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E5: 7 Domains of Food

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E5: 7 Domains of Food

Nov 30, 2020

Food touches the lives of every living being on this planet. Food can make you feel happy. Consuming certain foods over others may or may not align with a specific faith. And of course, some foods will make your body not feel so good. Clinical dietitian joins this episode of 7 Domains of Women's Health to talk about how food affects a woman's life and the lives of those around her.

    This content was originally produced for audio. Certain elements such as tone, sound effects, and music, may not fully capture the intended experience in textual representation. Therefore, the following transcription has been modified for clarity. We recognize not everyone can access the audio podcast. However, for those who can, we encourage subscribing and listening to the original content for a more engaging and immersive experience.

    All thoughts and opinions expressed by hosts and guests are their own and do not necessarily reflect the views held by the institutions with which they are affiliated.

     


    Food is an Incredibly Powerful Motivator

    Okay. Welcome. Welcome. I am two inches from my mic and I'm eating my mic, but not quite, because today, we're going to talk about the Seven Domains of Food.

    Food is an incredibly powerful motivator to more than just Labrador Retrievers. Everybody thinks about food on occasion. And all religious holidays and cultural holidays are surrounded by food, or by fasting and then surrounded by food. So, food has a powerful role in our life for health, for illness, for our spiritual lives, for our emotional lives. And just to lighten it up a little bit when we're talking about hard things, we've got a few little light things from the Muppets from "Sesame Street."

    [Soundbite of "Hey Food" by Sesame Street]

    Here's a little story about food and family—

    My mother was a great cook, and she cooked in German, and she cooked in Mexican, and she cooked in American. She didn't really cook in Asian, but because she had lived in those countries, she was a really good cook. And she passed down some of her recipes. But all important dates and "I love you" was said in food.

    She passed on this interest in food to her four children. We are all highly food-motivated. When we get together, all we do is talk about food, food we're going to eat, food we did eat, the best food we ever ate. It was hard for people sitting at the dinner table who were not food motivated, and that would include my husband, whose family is not food motivated, and neither is he.

    Those of us who eat to live—and that would be my husband—and those of us who live to eat—and that would be me—and to every family, food means something different. But as we're trying to grow our children and trying to feed our grandchildren, nutrition takes our focus from just any food that is yummy to something that's good for us. And we're going to be talking about that in some more detail about food that's yummy versus food that's good for us, and maybe food that's a little bit of both.

    To Eat, or Not to Eat?

    Today, in the "7 Domains of Women's Health," we're talking about what I perceive as being the ultimate woman's domain food. Now, that doesn't mean that men don't eat food, because we know they do, and it doesn't mean they don't cook food or shop for food, because we know they do, but in fact, often, at least in our culture, women make the decisions. They plan the menus. They have a kid who only eats white food, and then they've got a kid who won't eat that, and they have a kid who's allergic to this, and the husband who is a meat-itarian, and they might be snacking on the food they make for everyone. So, by dinnertime, they are all full.

    Food is the woman's domain. So today, I am lucky enough to be in the studio with a nutritionist. is a registered dietician, a clinical dietitian, and that means not just talking about food, but clinically thinking about food, and assistant professor here at the University of Utah about food and nutrition. Welcome.

     

    Dr. Jones: Now, here comes the big question.

    Kary: Yes.

    Dr. Jones: What did you have for breakfast?

    Kary: Oh, I'm a creature of habit. So for me, I grab what's quick and easy, but some iteration of Greek yogurt and granola or oats and some fresh fruit. It's quick. It's easy. It's portable.

    Dr. Jones: I just Googled last night whether you can make overnight oats with steel cut oats, which are my favorite oats, given that I don't really like oats or breakfast. But I'm going to be a new woman. I'm going to be a new woman and I'm going to have something easy. And steel cut oats, cooking them can take a half an hour, but if I soak them, I think I can do it overnight.

    Kary: Well, you'll have to let me know.

