I hope this is the proper thread to ask. I know a young woman in her late 20’s, lives alone, works a long hard job. She doesn’t eat properly, a salad or ramen noodles is her main meal of the day. She has tried every vitamin and can’t keep any down, they make her ill. So she is deficient in vitamin B and D and probably everything else. She does like to eat ‘real’ food when she has the chance. Her neighbors invite her over as they grocery shop together and they cook plenty, and I take her out to eat frequently. She’s always been a sickly girl, with colds, flu, bronchitis, and a myriad of other ailments.
Is there some supplement in the health food store she can take? She knows its her own fault that she doesn’t eat right, but she comes home and has a little something and falls asleep, or does whatever 20-year olds get up to :rolleyes:.
But my advice is that this young woman should see a doctor for a thorough checkup and depending on the results of that, consult with a dietitian/nutritionist.
With salads and ramen she’s not getting protein. There are plenty of nutritionally balanced supplements like “Ensure” she could take that have the protein she needs.
She is almost certainly deficient in protein, probably iron and potassium, and likely calcium if she isn’t getting it from good dairy or vegetable sources. Supplementation is only going to do so much if you aren’t starting with a reasonably balanced diet of basic macronutrients to begin with, and if you don’t have the requisite carbohydrates and fats, absorption of “pure” protein and micronutrients from supplements may be low or negligable. You can’t make up a healthy diet out of supplements, and you’ll pay an arm and a leg trying compared to just buying and eating whole, unprocessed foods.
The correct solution is to eat a well balanced diet including good sources of reasonably lean protein (fish, chicken, or lean cuts) along with the right proption of healthy vegetable or animal fats (olive oil, avacado oil, fish oil or fatty fish like salmon), low glycemic index (GI) carbohydrates like brown rice or whole grains, and a good selection of fruits and leafy green vegetables. If the issue is that the young lady doesn’t have time, inclination, or skill to make healthy whole foods there are plenty of companies that will deliver kitted or complete meals to your house, and many restaurants will provide a weekly alottment of whole meals to be reheated as part of their normal catering service, often with a discount compared to eating in since they can prepare them all at once.
The recommendation for her to see a registered dietician is on point with the caveat that even RDs sometimes have very odd or outdated ideas about what comprises good nutrition, and in my experience many do not really understand basic nutritional biochemistry and so are just repeating what they’ve read or heard in school or elsewhere. (A nutritionist is not a professional certification and doesn’t guarantee any standard of education, and while there are fine nutritionists out there who may have good knowledge of actual nutrition, many are just flakes spouting pseudoscientific babble.) Really, the best thing is do educate herself (or yourself) by reading well-regarded books on nutrition; an easy start is Gary Taubes’ Good Calories, Bad Calories: Fats, Carbs, and the Controversial Science of Diet and Health, which strips away a lot of nonsense than has been promoted by the food industry about what foods are ‘healthy’ and cuts down to the basics of applied nutrition. I have a few quibbles with some of his claims but on the whole it is well grounded and an easy read. At the end of the day, provided that you are well-informed about what comprises a nutritious diet (and it is not hard to understand), you are the best person to determine what diet works for your health, fitness goals, and lifestyle.
Stranger, I really enjoy your posts on nutrition when I run across them. Thank you.
Salinqmind, is it that she can’t eat or she won’t put forth the effort to eat properly? I’m not sure a nutritionist is the way to go as she probably wouldn’t do what s/he tells her. Could she be clinically depressed?
Adding hard-boiled egg, tuna, salmon or some sort of preserved meat (chopped pork or turkey, ham…) to the salads and ramen would help. Or beans; chick peas and lentils are popular in salads but I’ve also seen red and pinto beans. All those are sources of proteins.
A lot of what I eat for lunch consists of one source of proteins (meat, beans) and either vegetables or a source of carbs. The description covers all sorts of stuff from spaghetti bolognese to stew to rice and beans, it’s a single dish/tupperware but can have a pretty decent nutritional value as far as “one pot cooking” goes, and it covers a lot of dishes which are pretty simple to make and to keep varied.
Yes to everything! (well, not really!) She can and does eat but is tired when she comes home and is basically too lazy. She has studied nutrition in college and knows what the basic building blocks of healthy eating consist of. She’s seen a doctor for one of her many ailments and they have given her lists of healthy foods with the vitamins she needs. And I do think there is some depression here. (Life not going the way she expected, money troubles, breakup with boyfriend, etc. 20-something angst.)
