© Georgeanne Little
Welcome to the next installment of our “More About Me” series. Today’s post is by Georgeanne Little, Registered Dietitian and Nutrition Therapist.
As a high school athlete I always knew the importance of nutrition and hydration and the role they played in sports. I always carried a large water bottle, ate snacks during most of my classes leading up to lunch, and of course the whole cross country team would have a pasta dinner at our coach’s house before our district race to make sure we had enough energy to perform our best.
Yet I wasn’t aware of just how complex the whole process was, or how fascinating nutrition could be. I remember when I first decided my major, in my senior year of high school, I’d never even heard of a dietitian.
When I wasn’t running or playing soccer you could often find me watching some new documentary, whether it was about electric cars, the cosmos, or health care in our country. I have a deep passion for science and it’s ever-evolving information. If someone were to ask about my favorite things to do, learning would be right at the top.
Even today, when I’m not working I’m often curled up on my couch watching the latest documentary on some kind of science or history. I’m so fascinated by new emerging information. I think that is the beauty of being a dietitian; we get to take complex things like metabolism and break them down into something better understood by all.
Nutrition includes many different areas of study from chemistry to biology and even statistics. Nutrition itself is the study of the effects of food components on the metabolism, health, performance, and disease resistance in human and animals. It also includes human behaviors related to food choice. This is an important aspect of our survival as individuals and as a species.
One of my favorite things about being a registered dietitian is our emphasis on science and evidence-based information. With nutrition being such a relatively new science there is so much that is still being uncovered today, and it can be easy to misinterpret the vast amount of data that is at our fingertips. That is where I can play a role for my clients, by being a beacon to help them navigate through the vast sea of nutrition information and applying it to their lives to make long-term healthy changes.