Professional speaker and certified dietician Zonya Foco, Yes America’s Nutrition Leader, and Krista Sanderson, creator of eatrealamerica.com, presented their nutritional program “Three Simple Words: Eat Real Food” yesterday in Albert Taylor Hall.
“We need to really know the power of choice and that our body is the only body we get,” Foco said.
Food can be categorized by its ingredients, and based on the ingredients, it is either laboratory food or grown food, according to Foco.
“We have so much processed food in our diet,” Foco said. “We can revive our brains, our tastebuds, that have been hijacked.”
“There’s such temptation we’re exposed to all the time, to products, that may not be the best things we can eat,” said Belinda Schlesener, leader of Take Off Pounds Sensibly. “I am hoping that faculty, staff and students and their families all benefit from this program.”
Foco spoke on general nutrition tips for the first half of the event before being joined by Sanderson on stage where the duo cooked moroccan vegetable curry live for the audience, speaking on the benefits of real food, which is, according to Sanderson, “anything that came from the ground, grew from a tree, swam in the ocean or grazed on the prairie.”
ESU nutrition organization TOPS, invited both speakers to share their knowledge of healthy eating.
“One of our members went to a conference and Zonya was the speaker,” Schlesener said. “We figured the report on her was so good, we wanted in on it. We wanted to know how we can be healthier.”
Various Emporia organizations donated to the event, as well as contributing to promoting it.
“Donations paid for the entire $6,500 cost of the speaker,” Schlesener said. “Even publicity cost was offset by donation.”
Both speakers were motivated to become speakers by their own health in their past.
“I have seen such change in my family that it’s become a passion for me to help other people learn what we’ve learned,” Sanderson said. “I wish I knew then what I knew now when it came to food and making healthier choices.”
“There’s nothing that gives me more joy than helping people figure out how to be healthy,” Foco said.
