Humans Of Nutrition

Welcome to the Humans of Nutrition Podcast brought to you by Registered Nutritionists Anna Wheeler and Prof Danielle McCarthy.

In this bonus episode, Anna and Danielle reflect on their 20-year journey since graduating from the University of Surrey. Back on campus to deliver a careers workshop to current students, they discuss the nostalgia of returning and the memories it brings back.

They also share advice they would give their younger selves, emphasising the importance of determination, work-life balance, and confidence. The episode concludes with their hopes for the future of their careers and the nutrition profession.

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As nutrition professionals working in multiple contexts, we want to use our diverse experience to help organisations achieve their nutrition and health goals by providing them with the expertise they need, when they need it.

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Welcome to the Humans of Nutrition Podcast brought to you by Registered Nutritionists Anna Wheeler and Prof Danielle McCarthy.

Welcome to the Humans of Nutrition Podcast brought to you by Registered Nutritionists Anna Wheeler and Prof Danielle McCarthy.

In this podcast Anna and Danielle chat to Dr Liz Leigh-Firbank, a nutritionist and product developer with expertise in nutrition communications and strategy, food product development, regulatory and sensory evaluation.

Welcome to the Humans of Nutrition Podcast brought to you by Registered Nutritionists Anna Wheeler and Prof Danielle McCarthy.

Anna and Danielle chat to registered nutritionists, Dr Laura Wyness and Lynn Burns, about navigating perimenopause.  This has become a hot(!) topic, bringing the conversation into the public domain, while creating an explosion of supplements and products targeted at women that may not be supported by evidence – ever heard of menowashing?

Welcome to the Humans of Nutrition Podcast brought to you by Registered Nutritionists Anna Wheeler and Prof Danielle McCarthy.

In this podcast Anna and Danielle celebrate Nutrition Talent’s 6th birthday!

To mark the occasion, they reflect on 6 themes that represent key areas of learning, growth and change during the past 6 years.

Listen in to hear what they have to share on:

The whole package and salary negotiations – The rise of remote and hybrid roles, the importance of job satisfaction and enjoyment as well as salary, how we gauge our “value” as nutrition professionals and measure our impact.

Career mapping/ pivoting - Has the career ladder gone?  Does this create its own opportunity? Hear about the power of the pivot and set your own goals!

Presenting yourself well - You are not just your CV.  When given the opportunity, you should present the ‘whole’ you.  What are your life and work experiences, and how, in the context of applying nutrition expertise, could this be valuable?

Defining success - Anna is clear on this.  “It's been really important for us to enjoy our roles and it's something that we actually put front and centre in our business aims and objectives.”  How do you define success?

Sustainability - Nutrition security is paramount and sustainability is increasingly being integrated into job roles and titles.  An ideal area to upskill!

Data – We cannot ignore the exponential growth of AI and tech and the need for nutrition professionals to be part of this journey.  Nutrition Talent’s consultancy is underpinned by data informed strategic thinking for successful outcomes.  High quality data has value, and we shouldn’t be scared of it!

We'd like to say a big thank you to our community for being an integral part of our journey over our six years to date.  We hope you can learn from these reflections - they have inspired and empowered Anna and Danielle to continue to grow. 

The podcast ends with some forward thinking about the next 6 years and beyond!  How has your professional life changed over the past 6 years?  What do you want to map out for yourself over the next 6 years? Feel free to let us know!

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As nutrition professionals working in multiple contexts, we want to use our diverse experience to help organisations achieve their nutrition and health goals by providing them with the expertise they need, when they need it.

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Welcome to the Humans of Nutrition Podcast brought to you by Registered Nutritionists Anna Wheeler and Prof Danielle McCarthy.

In this podcast Anna and Danielle join in the chat with Emma Williams (Food, Nutrition & Health Consultant), Laura Wyness (Freelance Nutritionist) and Kate McCulla (Dietitian) in a (mostly!) light-hearted and Christmas themed conversation on a broad range of topics:

1.       Our Christmas tipple of choice

2.       Biggest professional achievement of 2023

3.       What sparked most joy in 2023

4.       Reverse advent calendaring! What we want to close the door on going forward.

5.       Next career goal for 2024

6.       Favourite festive food tradition

7.       What “gift” we would like for the nutrition world in 2024

With a diverse range of guests, we get a diverse range of answers!  What would your responses be??  We’d love to know!