I tell her there are dozens of take-out restaurants and prepared food in grocery stores, it wouldn’t kill her to stop after work and pick something up instead of going home and crashing in front of a videogame and eating whatever.
The o.p. does say that the young lady in question “does like to eat ‘real’ food when she has the chance,” indicating that the issue it is not inclination against healthy food or a failure to recognize of the deficiency of her standard diet. I would guess that it is simply the perceived time and effort to prepare food, or perhaps a fear of cooking borne of never having been taught how to cook. The latter is understandable as cooking looks difficult and elaborate to the untrained, even though it is really a small collection of basic skills to produce healthy food, and learning to prepare single dish foods in under fifteen minutes is a skill anybody should have.
In terms of motivation, it should be pointed out that the modicum of time it takes to learn basic food preparation and making food is offset by the illness, general lassitude, and long term health impact of eating a nutritionally unbalanced diet. It is easy enough to spend an hour or two on Sunday preparing foods for lunch and dinner for the entire week, and if you are reasonably clever you can prepare different dishes in bulk and then mix and match to get variety; for instance, grilling up some chicken with a couple diffierent spice options; make up a cucumber/tomato vinegar salad; cut up some apples; prepare a pot of brown rice and some whole grain pasta; bake a large piece of salmon; and then chop up some onions, carrots, and broccoli for a quick grill or stir-fry. Get some yoghurt dip or hummus, and you can mix and match items from your fridge to have a different meal every night of the week, and healthy snacks to take to work instead of getting chips and soda from the vending machine. It’s not hard, doesn’t take any special skill, and you’ll feel better for it.
Also, it actually tastes better than junk food and fast food once you get past the craving for sugar and grease. And believe it or not, it will improve attitude and outlook, including chronic depression and malaise.
Sounds like she’s just depressed. I have a similar problem - I know exactly what to eat and am not even interested in eating junk, I just am not interested in preparing, eating and cleaning up after it all. And I don’t even have a particularly stressful job, I work from home where I have access to all the food I could want (which … is very little).
Luckilly it’s not affecting my health…possibly because I do take the time to exercise. And I do eat more than 1000 calories a day. Sometimes it is a struggle to come up with what to eat but the gnawing hunger helps me get stuff down.
But when you’re depressed, knowing what to eat and being told “oh you just simply do this, it’s fun!” is not going to help. I can’t think of anything that anyone has said to me that has made me eat more or better. Being told she wouldn’t be so physically ill if she ate more doesn’t seem to be helping, even.
She needs to get her mind right, then her body will follow.
I’d suggest she start small: rather than completely overhauling her diet in one fell swoop, try to improve her current dietary habits. Ramen can be the base for not-completely-terrible meals. Personally, I always throw in some frozen vegetables and an egg or some meat. That’s cheap and easy, and doesn’t require buying a lot of groceries that will spoil if she doesn’t have time to cook.
Someone who has “always been a sickly girl, with colds, flu, bronchitis, and a myriad of other ailments”, who doesn’t eat properly and lacks energy doesn’t need a diet book or various dietary suggestions - she needs a proper physical exam and whatever tests are deemed necessary.
Without knowledge of exactly what her diet consists of (and ancillary testing as necessary) any statements about deficiencies are guesses.
Thank you all for the advice, I will share it with her.
I’ve read similar advice on other threads here, about cheap/healthy/easy eating (since I’ve been here on SD from the AOL days).
It ain’t that hard, and the lady in question is not a dummy. IMO she is too darn busy, with a long hard job, involved in animal rescues, driving out of town all the time to visit people who moved away. I hope when they hire some new people her job will be easier, and she will use a weekend to make food for the week.
One good thing, she has a crockpot and loves to make soup and such. I’ll encourage her to keep doing that.
Since she likes the crockpot, maybe she could be enticed into making some freezer meals ahead of time? She’d have to remember to put one in before she goes to work but I wonder if something like these might work? this is just the first Google result. There are thousands more.
I’ve got a subscription for Soylent. It just keeps coming. Some days it’s like dwarf bread: “If I don’t fix something, I’ll have to drink the soylent again.”
She has a little insurance, but mostly goes to a doc-in-a-box for smaller problems. Anything major, emergency room. Going for a complete physical and tests? Can’t afford such a thing. No money, too busy, not urgent enough.