m old enough to remember the fat-free frenzy in the 80s and 90s and guilty as charged following it without questioning it. Society learned its lesson with a hungrier population that overconsumed carbs.

A balanced diet includes heart-healthy fats in avocados, nuts, seeds, and fatty fish. Fat adds flavor to food and helps us feel fuller longer. The jury is still out on whether saturated fat should be limited for heart health, but it’s important to remember your overall dietary intake and eating behaviors. Even so, to manage diabetes, I don’t recommend the Adkins or Carnivore diets.

Avoid high-protein fad diets

Fat-free mania gave way to the protein obsession that’s evident at every grocery store. Everywhere we’re told we don’t get enough of it, and of course, there’s a product to help with that. Healthy people on a regular diet, while not restricting their dietary intake, usually consume enough. Overconsumption leads to weight gain and is harmful to the kidneys, especially with the overuse of protein powders and supplements.

Get moving

Physical activity improves muscular, skeletal, and cardiovascular fitness while it improves glucose metabolism. If you are sedentary, look for opportunities to move more. I know it’s easier said than done, there are barriers to exercising and it’s never easy to start. How can you increase activity by making it part of something you enjoy? I like to hike in state parks to get fresh air while watching the butterflies and bees interact with the native plants. You don’t have to join a gym or jog on the side of the highway. Check with your doctor before starting any exercise program if you’re experiencing any health issues.

Take care of your mind

Receiving a diabetes diagnosis can be a slap in the face for some patients. It’s usually followed up by the overwhelming education from health practitioners which results in information overload. It’s understandable to feel a range of emotions after going through that. There’s nothing wrong with letting things settle and giving yourself time to process it all.

Even though I mostly accepted my situation, I can’t help but wonder if there’s something else, I can do to prevent a diagnosis. Deep down inside I hope for a cure. But then I think of the privileges I was fortunate to possess for maintaining my health and how my choices benefited me later in life. I also believe that if there is breath in your lungs and a beat in your heart, it’s never too late to keep learning and doing.

Plenty of research points to weight loss for diabetes management. Science continues to evolve and rarely considers a patient’s individuality and how they think and feel. I recommend staying focused on improving your body’s physical fitness and making necessary dietary changes. Your weight will trend accordingly because your body will respond to how you treat it. Steer away from black-and-white thinking: good foods vs bad foods or thinner bodies are healthier than larger ones to avoid increasing anxiety and allow for an open mind. Self-blame and unacceptance won’t move you forward. To reach your fullest potential, accept what nature gave you then maximize it.

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