Dieticians class (2025) | Pat's Language Cabinet

There are many great chefs out there who share their experiences and knowledge. Another one of my favorites is the late Anthony Boudain, who travelled the world and explored local cuisines.

I personally do not like competitive cooking shows, or ones who do fancy things like tiny meals on spoons. I prefer learning about different food customs and ways of cooking that a non-professional can enjoy. In this respect, one of the most famous American chefs who was also on a mission to educate was Julia Child. You can watch her really old TV show on youtube too. Meryl Streep played her in a movie and her classic French Cuisine cook books are still available. Julia Child – Wikipedia

Isn’t is strange though that cooking shows are so popular in a day and age when so many people say they don’t cook?

Share your favorite cooking shows.

April 23 (This is our last meeting before we prepare our cooking session in May for August)

Last week we looked at some basic body vocabulary and went through some of the questions on the Nutrition Questionaire. (The questionaire itself is a treasure trove of vocabulary.)

Our next meeting is on the 14th of May. On this day we will discuss what you would like to do during our cooking session in August. We will also look at some cooking vocabulary.

Today, (after reviewing body vocabulary briefly – 2nd copy with quiz questions) we watched the video below and talked about the questions Sarah Greenfield, a certified (American) dietician goes through in her video. Before we watched, we tried to answer them beforehand ourselves. We also spoke about differences between countries.

What does a registered dietician do?
What’s the difference between a nutritionist and a dietician?
How do you become a dietician and how long does it take?
What skills to you need to be a dietician?
How can a dietician help you?
Should you see a dietician to lose weight?
What do dieticians wear?
What are some of the questions you can ask a dietician?
What do dieticians eat?
Are dieticians worth it?

A Dietitian Answers Commonly Googled Questions About Dietitians

Follow up: How your digestive system works

What do the following numbers below refer to?

1 – 2.7;
28,800;
10
30 to 40 m2
1.5
3
millions

Can you name the 10 organs that belong to the digestive system? How does the German ‘Darm’ translate into English?

Check our for further practice Free Anatomy Quiz – General Anatomy Facts – Quiz 1 Another example Free Anatomy Quiz – The Endocrine System, Physiology – Quiz 1

(3) 16 Little Food Pictograms Quiz if time allows (we did the body parts food pictograms, which was more difficult than this one)

9th of April

We spoke about some other diseases and ailments: Celiac disease, Crohn’s disease, gout, heartburn, and chronic fatique syndrom. We have not yet gone more deeply into the Nutrition Assessment Questionaire. We will do that on April 16th.

26th of March

We listened to Kimberly Wilson, a psychologist and nutritionist who also practices in London (like Dr Andrew Jenkinson). We watched The harmful legacy of poor nutrition. As Kimberly Wilson aims to address and reach a large audience, her videos are slow and clear and include some written captions. Watch The truth behind your favourite flavours in some of our next meetings.

We reviewed the vocabulary from last time (in written form) from the Sporcle on Dietary Terms. We have not yet done the Merriam Webster Medical terms quiz. If time left, we will review body vocabulary (copies of ultrasound image).

For one of our next meetings, I would like to give you some pages (2-7) from the questionaire below. We will work with it a little after our one week break (dietary consultation). After that we will start the ‘cooking phase’. We will watch some cooking shows and practice some related vocabulary.

Nutrition-Assesment-Questionaire (shorten for class)Download

19th March

I would like to watch Dan Buettner with you. He has also produced a Netflix mini series with the same topic: Live to 100, Secrets of the Blue Zones. I printed out the transcript that I would like you to read to minute 4:59.

If time allows, we will do one or two of the sporcles below.

Dan Buettner: How to live to be 100+ | TED Talk

NOTE: Someone asked about podcasts; here is an interesting one: ZOE Science & Nutrition Podcast

***

Januar 8^th was our first meeting. As always, we spent this session with getting to know each other and with getting an idea what this course will be like or about. @language-cabinet.de you find the course description on the upper part of the blog (in the dark section), where you also find this page and Resources and Recommendation for Dieticians (we took a brief look and started with a ‘body vocabulary’ related ‘sporcle’ at the end or our session).

We talked about some of the questions on the questionaire, first in little groups, then together. We will continue with that.

We also discussed the question why English is the language of science and useful to learn or improve. A lot of resources are written by experts in their fields, written for non-experts and well accessible. Some you find on my resources page. Secondly, English is the ‘default’ language known by many who might not speak German.

