Hi my healthy friends! My name is Sarah, and I am a Sodexo dietetic intern at the Philadelphia campus. I am half way through my internship and completed my clinical rotations at Capital Health in Trenton, NJ. My opportunities have ranged from spending a few days in the Neonatal Infant Intensive Care Unit at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, to helping a school dietitian make dysphagia meals for students with special needs. My concentration, leadership, is the best of both worlds. I am learning how to become a more effective leader in the field of dietetics, while also expanding my interest in school food nutrition and policy. This concentration allows you to choose an elective you’re interested in while still learning how to apply leadership skills. Throughout these past couple weeks, I have been working on a survey that will help Sodexo’s efforts in schools, by interviewing state agencies about their regulations related to the Healthy Hunger Free Kids Act. This alone has given me a boost in confidence and leadership skills.
A special experience that I was a part of during this rotation was an important conference call with the National Dairy Council. The efforts of increasing the consumption of milk in schools is a difficult one with many other sugary juice drinks and sodas on the market. But as a future dietitian, I am very concerned about the importance of milk consumption in children, for calcium and vitamin D. Children are also still lacking the knowledge of where food and milk comes from, so the focus of our meeting was to come up with ways to educate children on dairy farms and the benefits of milk. Sitting in that meeting was very fulfilling, especially when I gave input on things I’ve done as a dietetics student to implement farm to fork.
One idea we came up with was printing barcodes on milk cartons so children can take a picture using an app with their smartphones to show exactly what farm their milk came from! Another was to create an easy-to-use, interactive website where children can click on a cow, all the way to the distillery machines to see how milk is transported to grocery stores. It was amazing to see who was all involved; from school directors, to milk distilleries and farmers, to Sodexo dietetic interns!
Thanks for reading! And good luck on your dietetic journey!
One idea we came up with was printing barcodes on milk cartons so children can take a picture using an app with their smartphones to show exactly what farm their milk came from! Another was to create an easy-to-use, interactive website where children can click on a cow, all the way to the distillery machines to see how milk is transported to grocery stores. It was amazing to see who was all involved; from school directors, to milk distilleries and farmers, to Sodexo dietetic interns!
Thanks for reading! And good luck on your dietetic journey!
