What is Nutrition? : A New Experience, A New Outlook.

Source: blog.foodnetwork.com

            After spending the past few months interning at a collegiate level athletic training table I have seen an entirely unexpected side of sports nutrition. Until this point I have held certain ideals of what foods and styles of eating are nutritious or healthy. It’s not surprising, then, that I was quickly struck with the harsh reality that what college level athletes should eat and what they actually eat are often at opposite ends of my perceived nutritional spectrum. The first few days of my experience I watched in awe as dishes like mac and cheese and deep fried okra were passed to players amidst simplified signs providing generalized nutritional guidelines. How were we fueling athletic performance when every other bite for these players was so far from the “wholesome” and “clean” athletic dishes I had learned about and envisioned for so long? Why didn’t the menu consist more exclusively of items like baked seafood, steamed vegetables, and whole grains? In short, I was quickly met with the realization that players would simply never eat most of these foods voluntarily. Rather than push the athletes toward other (even worse) food choices, I learned our establishment simply worked to make food the athletes liked as best we could.

            As I spent week after week cringing at endless comfort foods flowing from our kitchen I began to grapple with the same persistent question: If the fare we produced at the training table seemingly threw nutrition to the wind what were the athletes getting out of their time here? Was it just another meal? Or was there some other real benefit I simply failed to see?

            My answer came not in a single moment of clarity as if with the lighting of a proverbial bulb, but rather gradually, throughout my experience as my perspective on the world of food and nutrition changed. Coming in to my internship I had a very narrow view of athletic cuisine: food was to be used nearly exclusively as fuel for performance. After all why risk missing any competitive benefit of eating the healthiest diet one can? With this mindset I must say I was quite disappointed to discover that the food I would be cooking for our athletes was far from my definition of “nutritious”. I began to look for a silver lining in our seemingly fundamentally flawed operation and took notice of the signs hanging throughout the dining room. Reading through them it dawned on me that while most of the information seemed commonsense and oversimplified to me, for someone that never studied in nutrition they could provide a very effective guide to the role of different foods and nutrients in an athlete’s body. I listened as players with plates full of barbeque ribs made a point to ask for vegetables because they “still needed a green level food [the color code for most nutritious] on their plate”. I began to see that while our small dining hall for college athletes wasn’t serving whole grains and lean seafood; we were providing something perhaps even more beneficial to our guests. Our athletes were learning, slowly but surely, the nutritional value of different foods and how they could affect their performance. I realized that fundamental concept of diet structure they learned here may especially help later in their career, as athletes need to become more vigil and protective of their bodies to keep up with increased training demands at an older age. Not only did the time in our small dining room help impart that basic understanding of nutrition upon our athletes, but also seemed to build a stronger sense of community between the teams. As they ate they laughed, shared, and worked on the part of a team that can’t be coached, they developed camaraderie.

As my time at my internship dwindled, I no longer saw fattening food being passed to indifferent athletes. Rather, I watched as these teams learned, ate, and built bonds beyond the playing field. From this I have certainly gained a new perspective and with it a new scope for this blog. Nutrition is personal, and therefore never good or bad, nutritious or un-nutritious definitively. Food, rather, is enjoyment, comfort, a tool for performance, and even a reward for a hard day’s work. As such, our diets can clearly affect us in many ways both physically and emotionally. It’s time we move forward from the strict lines of what’s “fattening” or not and toward a better understanding of the intimate interactions between food and our lives, health, and happiness.

Nutritional is personal; unique to our own goals and lifestyles. How does food impact your health and happiness?