Welcome to the Humans of Nutrition Podcast brought to you by Registered Nutritionists Anna Wheeler and Prof Danielle McCarthy.

In this podcast Anna and Danielle are delighted to introduce Maria Traka, Head of Food and Nutrition National Bioscience Research Infrastructure (NBRI) at Quadram Institute.

Danielle attended the Food & Nutrition NBRI Stakeholder Engagement Event earlier this year. A key part of this stakeholder meeting was to generate discussion on how the McCance and Widdowson’s series of Composition of Foods Integrated Dataset (CoFID) is currently being used. Thanks to those who shared how this database informs their work - you can access our blog on the meeting here.

But we needed to hear more about the important work being conducted! As background, the Food & Nutrition NBRI was set up in 2023 and is a national coordinating ‘hub’ in nutrition and health and the leading national provider of new and continuously updated data tools and services vital for UK public health research and innovation.

Of course the Food and Nutrition NBRI did not start from scratch – it is part of the evolution that traces back to pioneers of nutrition research, namely Robert McCance and Elsie Widdowson. Tune in to find out:

What has changed over the years?

Who uses food composition databases? For what?

How often are nutritional databases updated?

What needs to be considered to future proof nutritional databases to stay relevant?

How do consumers influence what information may need to be captured on a nutritional database? (Inside scoop - Maria shares plans to include plant-based products in the dataset, a perfect example of consumer influence and future-proofing)

As nutrition professionals, we know how challenging it is to make the complex simple. Maria faces this challenge daily. For example:

How do we represent the range of different types of fibres that have different physiological impacts?

How do we keep pace with food reformulations?

We discuss nutrient profiling – an easy, accessible, at-a-glance way of categorising food. But what is getting lost in translation? Where do bio-actives sit? Additives? Processing techniques? UPF’s? What about environmental scores?

The complexity of the work of NBRI is obvious and real – how does Maria deal with these professional challenges? It’s a combination of values, vision, teamwork and being a realist.

Maria ends with a plea to make data FAIR – Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable. If you have influence in the food data space, and are invested in public health benefit, let’s make it FAIR!

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As nutrition professionals working in multiple contexts, we want to use our diverse experience to help organisations achieve their nutrition and health goals by providing them with the expertise they need, when they need it.

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Is there a nutrition topic you’d like to hear discussed? Or a ‘Human of Nutrition’ you think would make a great guest? Email us at info@nutritiontalent.com.

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Help spread the word! Please share this episode with 1 person who you think might enjoy it.

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Get in touch to find out more about our company, Nutrition Talent and how we could work together.

Web: www.nutritiontalent.com

Email: info@nutritiontalent.com

LinkedIn: @NutritionTalent

Instagram: @Nutrition_talent

Twitter: @NutritionTalent

Follow Anna

LinkedIn: @Anna Wheeler

Follow Danielle

LinkedIn: @DrDanielleMcCarthy

Welcome to the Humans of Nutrition Podcast brought to you by Registered Nutritionists Anna Wheeler and Prof Danielle McCarthy.

In this podcast Anna and Danielle chat to their team member Kate McCulla, Registered Dietitian and Nutrition Development Manager for Nutrition Talent.

Kate passionately believes that health professionals need to invest in developing their communication and behaviour change skills.

Think about how you would like to be talked to if you were discussing a behaviour change with someone – especially on a topic where you are experiencing the (completely normal!) human experience of ambivalence (being uncertain about how you feel about change).

Would you respond better to:

1. Being told what to do, or

2. Being supported in a 2-way conversation that explores what is important to you and what your abilities and strengths are to help overcome barriers to change?

It is widely accepted that imparting knowledge, giving information alone, or telling people what to do does not support behaviour change. We need to couple our knowledge with communication skills in a way that enables action.

With a focus on practical and learnable skills, Kate gives an outline of communication skills borrowed from the world of motivational interviewing.

