March is nutrition month

Editor’s note: This column is a monthly health feature from the folks at Leamington Area Family Health Team.

Reflecting on 2020, you may have noticed what felt good and nourishing was sometimes quite different from the normal or “healthy” eating you practiced in the past. Why did so many of us find joy and hope in baking homemade bread, growing vegetable gardens, and crafting our own versions of trendy internet recipes?

Food has and always will be more than the nutrients it contains. We can’t truly explore the impact diet has on our health without acknowledging the calm in a cup of tea, the smiles in an ice cream cone, the sense of safety in our grandmother’s soup or the rest in a summer barbeque.

As a registered dietitian, I am privileged each day to be invited to explore with you these dynamic relationships with food.

The relationship with food that reflects a lifetime of experiences, preferences, dislikes, memories, family recipes, financial freedoms and challenges, periods of illness, places lived and travelled, culture, beliefs, passions, struggles and aspirations.

In finding “your healthy,” it is my goal to approach and explore this relationship with curiosity rather than judgement, a mindset of gratitude over restriction, and ultimately, discover and inspire health within a framework that is uniquely and perfectly yours.

“Your healthy,” is not the same as your neighbour’s, your sister-in-law’s, or that of the celebrity you admire. Health does not look the same for all of us, and it may not look the same for you now as it did ten years ago.

Our health will continue to change with time, place, and season. But within each season of change, let’s focus on ‘more’ instead of less; more listening to and honouring our bodies’ preferences and needs, more teaching our little ones about the foods that nourished the generations before us, more trying new things, more seeking out pleasure and more eating together.

Finally, let’s continue to work toward “finding our healthy” at every age, in every season, at every body size, at every food skill level, while living with or without chronic disease, because “your healthy” deserves to be as unique as all of the other things that make you, you.

Citrusy Chicken Salad with Feta

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups (375 mL) Edamame, shelled

2 cups (500 mL) Cooked chicken shredded

1/4 cup (60 mL) Sundried tomatoes minced

2-3 Clementines peeled and separated into segments

2 tbsp (30 mL) olive oil

1/4 cup (60 mL) Orange juice

5 cups (1.25 L) assorted lettuce

1 cup (250 mL) Canadian feta diced

Freshly ground pepper, to taste

Directions:

1. Cook soybeans according to instructions on packaging. Drain and cool under running water.

2. In a large bowl, mix together all ingredients except lettuce. Adjust seasoning.

3. Add lettuce, toss and serve immediately.

Adapted from the Dietitians of Canada’s Nutrition Month materials.

Find more information about Nutrition Month at NutritionMonth2021.ca.