    Dr. Jones: Well, in your clinical work, thinking about the health aspects or the physical aspects of the seven domains, there are people who have to eat certain things or have to not eat certain things, and those would be diabetics, or people with liver failure, or maybe some people with an odd genetic disease like phenylketonuria. Tell me about some of the work you do with people who have to eat certain things or not eat certain things.

    Kary: Oh, sure. So there are individuals . . . for example, you identified PK. Someone who has a diagnosis of PKU, phenylketonuria, they need to avoid anything that has been phenylalanine in it.

    Dr. Jones: That's a basic amino acid that all of us . . .

    Kary: It is.

    Dr. Jones: . . . need supposedly. And it's in everything, isn't it?

    Kary: Correct. Well, all protein foods. And so, it's really a diet comprised of refined carbohydrates and really sugar-containing foods. And so, they rely upon dietary supplements to make sure that they're able to meet their dietary needs for vitamins.

    Dr. Jones: That's a tough diet.

    Kary: Oh, it's very tough. Yep.

    Dr. Jones: And people with liver failure aren't supposed to eat a lot of protein, right?

    Kary: Yeah, depending upon their stage of liver failure. Absolutely. Or even with kidney disease, end-stage renal disease, they need to be cognizant of their protein intake, depending upon their stage of dialysis or form of dialysis as well.

    But yeah, what I find is clinically there are very few patients who, in a medical setting, really don't have some sort of dietary implication of their disease. So, it could be more mild or moderate. It could be more extreme. But so many of our body systems are impacted by the foods that we eat and the nutrients that we consume. And so, to some degree or another, almost any medical condition may necessitate some sort of adjustment or tweaking with our diets.

    Food Allergies vs Perceived Allergies

    When I have a dinner party or invite people over or having people stay, I now automatically, in my email, say, "Are there any food preferences?" because more and more people say, "I'm allergic to this, this, and this." Gosh, I'm an omnivore. I was eating dirt before I ate food. I mean, I was raised . . . in my early years, just after weaning, we're in Mexico, in a mining camp in Mexico, so I probably was eating dirt. But I didn't know that people could be so allergic to food.

     

    Dr. Jones: What are these food allergy things? And what's a food allergy versus food preference or . . .

    Kary: With that, I'm going to clump sort of perceived allergies. Diagnosed allergies, an allergic response, the body's immune . . .

    Dr. Jones: Immunologic response.

    Kary: Yeah, the body's immune system is responding to that specific antigen. And so, in that case, that person does need to eliminate the food from their diet because if not, that could result in maybe mild symptoms of itchy, rashy skin, or very severe symptoms of anaphylaxis, which can be life threatening.

    Dr. Jones: So, anaphylaxis is when people . . . their throat closes, and they can't take a deep breath, and they can't breathe. So, they can have hives, or they can have difficulty breathing or feeling like their mouth is getting swollen. Those are scary things.

    Kary: Absolutely.

    Dr. Jones: But then there are people who say, "Oh, no, I'm allergic to this, that, and the other." So I always ask as a clinician, "What happens when you eat that?"

    Kary: So a lot of times, there are perceived allergies. And by that, it could be an intolerance. So a very common example would be gluten intolerance. Now, there is a condition called celiac disease, which is an autoimmune disorder, whereby the consumption of gluten, which is a protein type in wheat, barley, and rye, causes damage to our gastrointestinal system.

    But a lot of times, there are also individuals who . . . and we do see a strong crossover with irritable bowel syndrome and non-celiac gluten sensitivity, or this perceived gluten intolerance. And when I say perceived, it can be real. The challenge is we don't have good diagnostics for it. So, we don't have a test to say, "Yes, you are gluten intolerant," other than to say, "Well, if you eliminate gluten from your diet, and you notice an improvement in symptoms, then that becomes more of a diagnosis of elimination."

    But some individuals really do seem to be more sensitive to gluten. The challenge is some of the studies, if you actually do a placebo-controlled study, if someone thinks that they're consuming gluten, they may often report the same symptoms even if there actually was not gluten in the food.

