Second Well Session on Nutrition – August 12, 2025
STREAMING COPY IN PREPARATION — RECORDING AVAILABLE FROM THE ORIGINAL SOURCE
Second Well Session on Nutrition – August 12, 2025
This was the second well session, focused on nutrition, led by Jacqueline Fedor, a registered dietitian with Nutrition Counseling of New England and a classically trained chef. The session provided practical strategies for meal planning, healthy eating, and the concept of volumetrics. The meeting was recorded for staff unable to attend.
Public Comments & Testimony
- An attendee asked about diet sodas. Jacqueline responded that while occasional consumption may not be harmful, regular intake of artificial sweeteners like sucralose, aspartame, and acesulfame potassium can be harmful. She recommended moderation.
- Another attendee asked about stevia. Jacqueline explained that stevia is a more natural sweetener but still processed; occasional use is safer than artificial sweeteners, but frequent consumption of many stevia-sweetened foods is not ideal.
- A question about preferred cooking oils: Jacqueline recommended extra virgin olive oil for most cooking, and avocado oil for high-heat applications. She advised avoiding oils that smoke.
- An attendee asked about trans fats. Jacqueline stated that man-made trans fats (hydrogenated oils) are extremely dangerous and should be avoided entirely. She advised checking ingredient lists for "hydrogenated" and avoiding those products.
- A final question about organic foods: Jacqueline noted that for processed packaged foods, organic often indicates no trans fats or high fructose corn syrup. For fruits and vegetables, she recommended the Environmental Working Group's "Dirty Dozen" list to decide which produce to buy organic.
Discussion Items
- Meal Planning: Jacqueline emphasized reducing impulsive decisions by having a simple plan (e.g., a weekly meal planning worksheet or notes app). She suggested keeping breakfast and lunch simple with 2–3 rotating options, and planning dinners with a mix of new recipes and family favorites.
- Building a Balanced Plate: She introduced a visual of a menu stairs to success, with the majority of the diet coming from fruits, vegetables, and lean proteins, followed by starches, healthy fats, grains, dairy, and occasional treats. She advocated an "all foods fit" mentality.
- Meal Prep Ideas: Batch cooking grains, proteins, and hard-boiled eggs can save time. She shared examples of easy slow cooker meals (e.g., chicken with salsa, barbecue pulled pork, Italian chicken legs, steak fajitas).
- Breakfast Ideas: Eggs prepared various ways, sweet potato hash, overnight oats, yogurt parfaits (using Greek or skyr yogurt), and protein shakes/smoothies.
- Lunch Ideas: Leftovers, salads with lots of toppings, soups (she will share a "soup formula"), sandwiches (choose sprouted grain or 100% whole wheat bread), and bento boxes/adult lunchables.
- Dinner Ideas: Stir-fries (quick cooking), meat sauce/bolognese (using food processor to mince veggies), pasta alternatives (e.g., Banza or Gorilla protein pasta), tacos (assembly meal), and slow cooker recipes with 5 ingredients or less.
- Snack Ideas: Keep snacks small and simple (fruit, cheese, nuts, olives, protein balls). She recommended Kind bars, Lara bars, jerky, roasted chickpeas, and individual guacamole/peanut butter/hummus servings.
- Volumetrics: Jacqueline explained Barbara Rolls' concept that people eat a consistent weight of food per day (women ~3 lbs, men ~5 lbs). Low energy density foods (high water, fiber, air) allow larger portions for fewer calories. She compared 16 Wheat Thins (140 calories, ~40 g) vs. 3 cups of sliced strawberries (140 calories, ~400 g). She also showed examples: 1 cup raisins (500 cal), 1 cup grapes (60 cal), 1 cup plain popcorn (30 cal), 1 cup M&Ms (1020 cal), 1 cup sunflower seeds (850 cal). The goal is to increase low-energy-density foods and be mindful of high-energy-density foods.
Key Outcomes
- No formal votes or decisions were taken. The session was purely educational.
- Attendees received actionable tips for meal planning, meal prep, and healthier snacking.
- Jacqueline Fedor offered her email and website for follow-up questions and one-on-one counseling.
- The slide deck and recording will be shared with staff.
Meeting Transcript
Alright, we're gonna actually get started just for the sake of time. I wanna be able to get through the presentation and have time for questions, which I think are where we often learn a lot with those questions. It can take us into different avenues of the materials that we've covered, which gives us that added bonus material, which is great. So thank you for coming today. This is our second well session, and it's focused on nutrition, which I think as we all gear up to get back on routines with children or just schedules having to get out a little earlier so you don't get caught behind the bus, which will be me soon. So this hopefully will give us some tools to put in our toolbox around healthy snacking, um, ways to set meals and so forth to help us with that real life nutrition, which is critical. So today we have Jacqueline Fedor with us. She's a registered dietitian with Nutrition Counseling of New England. Welcome, Jacqueline to Nashua. I'm glad to have you. And one of the housekeeping things that I just wanna mention, this is being recorded for all of those staff that are not able to get here live. So if you have a question, just put your hand up, and what I'll do is I'll run the mic over to you and we'll get the question answered that way, just so that everyone has all the same information and that we're not missing anything. So all right, I'll turn it over to you. Hi everyone. Um, like Christy said, my name is Jacqueline. I've been a uh dietitian in New Hampshire and Massachusetts, practicing for 12 years. I'm also a classically trained chef. I went to Johnson Wales, so food is kind of like my whole world, pretty much. I'm glad you guys have snacks because we're gonna talk a lot about food, and I'm hopefully my goal is to leave you with some inspiration. Leave here with like, oh, that sounds good. I think I wanna make that for dinner this week, and that snack sounds good, and all of that, okay. Um, if you have any questions, like Christy said, just let us know and we'll get them answered. So, first we're gonna start talking about meal planning. Does anyone here do any type of meal planning? Couple, good. I say anything from an organized grocery list before you go to the grocery store to full-blown cooking everything on Sunday, putting it in color-coded containers and putting it in your fridge and make it look all nice, and anything in between. That's all meal planning, okay. I have worked with thousands and thousands of people, and I just know from experience the cooking all day in the color-coded containers just doesn't work for a lot of people. If I had a dollar for every time someone said to me that the leftovers don't sound good on Wednesday, I I say, like, I know they wouldn't sound good to me either. So when I talk about meal planning, don't feel like, oh, I can't do this, I don't want to do it, I don't want to waste my Sunday. That's not the kind of talking about. What I think is beneficial is having some sort of plan, and whether that happens on Sunday or on Wednesday or on Friday or whatever works for you, but having some organization through your week, answering the questions, what am I going to eat? And where is that going to come from? Okay, so that's kind of like my point of view when it comes to meal planning. And this is something that you know, of course, I love and I do myself, and I'm gonna tell you exactly how I do it for my family of five. So, why is it important to at least plan something? It is really important to reduce the amount of decisions you have to make after work because after work, do you have the most amount of energy, will power, and motivation? No. If someone after 3 p.m. asks me what's for dinner, my immediate response is anger. Like, why are you asking me? Even though that is my responsibility. But it's just the end of the day, we don't want to make those decisions. So whether you're cooking everything from start to finish every weeknight or not, because you're using some leftovers or some takeout, having a plan in place is going to eliminate impulsive decisions, and that's what we want. What is an impulsive decision look like on the on a weeknight for most people? It's walking in the door, opening up the fridge, saying, Yeah, I don't know, and then going to the pantry and getting weekends, right? Like that's an impulsive decision. I'm hungry now, and I don't know what to cook for the full meal, so I'm gonna get a snack. Does that resonate with anyone? Like have you felt that before?
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