At risk of spoilers, we include links to some resources referenced:

In this episode we speak to our first international guest, Registered Dietitian Nutritionist Barbara Ruhs, who joins us from Arizona, USA.

Barb tells us about the fascinating and diverse phases in her career which have included working on school meals, private practice, sports nutrition and retail, not to mention a position at Harvard.

We have heard time and time again from our colleagues in the field including our Humans of Nutrition podcast guests, how utterly fascinating people’s career journeys can be within nutrition, with all the twists and turns and ups and downs. Barb shares another example of this and provides inspiration that following what you are curious about and passionate about can lead to numerous opportunities across the food system.

Barb speaks openly and honestly about a change in her consultancy work and how she is currently taking the courageous approach of taking the time to re-evaluate and consider what she wants to pursue next. We talk about having the confidence to pause and think ‘okay what's next for me in my career?’, something we are all likely to face at some point as we navigate our career paths.

We learn what’s happening in the States right now in terms of health policy and trends, including some innovative initiatives such as Food as Medicine, medically tailored meals and produce prescriptions; with Barb speaking honestly about their advantages and challenges. Skip ahead to 26 minutes to hear all about this.

We discuss the definition of ‘healthy’ from 41 minutes; and from 46 minutes Barb shares our passion for the utmost importance of having nutrition experts in all food organisations, and just how dietitians and nutritionists can apply their nutrition expertise to deliver impact towards health goals, including how health can equal good business and commercial benefits.

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As nutrition professionals working in multiple contexts, we want to use our diverse experience to help organisations achieve their nutrition and health goals by providing them with the expertise they need, when they need it.

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Get in touch to find out more about our company, Nutrition Talent and how we could work together.

Welcome to the Humans of Nutrition Podcast brought to you by Registered Nutritionists Anna Wheeler and Prof Danielle McCarthy.

Welcome to the Humans of Nutrition Podcast brought to you by Registered Nutritionists Anna Wheeler and Prof Danielle McCarthy.

Look at Matt Lawson’s CV and you’ll probably see under ‘Work History’ PFA Dietitian, The Football Association; Development Football Head, University of Nottingham; Team GB Dietitian, British Olympic Association. Under ‘Skills & Experience’, you’ll find UEFA Licenced Coach. Get a chance to look in his little black book, and you may see names like Sven Goran Eriksson, Ellen White and Carly Telford, Sophie Bradley and Alex Greenwood (major shout out to England’s women’s football team, past and present!). Talking of which during this episode, Nutrition Talent’s Anna reveals a secret football ambition from her 10-year-old self, and how she was an inadvertent women’s rights campaigner at this tender age – go Anna!

Matt still considers himself a dietitian, first and foremost. Just how did Matt become a top sports dietitian? He jokes that it was primarily because he “failed in (his) bid to be a footballer”! But this early love of sport triggered an interest in how the body works, how what you eat and drink impacts performance, leading him to the world of dietetics.

Matt talks about the common one-way system from dietetics towards clinical work, but he never let go of his true interest in sports and nutrition, choosing to go on to complete an MSc Nutrition with a dissertation in sports, then going on to study at Loughborough University to attain Sports accreditation.

We hear about his early days, the challenges of improving the diet (and by extension performance) of his first football club – faced with a team eating burgers and chips when he first met them, he certainly had his work cut out!

We are reminded that athletes are as human as we are – advice needs to be evidence based and individualised (seems so obvious now, but who considered that the dietary and performance needs of the striker would be different than the defence?!!). And some of these athletes live with diabetes, coeliac disease, IBS, disordered eating behaviours etc. – “they're just normal people at the end of the day”.

There’s a multitude of other topics covered – supplements (banned or otherwise), recreational players and the opportunities to have a positive impact on nutrition and exercise at a grassroots level. Matt welcomes the evolution and developments in sports science, which of course informs his practice, and ends with a wish – to see both England teams win the championships…to be continued!

Listen to the full episode here, or wherever you usually access your podcasts!

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As nutrition professionals working in multiple contexts, we want to use our diverse experience to help organisations achieve their nutrition and health goals by providing them with the expertise they need, when they need it.

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Get in touch to find out more about our company, Nutrition Talent and how we could work together.