    Some degree of bloating is normal when we consume food, and some degree of just feeling of fullness is very normal. Fiber is contained in many healthful sources of wheat, and so some of that can just be normal digestion. But I think there's a little bit of media hype around bloating and distension that we've almost become . . . potentially, some individuals are a little hypersensitive to that.

    Dr. Jones: Bloating, I make a joke about this on this particular podcast because I've never heard a man, at least not a man who was older than 30, ever use that word, whereas women use that word, "Oh, I feel bloated," or, "Oh, I eat that and I feel bloated," or, "I eat this and I'm six months pregnant." Every beer would make me bloat, and guys drink beer and their bellies stick out, and they would never say, "I feel bloated," because that's such a girl thing to say.

    Kary: Yes. Absolutely. So, I want to emphasize that there are individuals who experience gluten intolerance. There is also, though, a certain population that may not actually have what we would consider to be gluten intolerance. It's more just normal feelings of digestion along with some inaccurate messaging around gluten-containing foods. And so, then they sort of self-diagnose and take themselves off of gluten. So, it depends upon how they approach that diet, so to speak.

    Dr. Jones: I think about lactose intolerance, because that's so interesting. It has racial prevalence in the sense that people who evolved . . . and I think of northern Europeans who evolved. As we moved out of Africa and moved north, and then had the choice and the ability to farm, and then we had the ability to have dairy in our diet. So, people who are Northern European often eat dairy throughout their entire lives, and it makes a significant amount of their calories, whereas people who are Asian and African, they lose their ability to drink milk. So, they really are lactose intolerant. It makes them pretty uncomfortable.

    Kary: Correct. And the nice thing with lactose intolerance is that, for most individuals, it's not an all-or-nothing diagnosis. And so, that's, I think, refreshing to know. Even someone with lactose intolerance, maybe they can't eat the large bowl of ice cream, which can be fairly disappointing, I get that, but they could consume small to moderate amounts of lactose without symptoms.

    Especially foods like cultured yogurt products, yogurt, or kefir can be better tolerated because it actually has some of the bacteria to help it to be digested. And those foods are high in calcium, high in protein. Some of them are high in vitamin D. So they can be very nutrient-dense foods.

    Now, again, someone can be healthy without consuming any form of lactose, or even dairy . . .

    Dr. Jones: Oh, I think of Asia where drinking dairy or cheese is not a big part of their diet. Think about East Asians. They just don't. It isn't a big part of their diet, and they manage to make strong bones and they manage to be smart.

    Kary: But there are so many other factors in those lifestyles. They probably are much less sedentary, and they consume lots more fruits and vegetables.

    Dr. Jones: And more fish.

    Kary: And maybe a higher consumption of soy. So, it gets a little complicated. But yes, 70% of the population here in the United States does experience some degree of what we call a hypolactasia, or decreased lactase levels, as we get older. And so, decreasing our consumption of lactose in those instances is appropriate. And luckily, there are also lots of lactose-free options as well.

    Food is Love

    As a hostess and as a cook, I want people to come to my table . . . my table food is love, because that was my upbringing. Food is love. I want them to be completely comfortable with what I offer. Part of me wants to say, "Oh, come on. You mean you can't eat my vegetarian lasagna?" But my goal is to honor everyone's dietary preferences, which can be an emotional choice. It can be a spiritual choice, meaning people who've made either a religion . . . their faith demands that they not eat meat, or they can't eat certain kinds of meat. I think of religions, and I think of Islam, and I think of Judaism where they can't or don't eat pork and shellfish.

     

    Dr. Jones: There are some reasons some people have. Epidemiologists and anthropologists have said, "Well, here are the reasons that people don't eat pork and don't eat fish." But I want to make people comfortable at my table.

    Kary: Absolutely.

    Dr. Jones: You work in the hospital. You have people who say, "I can't eat this because of my faith," or, "I'd prefer not to eat that"?