Since we have a long break in February, one of my main intentions for the first meetings is to show you some online things you can check out and do on your own. In our second stretch of meetings (in March), we will look at some of the literature and do some longer readings.

Questions that came up in our first meeting and that we continued collecting in our second meeting:

What are food related diseases?
Have they increased since World War II?
If the answer to the question above is yes, why would that be?
There seems to be so much information publicly available, is this helping people? If not, why not? If yes, how?
How can people decide which information on the internet can be trusted?
How has the food landscape changed over the last decades?
How have obesity rates changed, since when and where?
Is artificial sweetener harmful or not?
What are food and health related myths and how do we know?
How can dieticians help treat food related diseases?
What is your favorite food and do you remember what you ate yesterday?

Link to the sporcle we started last week: 16 Little Body Part Pictograms Quiz. (This one is actually a little too difficult – should have kept it for later session.)

We watched and talked about the TED Ed video about eating disorders in our second session. We will repeat it after our longer break, read the text and check vocabulary.

Why are eating disorders so hard to treat? – Anees Bahji | TED-Ed

In our third meeting, we read a page from Dr Andrew Jenkinson’s Why we eat (too much) where he describes his typical patient. We will continue with the text in our first meeting after the longer break, clarify comprehension and vocabulary and summarize the points he is making.

For further session(s):

Is it possible to lose weight fast? – Hei Man Chan | TED-Ed

More TED eds under Class for dietician students: Literature, fun stuff and further recommendations | Pat’s Language Cabinet

Vocabulary games:

Food sporcles: Foods that are White, Red, Green, Yellow, Orange, Brown, Pink, Blue/Purple

Diet and Nutrition Glossary Quiz – By hatefulmissy (also as paper copy for repetition – a little more challenging)

A Visit With The Word Doctor: Medical Terms Quiz

26th February

We continued with Andrew Jenkinson text (pages) from the chapter ‘My Typical Patient’. Afterwards you got together in groups to discuss what advice you would give this patient. A discussion came up about the role of calories as a concept in nutrition science. We will continue with this question and look at some dietary advice Andrew Jenkinson gives at the end of his book. Always note: The pages are taken from a whole book, so are limited in scope. In the end, this is an English class and the aim is to improve your language skills.

An interesting watch: Fat Fiction

A critic of this documentary accuses the researchers, doctors and scientists on this documentary of lying about weight loss on a low carb diet. He claims the documentary fails to acknowledge that the initial weight loss is in water. I didn’t know if that was true and checked a source on keto diets, as they are the most extreme when it comes to low carb. And they don’t ‘lie’ about the initial weight loss. It seems to be common knowledge that this happens on low carb or ketogenic diets in the beginning when people change their eating habits (How Much Water Weight Do You Lose on Keto? – Keto Science). Interesting is what happens in the long run and how many people have truly been helped in the clinics or practices of those featured in this documentary.

One other thing I find very important to point out: It is my impression that much dispute is around words. I believe many of the categories people fight over are too wide and not clearly defined. All the categories for macronutrients – fat, carbohydrates and protein – include many different kinds of foods, and what people refer to when they use these terms often remains foggy. A low carb diet, in my opinion, should be renamed ‘Natural Food Diet/No Refined Grains and Sugar’ – NFD/NRGS for short ;-). Vegetables – highly propagated in all diet recommendations, include carbohydrates. Grain carbs are a fairly recent food humans have included into their diets, so they are not necessarily the kind of substance human bodies evolved to digest in high quantities. Not to mention refined sugar. You can’t get more unnatural. I understand when some call sugar toxic.

In the wake of the 60ies’ vilification of saturated fat, the food industry created industrial fats – vegetable oils and margarines e.g. – to substitute natural fats found in animal foods like meat, dairy and eggs. These fats – called trans-fats – entered peoples diets in huge quantities, especially when they ate foods prepared outside their home, in restaurants, bistros etc., that use these kinds of fats to fry and deep fry extensively. Over the decades, fast food restaurants mushroomed, their portion sizes grew, sweet soft drinks were being consumed more and more and in vast quantities, and the creations of fast food cooks took on more and more disgustingly unhealthy forms (see first chapter in Giles Yeo’s Why Calories Don’t Count). The obesity epidemic took off full swing and keeps increasing, effecting more and more children as well.