Welcome to the Humans of Nutrition Podcast brought to you by Registered Nutritionists Anna Wheeler and Prof Danielle McCarthy.

In this episode we have a brilliant in-depth conversation with Nilani Sritharan, Group Head of Healthy and Sustainable Diets at Sainsbury’s. Nilani tells us about her hugely varied role, which includes working on over 10,000 own brand products!

Nilani explains the importance of data and how personalisation can lead to opportunities to help customers navigate towards healthier choices. She also tells us how applied research such as in-store food environment trials can help us to understand the reality of customer behaviours in store and how the data can be used to identify hotspots for action to drive impact at a total diet level.

We hear Nilani’s insights on how to keep health at the top of an organisation’s agenda, even when there are other key drivers such as the cost of living crisis. She explains the importance of working with the third sector and with investors, who are all part of the same system and who can help drive the momentum for change – something that has been an area of real change over recent years.

Nilani kindly points us toward some reading in this episode.  The links below will take you to more information from the organisations she mentions.

Welcome to the Humans of Nutrition Podcast brought to you by Registered Nutritionists Anna Wheeler and Prof Danielle McCarthy.

Covid has undoubtably brought dramatic changes to the workplace, with many more of us working remotely some or all of the time. There has also been a big shift as to where in the world we can work, including the increasing trend of being a ‘digital nomad’. Our Co-Founder Anna recently had a taste of the digital nomad lifestyle during a six-week working holiday in Madeira.

In this bonus episode of the Humans of Nutrition podcast, Danielle grills Anna about her experience – the pros, the cons and the tips for others considering a similar move, and of course what exactly is a digital nomad?

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As nutrition professionals working in multiple contexts, we want to use our diverse experience to help organisations achieve their nutrition and health goals by providing them with the expertise they need, when they need it.

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Get in touch to find out more about our business, Nutrition Talent and how we can help you.

Welcome to the Humans of Nutrition Podcast brought to you by Registered Nutritionists Anna Wheeler and Dr Danielle McCarthy.

In this podcast Danielle shares details of her first ever experience of being front of camera in a TV shoot. An experience that absolutely changed her mind on how the media, companies and nutrition professionals can work comfortably together. There is no denying this was a ‘feel the fear and do it anyway’ moment for Danielle and in this episode she is absolutely honest about her experience. She shares tips on what really helped and went very well on the day, whilst also speaking openly about the challenges she faced. Worth a listen if you are a professional thinking about appearing on camera, or a company considering a way to raise your profile with your target audience.

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As nutrition professionals working in multiple contexts, we want to use our diverse experience to help organisations achieve their nutrition and health goals by providing them with the expertise they need, when they need it.

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Get in touch to find out more about our business, Nutrition Talent and how we can help you.

Welcome to the Humans of Nutrition Podcast brought to you by Registered Nutritionists Anna Wheeler and Dr Danielle McCarthy. 

In this podcast Anna and Danielle chat with Jenny Rosborough, Head of Nutrition at Jamie Oliver Limited, previously a Campaign Manager at Action on Sugar and prior to that a Senior Nutritionist and Programme Developer of MEND, a family weight management programme. A real custodian of nutrition and health, she blends being a campaigner and spokesperson who holds food system stakeholders to account, with driving commercial implementation of healthy practice at Jamie Oliver Limited. Jenny’s eloquence, knowledge of the evidence base, experience of policy, industry, and on the ground action alongside her passion for improvements in the food system and existing health inequalities is insightful and thought provoking. Our conversation was as spirited as we had hoped. Listen in to hear her thoughts on politics and how they impact the food and health landscape, the role of regulation in progress towards better health and how she personally takes on the challenge of implementation, working where the “rubber hits the road” at a time of inconsistency and stop start directives. As ever with our conversations, we seek to hear the human side and Jenny openly shares the merry-go-round and roller-coaster experience she has had as a Nutritionist working within and across the food system.

Unfortunately, the sound quality isn’t as good as we would have liked for this episode, but bear with us, it’s worth it for such an engaging chat!

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As nutrition professionals working in multiple contexts, we want to use our diverse experience to help organisations achieve their nutrition and health goals by providing them with the expertise they need, when they need it.

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Get in touch to find out more about our business, Nutrition Talent, and how we can help you.