    Kary: Yes, absolutely. And it absolutely depends upon the specific faith. So, for example, someone who is Jewish and they follow the Kashrut would dictate that they don't do animals that actually chew their cud, or that have, I think, split hooves is what the Bible says. So, in those instances, they would not eat cow products. And so, pork would not be allowed.

    Dr. Jones: Because of the split hooves?

    Kary: No, because they chew their cud.

    Dr. Jones: Oh, do they?

    Kary: Mm-hmm.

    Dr. Jones: I don't . . .

    Kary: That's okay.

    Dr. Jones: I've never bought pork in my adult life, except in the form of bacon. And bacon is not pork. Bacon is bacon.

    Kary: It's its own food group.

    Dr. Jones: It's its own food group.

    Kary: And they would not eat shellfish because it doesn't have both fins and scales. So, that's in accordance with the Kashrut, which is provided by the Bible in the Old Testament. And so, those dietary practices are followed by members of the Jewish faith.

    Now, someone, for example, who is Hindu, they're going to follow the do no harm principle. And so, for them, they may choose to be vegetarian or vegan, depending upon their personal preference and their interpretation of that principle. They may limit their intake of animal foods, or omit them altogether. And that's out of the principle of doing no harm to other organisms, to other animals.

    And so, it does depend upon the specific faith as to what foods might be not allowed and why, but many different religions do have specific dietary principles.

    Dr. Jones: Right.

    Your Food Choices Have Environmental Effects

    When I think about the environmental effects of the food choices we make, so the environmental domain of the seven domains, the WHO came out and said, "If the planet ate less meat, we would have less carbon dioxide. It would be a healthier planet."

     

    Dr. Jones: So, some of the choices we make actually affect our environment just in terms of the food choices that we make.

    Kary: Yep. So we know that, for example, the production of meat, it results in greater carbon emissions. And then also the input, so the amount of water, for example, that's part of the food manufacturing system of producing meat is much greater than for plant sources of protein.

    Dr. Jones: In terms of trees, I think of what's happening in Brazil. Do you have to burn down the rainforest so you can make places where cows can graze? Because they don't graze on the rainforest. It becomes difficult.

    Respecting Other's Food Choices

     

    Dr. Jones: So, here's a question. Can a vegan be happily married to a meat-itarian? How does that work out?

    Kary: Well, there are obviously going to be some, I guess, ethical implications of that as to why someone is following a vegan lifestyle, out of what principle. And if it's for how the animals are treated, there might be some ethical tensions there.

    From a health perspective, I think they can coincide. Michael Pollan says it best. He says, " And whether you consume some meat as part of that dietary approach, it can still fit into a plant-based diet. Plant-based diet is sort of a catchall phrase, but it's a diet that subsists of mostly plants. But sure, maybe some chicken or other environmentally sort of sustainable forms of protein are included in that, and yet still be a plant-based diet.

    So, for example, if you have that sort of meat-itarian married to someone following a vegan dietary approach, is your plate mostly can be plant sources? And maybe the person consuming meat sometimes has some chicken on their plate as their protein source, and the person who's following a vegan dietary approach has tofu instead. But if the bulk of the diet is going to be fruits, and vegetables, and nuts, and seeds, and legumes, and other healthy plant-based sources, then I think having a little bit of meat in there can still work.

    Now, if the plate is mostly meat and few vegetables, that can be a little more challenging. But I think it certainly can exist harmoniously, just depending on how it's . . .

    Dr. Jones: It's done with honor. As long as each honors the other's choices and supports them as best they can. I mean, some people roll their eyes and become accusatory whether they're, "There's no protein in there. You're wasting away to nothing," or, "Look, you've just got a dead cow," or whatever it is. It doesn't help when people don't honor someone else's choices.

    Kary: Well, it can come across as being very judgmental, and that's where there can be some tension.

