Nutrition Made Clear(Audio CD)

Course Description

Making smart eating choices is essential to living a healthy, happy, and successful life. Yet all too often, we’re exposed to information and techniques that promise quick and easy results but can be harmful to your overall health: crash diets, experimental medications, ever-changing studies on what you should eat more or less of, and more. It can be confusing to dig through the mass of hype, myth, and misconceptions about good nutrition habits. So in the face of potentially misleading information and aids, where can you find the key to nutritional success?

The answer: in understanding the concepts, practices, and science behind good nutrition. Once you master the intricate—and undeniably captivating—interaction between what you eat and its effect on your body and mind, you unlock a powerful and scientifically proven tool to use in the quest for maintaining or improving your personal health.

Nutrition Made Clear is your opportunity to finally sort through nutrition misconceptions and replace them with hard science you can understand. In 36 in-depth lectures taught by dietitian and award-winning Professor Roberta H. Anding, you explore the fundamentals of good nutrition and get a practical and personal guide to applying these fundamentals to your unique lifestyle. Designed to appeal to anyone at any age, this course is an invaluable source of medically backed, statistically proven information about the guidelines for healthy eating and living.

As scientific knowledge and technology have rapidly advanced, we now know that everything you eat and drink has an effect on your mind and body. The essential elements and nutrients contained in food help you in a host of ways, including:

• strengthening your immune system,
• optimizing the function of your brain,
• protecting you from illness and disease,
• and much more.

Because of this invaluable knowledge, you now have the ability to achieve lasting personal health and wellness—more so than at any point in history. By eating right, increasing your physical activity, reducing the risk of chronic illness through wise personal choices, and more, you can stay healthy and active throughout the majority of your life.

Nutrition is an applied science, which means that its power lies not just in grasping the concepts behind it, but in applying those concepts to daily living. In the organized lectures of Nutrition Made Clear, you

• discover the relatively recent history of nutrition science;
• learn where to find authoritative—and how to avoid unsafe—nutrition information
• master the science behind digestion, protein, carbohydrates, fats, vitamins and minerals, calories, fiber, and other concepts;
• uncover where you can find nutrients in the foods you eat and the distinct role they play in good health;
• recognize what your personal daily requirements of each nutrient should be, examine what happens when you get too little—or too much—of a nutrient in your diet; and
• find out how smarter nutritional choices can radically reduce your risk of developing serious health issues such as diabetes, obesity, cancer, and digestive disorders

Professor Anding also brings nutrition into your own life and home, with lectures that teach you how to make wise eating choices a daily part of your life and how to ensure lasting health. You learn

• how to correctly read a food label to make sure you’re getting the nutrients you need,
• how to build your own distinct exercise regimen
• how to safely integrate herbal therapies and remedies into your diet, and
• how to recognize when you should eat organic foods instead of conventional foods.

Nutrition on a Personal Level

Every lecture of Nutrition Made Clear starts with one of Professor Anding’s personal anecdotes from more than 25 years of experience as a practicing dietitian. After detailing the science behind the particular topic, she concludes each lecture with a brief Frequently Asked Questions section, in which she addresses practical questions with important bearings on your everyday life, such as:

• Is drinking tea in the morning better for you than drinking coffee?
• Which fiber-rich foods can you choose when you’re eating in a restaurant?
• Does taking a Vitamin C supplement affect other medications or supplements you might be taking
• Do herbal therapies used to treat medical issues actually work?

Similarly, the course concludes with an entire lecture devoted to answering questions about good nutrition you’ve always wanted to know but didn’t know where to find the answers. Or whom to ask.

Even as Professor Anding details the science behind healthy eating and exercise habits, she always makes each lecture of Nutrition Made Clear both practical and personal. As you learn about calories, carbohydrates, and more, you frequently discover a wealth of invaluable—and sometimes even surprising—tips you can easily apply to your own eating habits, including these:

• Drink your cereal milk: Many of us discard the milk at the bottom of our cereal bowls. However, since many important vitamins and minerals are sprayed on cereal, you miss out on essential nutrients washed off by the milk when you do so.
• Control your calories: Contrary to popular belief, it is calorie counting and not dieting that is the lifelong solution to losing weight—and maintaining that loss.
• Watch out for “the shine”: When eating out, watch out for salads, pastas, meats, and other dishes that appear to “shine.” This usually means the food contains extra—and unnecessary—fats and oils.
• Pay attention to portion size: When reading nutrition labels, make sure to do so with portion sizes in mind, as what may appear to be low in calories may have an incredibly small serving size.

Professor Anding also teaches you how to calculate your own dietary needs, how to create your own nutrition and exercise plans, how to recognize that a product or service is really a health fraud, and more.

What makes Nutrition Made Clear so unique is that it recognizes just how personal your own nutritional needs can be, and it outlines direct steps to show you how to customize the lessons you learn in these lectures to your lifestyle. This is due in great part to Professor Anding’s wealth of experience as a health educator both inside and outside the academic world.

For more than 25 years, she has educated adults of all ages about the merits of good nutrition in her role as teacher and lecturer at both the Baylor College of Medicine and Rice University. In addition, outside of a university setting, Professor Anding is a registered dietitian in Texas, a registered dietitian with the American Dietetic Association, a certified diabetes educator, a certified specialist in sports dietetics, and the dietitian for the Houston Texans NFL franchise.

Her research and teaching is continually focused on finding ways to improve the health and well-being of Americans, and it is this passion that forms the core of this fascinating course. Crafted with the needs of individual people in mind, Nutrition Made Clear is both a fascinating learning experience and the perfect investment in your personal health—one that will educate you, motivate you, and reward you for the rest of your life.

About Your Professor

Professor Roberta H. Anding is a registered dietitian and Director of Sports Nutrition and a clinical dietitian at Baylor College of Medicine and Texas Children’s Hospital. She also teaches and lectures in the Baylor College of Medicine’s Department of Pediatrics, Section of Adolescent Medicine and Sports Medicine, and in the Department of Kinesiology at Rice University. She received her bachelor’s degree in Dietetics and her master’s degree in Nutrition from Louisiana State University. Throughout her prolific career, Professor Anding has received numerous awards and accolades, including the Texas Distinguished Dietitian Award, the Texas Dietetic Association Media Award, the John P. McGovern Outstanding Teacher of the Year Award from the University of Houston School of Nursing, and the Houston Area Dietetic Association’s Texas Distinguished Dietitian of the Year award several years running. She has also published work in medical publications, including Pediatrics, the Journal of Adolescent Health, and Critical Care Nursing.