Welcome to the Humans of Nutrition Podcast brought to you by Registered Nutritionists Anna Wheeler and Dr Danielle McCarthy.

Dairy, nutrition and sustainability is the topic of this episode in which Danielle and Anna are joined by Zoe Kavanagh, Chief Executive of the National Dairy Council in Ireland, a dairy farmer funded organisation. She shares a number of thought provoking insights we think our listeners will want to hear from her view that sustainability is a big opportunity for dairy to restate itself as a highly nutritious food source produced responsibly at the centre of public health; to her deep knowledge of the diversity that exists not just within the dairy product category, but within its production process. Zoe paints a clear picture of the important differences between Irish, English and American dairy farmers that are often unknown or overlooked and she discusses the harsh reality that many dairy farmers face with their social license to be dairy farmers in their communities under threat. A deeply informative and thought provoking episode.

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As nutrition professionals working in multiple contexts we want to use our diverse experience to help organisations achieve their nutrition and health goals by providing them with the expertise they need, when they need it.

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Get in touch to find out more about our business, Nutrition Talent and how we can help you.

Welcome to the Humans of Nutrition Podcast brought to you by Registered Nutritionists Anna Wheeler and Dr Danielle McCarthy.

In this podcast, Anna and Danielle chat with Cathy Capelin, Head of Health and Sustainable Diets at IGD who shares her insights on what works and doesn’t in the area of sustainable and healthy diets. IGD is a registered charity which is working to drive change that makes a tangible difference for society, business and the individual, with commercial insight and social impact at the core of everything they do. Cathy also worked for many years at Kantar Worldpanel UK as Strategic Insight Director for the Nutrition and Public Sector and in this episode, she helps define sustainable and healthy diets from strategic and consumer perspectives. She shares the latest research from IGD’s innovative collaboration with Asda, Sainsburys and the University of Leeds which has identified what was successful and just as importantly, what wasn’t, in changing shopping behaviours within retail settings. Cathy openly discusses implementation of the new HFSS (high fat, sugar and salt) policy, her insights for the future, examples of great collaborations as well as the greatest challenges of her career.

Welcome to the Humans of Nutrition Podcast brought to you by Registered Nutritionists Anna Wheeler and Dr Danielle McCarthy.

In this podcast Anna and Danielle chat to Dr Sarah Berry, an Associate Professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences at King's College London and a Scientific Advisor for Zoe, a health science company running the largest nutrition study in the world with over 4 million participants. Sarah has led more than 30 human nutrition studies in cardio-metabolic disease and is Lead Nutritional Scientist on the PREDICT programme which investigates the genetic, metabolic and meal dependent effects of food on individuals in the UK and US. Her team’s transformational approach to research into personalised nutrition, the integration of big data and citizen science has brought never seen before scale, breadth, depth and precision to nutrition science, blowing open our scientific understanding of the complexities of how food impacts our health.

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As nutrition professionals working in multiple contexts, we want to use our diverse experience to help organisations achieve their nutrition and health goals by providing them with the expertise they need, when they need it.

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Get in touch to find out more about our business, Nutrition Talent and how we can help you.

Welcome to the Humans of Nutrition Podcast brought to you by Registered Nutritionists Anna Wheeler and Dr Danielle McCarthy.

In this podcast Anna and Danielle share insights from their journey as Co-Founders of Nutrition Talent, a consultancy and recruitment company specialising in nutrition expertise. They share how it all began, the professional and personal considerations that instigated their entrepreneurial leap, where it is now and their thoughts and hopes for the future of Nutrition.

Between them they have vast experience across the world of nutrition including academic research, health strategy development and the practical application of their nutrition knowledge in a vast number of contexts including food product development, communication campaigns, employee wellness programmes and many more. Listen in to hear their honest, very real perspectives of their Nutrition Talent journey so far.

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As nutrition professionals working in multiple contexts we want to use our diverse experience to help organisations achieve their nutrition and health goals by providing them with the expertise they need, when they need it.

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Get in touch to find out more about our business, Nutrition Talent, and how we can help you.

Welcome to the Humans of Nutrition Podcast brought to you by Registered Nutritionists Anna Wheeler and Dr Danielle McCarthy.