    Dr. Jones: Right. Well, while we're talking about meat, as someone who's dieted since I was 15, and I've been through all the little diets at one time or another, but right now, I'd say the keto/paleo . . . in some of the diets, there is a lot of protein. And there are some downsides to eating more than 80 or 90 grams of protein a day or 100. However, there must be an upper number at which point your kidneys are asked to do more than they really want to in terms of clearing protein.

    Kary: Oh, absolutely, especially if someone's at risk of a poor kidney health. And I think more than just the detriment to our kidneys, though, is at a dietary approach that's very high in protein. It may also be high in fats. We see that, for example, the Atkins diet. The other risk, though, is that if you're consuming that much animal products and you're not consuming enough of all the other really helpful dietary sources of fiber, and vitamins, and minerals, like fruits and vegetables and whole grains, those are also really important for our diets and nutrients.

    Do Diets Actually Work?

     

    Dr. Jones: So, let's talk about Princess Kate and the Dukan diet. So there's this diet, the Dukan diet. You might know of this. It's very popular in some circles. Well, it's a periodic fasting.

    Kary: Oh, is it intermittent fasting?

    Dr. Jones: It's an intermittent fasting. That's now become quite popular.

    Kary: Absolutely.

    Dr. Jones: And that actually makes sense to me based on how we evolved to eat. We evolved, I think, not having a refrigerator full of yummies that we could eat on every couple of hours. We might have had things that we ate every couple of hours, but we had lots of time and we didn't have food.

    Kary: I will propose sort of another vantage point of that, which is metabolically there are some advantages to the intermittent fasting approach. Now, keep in mind, intermittent fasting is a catchall phrase. There are so many different ways to approach that. So, it could be alternate day fasting. It could be limited hour fasting, so eating for 8 hours a day, fasting for 16 hours. So there are lots of different iterations of it. And yes, evolutionarily, our bodies have evolved to go through periods of time where they didn't have food.

    But here's where my bias as an eating disorder dietitian comes in. So, what happens, though, when we don't have food?

    Dr. Jones: You mean other than I get hangry and I get pretty cranky?

    Kary: Right. And then from an evolutionary standpoint, our bodies have evolved to prompt us to think about food. That sort of concept of deprivation can really result in the opposite end of the spectrum, of thinking about it all the time and seeking it out and can result in bingeing.

    So, from sort of a medical and metabolic standpoint, it can work. And for some people, it's very sustainable. They don't experience any of these sort of increased thoughts and fixations on food. But for some individuals, they find that restriction of intermittent fasting can really exacerbate or worsen one's relationship with food and can prompt some unhealthy thoughts as well.

    Dr. Jones: That's brilliant. That just leads into my next thought, and that is what is the best diet for weight loss? I think that people have different attitudes about food and the best weight loss diet. What would you say is the best weight loss diet? And then I'll tell you what I think is an OB/GYN.

    Kary: I love this conversation. So, more and more, we're learning diets don't work in terms of long-term studies of how effective they are. Now, short-term, three, six months, people may lose weight. Ninety percent to 95% of individuals gain the weight back. Sixty percent of those individuals will gain even more weight back. Long-term, now. We're talking three, five, or more years out. So, that's the challenge.

    And sort of the way that I look at it as a whole thought of going onto a diet is that eventually we're going to go off of a diet. And so, if what we're doing is something that is viewed to be temporary . . . even though there's sort of this wellness culture that now is putting everything as a lifestyle. But cutting out so many food groups like the ketogenic diet, for very few people, that's actually a lifestyle, and it really is more of a diet. Then when they go off of that approach, they then resume their previous dietary habits.

    Now, I've met a handful of individuals who have tried the ketogenic diet. They have found it to be sustainable for them, and for them, it works. They're a couple years into this approach, and for them, it works. But for many people, I find that they go on to it, they then eventually go off of it because what do you do for social situations? What do you do if you're raising kids and you're in a family context? And then that can sometimes result in bingeing and other unhelpful dietary consequences of that.