During Dietitian’s Week 2024, Kate also takes the opportunity to highlight one of the daily themes “Celebrating Us”, specifically suggesting that Registered Dietitians and Registered Nutritionists have more in common than there are differences. Nutrition Talent embodies this in supporting both professions in our mission of inspiring and connecting expertise!

Resources referenced:

https://www.bctonline.co.uk/

https://motivationalinterviewing.org/books

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Would training to develop your communication skills be useful? Let us know what areas you would find supportive of your professional development.

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As nutrition professionals working in multiple contexts, we want to use our diverse experience to help organisations achieve their nutrition and health goals by providing them with the expertise they need, when they need it.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Is there a nutrition topic you’d like to hear discussed? Or a ‘Human of Nutrition’ you think would make a great guest? Email us at info@nutritiontalent.com.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Help spread the word! Please share this episode with 1 person who you think might enjoy it.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Get in touch to find out more about our company, Nutrition Talent and how we could work together.

Web: www.nutritiontalent.com

Email: info@nutritiontalent.com

LinkedIn: @NutritionTalent

Instagram: @Nutrition_talent

Twitter: @NutritionTalent

Follow Anna

LinkedIn: @Anna Wheeler

Follow Danielle

LinkedIn: @DrDanielleMcCarthy

Welcome to the Humans of Nutrition Podcast brought to you by Registered Nutritionists Anna Wheeler and Prof Danielle McCarthy.

In this podcast Anna and Danielle chat to Professor Sue Lanham-New, Professor of Human Nutrition and Head of Nutritional Science Department at University of Surrey.

Sue’s research focuses on Vitamin D – she is passionate about helping people living with osteoporosis and happily volunteers her time and expert knowledge to osteoporosis charities. A true “Human of Nutrition”!

Anna and Danielle step back in time, returning to the University of Surrey where they studied, became friends and first met Sue in the lecture theatre!

Fast forward to April 2024, and Anna and Danielle are back at University of Surrey, delivering a careers workshop to final year nutrition students in the morning, and catching up with Sue in the afternoon!

We hear about the ground-breaking research on Vitamin D that Sue leads on. At the start of this journey, the UK did not have an RNI for Vitamin D due to the assumption that we had enough sunlight in summer months to generate, store and utilise through the winter months. It’s clear that the evidence around Vitamin D moved on, thanks in no small part to Sue and her colleagues, leading to the establishment of an RNI for Vitamin D in 2016.

Sue is generous in giving credit to her team, informing us about ongoing research projects such as the differing Vitamin D requirements in ethnic groups, Vitamin D / iron interaction, and investigating Vitamin D supplementation in the management of acute respiratory tract infections. She is honest about the difficulties securing funding for research projects but demonstrates how resilience and determination pays off.

Here's the science bit – do you know:

· the difference between Vitamin D2 and Vitamin D3?

· their different metabolic pathways?

· which type is preferred for supplementation?

· your micrograms from your international units?

· what the RNI is?

· what the safe upper limit is?

· why, on food labelling, the NRV is set at half the RNI?

· how fruit and vegetables impact bone health? (Fun question - Are tomatoes high in Vitamin D? Yes – if you ‘gene edit’ them!)

Listen in to find out all of the above and more!

Sue is offered a ‘magic wand’ – something she’d like to see change in the next 10 years. Her response is simple – for Vitamin D deficiency to be eradicated. Yet public health messaging around Vitamin D supplementation is not getting through – how can health professionals get this message across?

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As nutrition professionals working in multiple contexts, we want to use our diverse experience to help organisations achieve their nutrition and health goals by providing them with the expertise they need, when they need it.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

Get in touch to find out more about our company, Nutrition Talent and how we could work together.

Web: www.nutritiontalent.com

Email: info@nutritiontalent.com

LinkedIn: @NutritionTalent

Instagram: @Nutrition_talent

Twitter: @NutritionTalent

Follow Anna: LinkedIn @Anna Wheeler

Follow Danielle: LinkedIn @DrDanielleMcCarthy