In this podcast we delve into the career of our podcast co-host and co-founder of Nutrition Talent, Dr Danielle McCarthy. Interviewed by her fellow co-host Anna Wheeler, Danielle shares details of the scariest and most unexpected conversations she has had in her career to date. Listen in to this chat between friends and professionals to hear Danielle reflect openly about her experiences across her career to date which has included roles such as Head of Nutrition at Sainsbury's, Principal Scientist at GSK and Senior Lecturer at Queen’s University Belfast working in the Institute for Global Food Security. She shares what areas she feels are critical to consider at this time and what she believes is needed for progress to be made.

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As nutrition professionals working in multiple contexts, we want to use our diverse experience to help organisations achieve their nutrition and health goals by providing them with the expertise they need, when they need it.

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Get in touch to find out more about our business, Nutrition Talent, and how we can help you.

Welcome to the Humans of Nutrition Podcast brought to you by Registered Nutritionists Anna Wheeler and Dr Danielle McCarthy. 

In this podcast we hear all about our podcast co-host and co-founder of Nutrition Talent, Anna Wheeler (RNutr). In this interview with her friend, co-host and colleague, Dr Danielle McCarthy, Anna who is the longest serving committee member of the Nutritionists in Industry group answers some big questions that professional Nutritionists face; How can we best communicate a complex science like nutrition? How do Nutritionists avoid being seen as the naysayer in an organisation? And the biggy: What is it like being a Nutritionist for Coca-Cola?

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As nutrition professionals working in multiple contexts, we want to use our diverse experience to help organisations achieve their nutrition and health goals by providing them with the expertise they need, when they need it.

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Get in touch to find out more about our business, Nutrition Talent, and how we can help you.

Welcome to the Humans of Nutrition Podcast brought to you by Registered Nutritionists Anna Wheeler and Dr Danielle McCarthy.

In this podcast we chat to our guest Barbara Bray who was awarded an MBE in 2019 for ‘Services to Food Nutrition’ and she shares who the quite unexpected nominator was. Barbara Bray has 20 years’ experience working in the nutrition and agri-food sectors in the UK and Europe, Middle East and African countries. Her work has inspired her to create solutions to encourage different parts of the food chain to collaborate and communicate more effectively with each other. A lot is covered in this episode - from nutrition smart agriculture, nutritional needs for those in their 40-50s, the role of social science in health and wellness and that trip to Buckingham Palace!

In this episode Barbara talks about her podcast, which can be accessed here:

Welcome to the Humans of Nutrition Podcast brought to you by Registered Nutritionists Anna Wheeler and Dr Danielle McCarthy.

In this podcast Danielle goes on the road to chat with Jude Bailie, Director of the Warehouse, a place and space that helps support people in crisis. The Warehouse houses a social supermarket, a crisis kitchen, a community fridge, hosts many community mealtimes, has a wear ‘n’ share department as well as a community garden. An amazing example of healthy sustainable food access in action without shame. In this episode Jude shares the issues faced by those she serves, how wide and varied they are now compared to 10 years ago. Listening to Jude brings to life the challenges alongside the great hope that is experienced every day at the centre. Jude speaks about how food is at the core of life and how by giving people back the opportunity to enjoy food, to access that, it changes the bigger journey they are going on. She shares the practicalities of how they manage to run this centre, how they gather the food to feed their community which has included 173,679 meals since their launch 6 years ago, as one small part of what they do. What could food system stakeholders do to help? Straight-talking Jude shares what she believes those inside and outside of the community sector, who want to help everyone have access to healthy sustainable food, could and should do to improve the system. One of the most inspirational women Danielle has worked with, definitely worth a listen.

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As nutrition professionals working in multiple contexts, we want to use our diverse experience to help organisations achieve their nutrition and health goals by providing them with the expertise they need, when they need it.

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Get in touch to find out more about our business, Nutrition Talent, and how we can help you.

Welcome to the Humans of Nutrition Podcast brought to you by Registered Nutritionists Anna Wheeler and Dr Danielle McCarthy.

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In this trailer you will hear a little bit about us, what we do and why we’re launching this podcast. In this podcast we will delve into the world of Nutrition, interview expert guests from around the world and openly share our experiences and expertise.

As nutrition professionals working in multiple contexts, we want to use our diverse experience to help organisations achieve their nutrition and health goals by providing them with the expertise they need, when they need it.

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Get in touch to find out more about our business, Nutrition Talent, and how we can help you.