    So, what's the best diet? I really have come back to sort of my catchphrase . . . not my catchphrase. I am certainly not going to claim credit for this. But balance/moderation/variety as an approach to food. I really like Michael Pollan's tagline of "Eat foods, mostly plants, not too much," and really just focusing on increasing the healthful components of our diet, decreasing some of the what I call foreign substances, foods that our bodies are not used to consuming, so the more processed foods.

    Just trying to, as much as we can, eat more naturally based foods, but also acknowledging lifestyle doesn't always allow for that. So, non-judgmentally, allowing ourselves convenience when needed.

    But really balance, variety, and moderation. It's not very sexy, it's not very exciting, but it really is how we can sustain a helpful relationship with food and try to sustain our health.

    Dr. Jones: I tell people that if you read the contents of what you're eating . . . so if you're buying something that's been processed, that's been packaged, they have to tell you what's in it. And if you can't pronounce it . . .

    Kary: I know.

    Dr. Jones: . . . that's not a good sign. I understand because you're out and you don't always get a chance to see what was in the food that was prepared for you, but in general, trying to eat as close as you can to things as they came out of the ground would be helpful.

    Kary: Yes. And I always say to someone, "Start where you're at. How many fruits and vegetables are you eating now? Can you add in an extra serving every day? How often are you eating fish? Could you try and work up to once a week?" And so, it's just step-wise changes that we can make that will still be meaningful and significant.

    Food Do's and Don'ts

     

    Dr. Jones: So, help me here a little bit. What were the food dos and don'ts that you grew up with? So you look to me like me. You look like you're an Anglo-Saxon, probably Scottish/Irish/German background, but maybe you've been in this country for five generations. So, tell me about what your food styles were in your family of origin.

    Kary: Sure. So, my parents both worked full time. And so, for us, there was less of a sort of traditional food pattern that my parents were carrying on, and it was more getting food on the table. We had a lot of tater tots, and food from a can, Stouffer's, mac and cheese, Kraft macaroni and cheese, hotdogs, French fries.

    Dr. Jones: Wow.

    Kary: Very few vegetables, very few fruits. My mom didn't like fruits or vegetables, and therefore, neither did we. And then it wasn't until I became a high school and then college athlete that I started to pay more attention to my food and how that made me feel and how that impacted my performance. And so, that was sort of my gateway into sport nutrition.

    Dr. Jones: What was your sport?

    Kary: I was a rower in high school and college.

    Dr. Jones: Whoa. I haven't seen you stand up yet to see how tall you were.

    Kary: No, I was a lightweight rower.

    Dr. Jones: Oh, yeah. Because you don't look like the rower . . .

    Kary: I'm not six feet tall.

    Dr. Jones: You don't look like a big rower.

    Kary: Nope. I was a lightweight rower, and so we had to be very careful with what we were eating because we had to make weight.

    Dr. Jones: You probably have more calories per unit of time than any other sport except maybe cross-country skiing.

    Kary: Yes. Exactly.

    Dr. Jones: It's huge output.

    Kary: But we also had, because of the weight emphasis . . . and it was a group average. I rowed with seven other rowers, and we had to make an average weight. So, even if one of us was at the right weight, we all had to lose weight to make the boat average. There was sort of that tricky dynamic with that.

    Dr. Jones: Could that lead to eating disorders?

    Kary: Well, that was why I initially went to do a Master's in sports psychology. I wanted to understand what were some of the differentiating factors between athletes who would engage in these pathological behaviors and go on to develop an eating disorder versus individuals who would engage in these behaviors for their sport, but then after out of season, they'd go on to resume very healthy relationships with food. So, what were those differentiating features?

    Dr. Jones: There are some sports that require the body to look a certain way. And when I think of the anorexic patients, patients with eating disorders that I saw . . . because as a reproductive endocrinologist, they'd come to me because they didn't have periods. They were dancers, some distance runners, and of course, gymnasts because they were body shamed . . .

    Kary: Absolutely.

    Dr. Jones: . . . that they had to be a certain size to perform.

