Presentation Ideas from Subscribers

Shauna Schultz, RD, conducts a fun walking contest to get employees moving. Shauna and her colleagues choose a fun yet far place for employees of each of their clinics to walk to, such as New York, Mexico, etc. The number of miles will be converted to steps so the distance can be tracked by step counters. Prizes will be awarded to those who walk to their destination, and a theme party will be thrown at the end of the month. For example a Fiesta Party is great for walking to Mexico. They keep the staff motivated by keeping a colorful display of progress on large poster boards or banners. Motivating messages are displayed on the bulletin boards each week and everyone is able to track the progress of the other clinics, too!Shauna and her staff also hold Nutrition Olympics for children (this could work for adults, too) to promote fruits and vegetables and tie in eating healthfully with fun. The Olympics are held on one day at each clinic with prizes and promotional items. They stock stations with facts and goodies. For example: the melon dumbells will have facts about different kinds of melons and also include taste testing, melon shaped toys, or a coloring station.Katie Tullio, MS, RD, LDN, and the dietitians at Wayne Memorial Hospital in Honesdale, Pa., wanted to share their education ideas:

1. Set up a website where employees and patients can go to ask a question or get some advice about their diets.
2. Develop a hospital or company cookbook. All employees submit a favorite healthful recipe to be included in the cookbook.
3. “Lunch and Learn” is a lecture for all employes on a nutrition-related topic during lunch hour. Lunch would be provided. For instance, a talk on soy would include dishes made with soy products.

Mary Sikora-Petersen, RD, and the dietitians at St. Luke’s in Duluth, Minn., developed a display for their cafeteria that provided information on low-carb diets. They included:

• Myths and truths about low-carb diets (providing real data from research compared to misinformation often portrayed in the media).
• Comparisons of a low-carb versus a healthful diet by showing pictures of sample meals and a graph of the nutrition breakdown for these meals. The low-carb paper plate has a huge piece of meat and a small amount of vegetables. The healthful plate has a variety of tasty-looking foods such as fish, pasta salad, fruit, dessert and rice. They cut foods out of magazines and taped them onto paper plates.
• 2 handouts:1. A list of recommended weight loss books and Web sites.2. The CFFH handout entitled “10 Risks of Low-Carb Diets.”
• Q&A – They also invited people to write questions or comments on the display and the dietitians posted these questions along with their responses. As part of their low-carb research, one of the dietitians actually went on the Atkins diet. She was able to stay on it for only two weeks and made comments accordingly.
• “Position Statement: Dietitians at St. Luke’s do not recommend the use of low-carbohydrate diets (less than 100 grams of carbohydrate per day). This position is based on the research showing low-carbohydrate diets are not effective for long-term weight loss, increase the risk of heart problems, and do not include all the nutrients required for a healthy life. Dietitians at St. Luke’s do recommend a diet that includes foods from several food groups that is low enough in calories to produce weight loss.”