November Summary

The first question was basic and just addressed whether or not they agreed with the hypothesis of that article that women tend to be overweight because they have that maternal instinct to feed their children over themselves. Many agreed that this could be one of the problems, but many pointed that there may be many more underlying causes. Some of the other causes that the class believes that women were more overweight were that women are more emotionally tied to food and that the studies mainly sampled women over men. Suggestions were made that they believed they article needed to do further research in order to truly come to this conclusion. I agree with the majority of the class in that there does need to be more research in this area to determine if this prediction is completely accurate!

The second question addressed the current problem with the food stamp program known as the “food stamp cycle” and how a practicing RD could help solve this occurance. Providing no nutrition counseling to clients before they dispersing the food stamps was an issue that many in the class suggested needed to be changed within the program. The education that some recommended the food stamp program to enforce would be educating the client on how to stretch the food dollar. Also, another great suggestion would be restructuring the program to disperse the stamps on a weekly/biweekly basis rather than a monthly basis. Most of the class agreed that the articles suggestion of limiting access of “unhealthy” foods would not be the answer as this may send many users of food stamps into a binge of eating them since they are restricted from them. I think that many of these suggestions are great ideas on how to limit the cycle, and I too wonder why the governement cannot issue the stamps differently, especially since this problem is not just for some stamp users, but for most!

The third question addressed the point that a trend seen with food stamp users is the consumption of energy dense foods. Everyone generally agreed that if a counseling session took place it would be important to teach the client that energy dense foods usually are high in calories but not as high in important nutrients. The suggestion that many in the class agreed on would be to educate the clients on portion control and also on foods that are higher in nutrients. Other great ideas that the article does not mention that some in the class suggested for counseling would be to focus the families attention on how to preserve the food stamp money throughout the month first, instead of first tackling the articles suggestion of educating on energy dense foods. There was a great suggestion of possibly helping the client create a grocery bill, giving them (I think) a great visual of nurtient dense foods!

I really enjoyed the comments to these questions from the class. Most of the responses were exactly what I wanted to see as answers, and there were a few that made me think outside of the box on the food stamp program. I hope that everyone gained an better insight of the problems that may be occuring with the food stamp program. I know that I definitely have a greater knowledge base as to how I would address the problems of the program and ways that I would try to limit the amount of obesity seen with the food stamp clients!