Welcome back to our post!

This week was our last week before our short presentation in front of our class. After 2 month of continuous struggle with project planning and on-going modifications, we have a clear picture of what we want to accomplish for this project, now we just need to divide the task among our group members. We decide to divide task individually instead of meeting and working as a group. This is mainly because of our class schedules time conflicts which made it difficult for us to meet together for the project. It would be nice for us to have more time to work on the project together during some of our lecture times. For us to make use of lecture time for the project will definitely be easier to organize group meetings, and our time spend will be much more efficient. After a brief meeting this Tuesday to divided our task, everyone accomplished their work, and we were able to share our part though Google-doc and facebook. Everything is going well, personally I am excited for the presentations next week to see what everyone else accomplished for their project.

One of the task we hope to accomplish this week was visit a dietitian and get some advice from them to help us with our project. Shi Yuan presenting our group did the interview. Here is a rough overview of the event from her:

We met up with a dietician Dr. Nooshin Alizadeh-Pasdar, PhD, RD on Friday, Nov.22. We wanted to ask for some suggestions and feedback from her on nutritional aspects for our guidelines. She gave as some recommendations:

1. Affordability. GMO free and organic foods are about at least 30% more expensive than conventional foods. Can food services/athletes really afford to buy them?

2. Some GMO free/ organic foods from California are relatively cheaper than those produced in Vancouver. Is locally produced really necessary?

3. Drinks are not necessarily sugar-free. Low sugar is fine. Athletes need extra calories. (Salt as well).

4. Grain–whole grain is better.

5. Eggs– omega-3 fortified eggs are better.

Disappointingly, since she didn’t have any research experience in sport events/big public events, she didn’t give us many recommendations on big scale events. However, she reminded us that foods affordability and FOOD SAFETY are important for a big public event.

Information from Dr. Nooshin is helpful for us. We’ll adjust our guideline accordingly. Thanks Nooshin!