By: Sue Borra, RD, Senior Vice President, Communications and Strategic Planning, Food Marketing Institute
Today is Registered Dietitian Nutritionist Day, and an opportunity to look back on how health and wellness has changed in food retail. More than 30 years ago, I first joined the Food Marketing Institute (FMI) as the registered dietitian to assist FMI members in developing nutrition programs for their customers. This was a newly defined field for dietitians and there were only a handful of nutrition professionals working with the food retail community. Remember, that this was the era before the passage of the Nutrition Labeling and Education Act, before the internet and there was limited consumer information on nutrition, food and health.
I had the opportunity to work on national projects including “Meat, Poultry, Seafood Nutri-Facts,” an in-store point-of sale nutrition information program; and “Healthy Start: Food to Grow On,” an in-store childhood healthy eating program developed in cooperation with the American Academy of Pediatrics and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Food retailers who adopted these programs provided a tremendous amount of nutrition and health resources to food shoppers who were hungry for his information.
Fast forward to 2015 where nutrition, health and wellness have become a part of everyday life in the world of food retail, as evident in the just released FMI report Retail Contributions to Health and Wellness. Almost all of the food retailers surveyed report that their companies are committed to expanding health and wellness programs in their stores and today hundreds of dietitians are employed in food retail. In my current role as head of Communications and Strategic Planning at FMI, I am delighted that I now have the opportunity to tell the story of how food retailers will play an important role in helping their customers achieve nutrition, health and wellness goals.
To all my fellow RD's, especially those working in food retail, happy Registered Dietitian Nutritionist Day!
Photo credit: www.nationalnutritionmonth.org.
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