    Kary: Yes. So, that was sort of my initial entry into food. And then now, as a mother of two little girls and as someone who does specialize in the treatment of eating disorders, I am very conscientious 100% of the time of how can I help to cultivate a healthy, balanced relationship with food with my girls.

    That's probably one of the biggest reasons why I'll never do a fad diet myself, because I personally don't want my daughters growing up with a mother who says, "Oh, bread is bad," or, "This is bad."

    • In our house, we have everyday foods, so the foods like fruits, and vegetables, and proteins, and dairy, and healthy fats. Those are our everyday foods. And then we have our sometimes foods, which will be the sweets, and treats, and snacks.
    • Instead of saying a food is good or bad and moralizing it . . . it's not that the apple is morally good and the chocolate cake is morally bad. The chocolate cake can be just as good for us sometimes as the apple is. And so, it's just recognizing that we have our everyday foods and then we have our sometimes foods and try not to moralize it. And that's what we try and do in our house.

    Dr. Jones: My mother was a dental hygienist, and she went to the Tufts Dental School for Dental Hygiene. And she had a ton of nutrition because Tufts was a big center for nutrition. So, we had breakfast, lunch, and dinner. She's the person who when she made a sandwich with peanut butter and jelly, she stuck cottage cheese in there, which we thought was kind of . . . We were used to it, but our other friends . . . And the filling had to be more than the bread, whether it was tuna or whatever. And dinner always had two veg, protein.

    Kary: That's awesome.

    Dr. Jones: I mean, she was religious about it. So, if my dinner didn't have two veg, then the plate looked weird.

    Kary: My girls know. They're 6 and 8, and they know if they're going to make their own lunch.

    • For example, they need to have a protein source, they need to have a whole grain source, and they need to have a fruit or a vegetable, and usually both.
    • And then the rule in our house is . . . and I'm not a short order cook, right? So, I don't cook one thing for my husband and I, and something different for my girls. I cook one meal, and they have to have one bite of everything. And then if they don't like it, then they can go make themselves some peanut butter toast, a neutral food.

    Dr. Jones: Well, it's hard to do the right thing, but the good news is there are so many ways to do the right thing. There's no one perfect . . .

    Kary: Yes, there's no one right way.

    Dr. Jones: Right. I think the fabulous thing about living in a multicultural society is how many fabulous flavors we have. But actually looking at the way the grandmothers of our multicultural societies cook, whether it's Indian, or whether it's Middle Eastern, or whether it's Mexican, or whether it's . . .

    Kary: Asian.

    Dr. Jones: . . . Asian, or if it's Native American, you take a look at the way the grandmothers cook, that gives us a view of probably a healthier way to eat.

    Kary: Absolutely. They are preparing foods that are minimally processed, lots of chopping and cutting up of vegetables as a good base, and whole grains, and really sticking to foods that have been around for thousands of years.

    Dr. Jones: Well, that's my pitch for keeping grandmothers healthy.

    Our Lives are Marked by the Food We Share

    So, thanks for joining us. And remember that as we're thinking about every holiday from spring, summer, fall, and winter, it's marked by the food that we share. This is so much part of the social domain, the emotional domain, the physical domain of course, the financial domain for some, and the spiritual domain.

    We're grateful that you joined us, and join us again so that we can carry on our thoughts about the seven domains of women's lives.

    We're going to leave you with a little Haiku.

     

    Food is personal
    You don't like stuffing or sprouts?
    Hey, don't yuck my yum

     

    For those of you who have no idea, the last line of that Haiku, I was driving along the road and I heard it on the news. Someone was talking about food and how some people like some food and some people say, "Oh, that's yucky." And then they said, "Hey, don't yuck my yum." And that's exactly what it is when people say, "Ew, that's yucky," and you think it's yummy. I don't want someone to yuck my yum. I don't want someone to diss my food. So, there you go. Don't yuck my yum.

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    Producer: Chloé Nguyen

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