Dr Andrew Jenkinson (Why we eat too much) blames much of this on the diet/heart-health hypothesis (initiated by Ancel Keyes in the 1960ies to become mainstream dogma in the following decades). The diet/heart-health hypothesis claims a link between natural saturated fat and heart disease. In the mean time, numerous studies have tried and failed to confirm this hypothesis (Saturated Fats and Health: A Reassessment and Proposal for Food-Based Recommendations).

Several things have come together over the last decades that have led to this disastrous health crisis we experience in societies that follow the so-called Western diet: unnatural industrial food productions, a drastically changed food environment created by the food industry, and a consequential change in eating habits. Andrew Jenkinson’s main mission is to encourage people to get back to a lost food culture in which we enjoy food and cooking. He strongly advises to stay away from industrial foods high in refined carbohydrates and sugar, including industrial vegetable oils, and to instead go back to natural fats like butter or cold-pressed olive oil and cook natural foods. He is aware of the difficulties people face who live in areas in which natural foods are not readily available (‘food desserts’) or who have developed a full-swing sugar addiction. But he encourages patients to give the proposed changes a try if possible, before conducting bariatric surgery in cases where all dietary interventions won’t work any more.

March 5th and 12th

After reading the chapter ‘My typical patient’ from Why we eat (too much), we watched Dr Jason Fung trying to explain why calorie restriction diets don’t work and calorie counting is useless. (As some did not find Jason Fung’s explanation convincing, listen to Dr Tim Spector.) After that, we read passages from Jenkinson’s book and tried to understand and summarize his dietary recommendations. Jenkinson does NOT recommend a specific diet. Even though he advises to rid your pantry (kitchen) of all refined grain and sugary foods, among them breads, cookies, cakes and all candy and sweets, his is not a ketogenic approach (which is why you find rice, potatoes and pasta salad among the things listed. Although he does advise against pasta in other sources as pasta belongs into the highly refined grains category. Maybe the pasta salad was just a slip ;-)).

Dr Jenkinson’s intention is to guide people back to enjoying natural food and cooking. He is aware of the challenge quitting sugar can mean for those who have developed an addiction and gives special guidance on this issue (a passage that was not included in my exerpts). He does not want people to restrict calories. He wants to get them off the insulin-sugar ‘roller-coaster’ ride. Therefore, foods that spike insulin levels to have them then drop fast are removed. The first goal is to level insulin and get back to a hormonal balance. In some cases, a dietary approach doesn’t work any longer, leptin resistance is too strong, the metabolic syndrom and the obesity too advanced. In such cases, Dr Andrew Jenkinson performs bariatric surgery. Correction: He is not American as falsely claimed in class. He is an English surgeon and practices in London.

Sources:

Jason Fung on youtube. Dr Fung has posted many videos on youtube. Some are presentations he gave at different institutions like universities, some have been made specifically for a broader audience. How Calories Are Different for Weight Loss (Science) | Jason Fung

The BIGGEST MISTAKES People Make When Trying To LOSE WEIGHT Dr. Jason Fung explains more in this interview.

Maybe watch Sarah Aamodt: ‘Why diets ususally don’t work (TED talk)

Note: We won’t be able to do everything, so maybe go to Class for dietician students: Literature, fun stuff and further recommendations and check out if there is anything you would prefer we do.

Remember: The passages we read are from books. They offer only little bits and pieces. They do not give a complete picture. For that you have to read the whole book 🙂.

***

When I started with this course in 2013, the director at the time – Claudia Schecker – gave me a study she asked me to read with my class: Guideline for the Management of Insulin Resistance, 2015. It was about the newest research in the treatment of diabetes 2 and insulin resistance that supported a low carb versus low fat dietary approach. (Carbs being defined as those foods high in refined carbohydrates that raise insulin levels, i.e. have a high glycemic load, not ‘carbs’ that have a high fiber content, like vegetables.) The findings of the study stood in opposition to the common approach to insulin resistance and diabetes that regarded diabetes as an irreversible disease that progresses and eventually leads to the necessary intake of insulin by those effected. We are now ten years later, more and more research supports this dietary approach, but age-old paradigms die slowly, especially when they have been passed on over generations and many industries profit from them. The text was quite challenging for the group, but we managed. You find it at Academia.edu | Welcome to Academia.edu. They ask you to sign up, but you don’t have to pay anything, unless you want premium access.