Last week I went to a seminar on nutrition in America by Eileen Keating. I learned numerous interesting facts regarding the history of nutrition in the United States. For instance, I learned that milk was considered the healthiest, most nutritious food a person could consume. Families bought gallons of milk and drank it voraciously. Additionally, I learned that housekeeping was considered a profession and women went to school to take classes on cooking, biology, chemistry, nutrition, etc. in order to learn how to feed their families properly. It is difficult to imagine a world where women go to school to become housewives and no one knows what vitamins are. However, this talk helped me acquire a new perspective on nutrition in America, showing me that these drastic differences in nutritional knowledge occurred only a few years ago.

The great impact this talk made on me derived from my realization of the rapidly changing nature of nutritional intelligence. Just several years ago people thought milk and cereal were the most nutritious breakfast one could eat, and now there are a host of dairy-free people, gluten-free people, and die-hard vegans out there claiming the opposite is true. I have heard so many different theories on what the healthiest diet is. Now it seems that everyone is a protein and lean meats cheerleader. When I went vegetarian for a year, everyone asked me: “but where do you get your protein?” I am curious to see how our conceptions of nutrition will change in the future. For now, I have to thank Eileen for inspiring me to think about food in a different way.