It’s Always a Fun Day at Maryland Day!

By Joyce L. Hornick, Dietetic Intern

 

This past Saturday, April 28 was Maryland Day at the University of Maryland, College Park. If you’re not familiar with Maryland Day, it’s when the college has an open house and invites anyone and everyone. There’s fun for kids, students, parents, really anyone of any age. All of the departments  and clubs host activity booths to show off what they do. The Engineering department shows off fun things for kids like blowing giant smoke rings from a large drum and powering light bulbs by pedaling a bike. The Languages department has a booth where you can write your name in different world languages. Dining Services does cooking demonstrations all day at Hornbake Plaza. Even celebrities like UMD Alumni Joy Bauer, MS, RD, the Dietitian for the Today Show, came to help with a cooking demonstration. And, the School of Agriculture and Natural Resources, which includes the Nutrition and Food Science department takes over the area around the Animal Sciences building and renames it Ag Alley. Besides the chance to get free campus-made ice cream, you can learn about terrapins, insects, native plants, and my favorite, nutrition!

The Food and Nutrition Information Center (FNIC) had a booth with several MyPlate activities. This was where I got to play. Kids of all ages could show how they can make a healthy meal using very colorful static cling pictures. If they didn’t want to do that, they could use crayons and markers to draw their food on a paper plate. Another favorite was the scratch-n-sniff cards, where you tried to guess a food by its aroma. It was fun to see how many little kids knew their plate should be half fruits and vegetables! A lot of them also knew that chicken nuggets weren’t the healthiest choice for a protein. The best part about an event like this it makes learning about nutrition fun and without feeling like you are in school. 

 

At a nearby booth, some of my fellow interns got to help kids with a different MyPlate activity. Pictured are Lauren, Marion, and Angie, helping at the bean bag toss. The kids got to toss bean bags to match the bean bag color with the same color section of MyPlate. And other interns helped at the University of Maryland Extension booth helping people learn about the benefits and how-to’s of canning.

If you missed Maryland Day this year, you missed out on a lot of fun. Don’t worry, though, it will more than likely be back next year. The event has been going on for many years and it is one of the most anticipated events by everyone. Just keep your calendar open for a Saturday in late April!

Adventures in Foodservice

As a part of my foodservice rotation I had the opportunity to work in a kitchen at Riderwood Village, a retirement community. But this wasn’t just any kitchen; Renaissance Gardens is a specialty kitchen on the campus, catering to the needs of residents in assisted living facilities or skilled nursing facilities. On top of preparing regular meals, they also make meals for residents needing modified textures, such as mechanical ground or chopped, or pureed. My partner and I actually helped prepare a pureed meal consisting of collard greens, corn pudding, and baked chicken. I was surprised to learn the techniques used to obtain the perfect pureed consistency. To puree the chicken, we used broth, water, and cornstarch to make sure it wasn’t too watery or too dry. We even got to sample the pureed meal; it was actually pretty good! I was amazed at how similar the pureed chicken tasted to the regular version.

After sampling, Chef Willie, the Chef de Cuisine in the kitchen, explained to us the upcoming implementation of a puree molding program, which will use food molds to make the pureed foods look more like the original. They’re hopeful that making the pureed foods look more pleasing will increase resident satisfaction when consuming the meal. Chef Willie is extremely motivated and excited about the puree molding program, so I’m sure it’s going to be a hit!

I enjoyed my time in the “RG” kitchen and picked up some useful skills that are going to be very helpful when my partner and I host our theme meal, “Strawberry Patch Brunch,” for residents in the independent living facilities. Stay tuned for details and pictures from that!

A Baltimore Weekend – Sports, Cardiovascular, and Wellness Nutrition

This last weekend some of the University of Maryland College Park interns were given the opportunity to volunteer in exchange for free admission to the conference. I was so excited and have been looking forward to this conference for months. As some may know, I am very passionate and interested in sports nutrition so this was a perfect symposium for me to attend, not to mention that I am also a member of the SCAN DPG.

For those of you who are not familiar with SCAN, members of Sports, Cardiovascular, and Wellness Nutrition (SCAN) are “experts in nutrition for athletic performance, fitness and weight management, cardiovascular health, wellness, and in the prevention and treatment disordered eating and eating disorders.” 30 years ago SCAN started off to a slow start but grew exponentially with support every year and is now the largest DPG in the Academy with almost 7,000 members and just celebrated its 28^th national symposium. This year’s symposium was in Baltimore and brought out over 400 people from all over the country.

My top 2 favorite presentations were:

·       “Train to Manage Pain: How the Foods We Eat Can Optimize Exercise Recovery” by Leslie Bonci MPH, RD, CSSD, Kerry Keuhl, MD, DrPH, and Leanne Shear

·       “Fueling for Power and Strength” by Paul Goldberg, MS, RD, CSSD, CSCS

Top 5 Quotes of the weekend:

·       “To train with pain sends athletes down the drain” –Leslie Bonci

·       "Eat food with color in it, that's not a skittle" –Leslie Bonci

·       "The tsunami in the ocean is poor blood glucose control, diet and exercise are the prevention" –James Rippe

·       “Discipline is a muscle and it fatigues” –Dan Buettner

·       “You can't spell ‘nerd’ without RD” –Jon Vredenburg

My classmates and I tweeted throughout the whole symposium with the designated hashtag of #SCANsymposium. I think I logged over 85 tweets full of information from the presentations, quotes, pictures, and comments about exciting updates from SCAN. For more information on this follow me @ErikaWincheski or any of my classmates who also joined ( @SashaBaRD, @rccoury, @AngelaAFarris, and @JoyceLHornick).

I cannot wait until next year’s symposium in Chicago!