Food Cravings Guide

This is a guide to help curve Food Cravings

By Amanda Korman, Berkshire Eagle Staff

Monday February 20, 2012

GREAT BARRINGTON — With two larger South County health care providers now hosting their own nutrition counseling, a nutrition nonprofit is closing its Great Barrington headquarters and directing its efforts fully to Pittsfield.

The Nutrition Center on West Avenue has seen its counseling clientele decline since its former partner, Fairview Hospital, began offering independent nutrition services about four months ago, according to director Peter Stanton, who noted that counseling accounts for about half of the center’s budget; Community Health Programs stopped its affiliation with the center three years previously to begin its own services.

The Nutrition Center’s newer offices on Summer Street in Pittsfield, meanwhile, have seen a burgeoning number of patients.

While it’s a relatively simple calculus, Stanton said, the closing of the hub — which also housed a community garden, teaching kitchen and formerly a farmers market — means giving up, at least temporarily, a specific nutrition model.

“Usually when you go for nutrition counseling, you go into an environment more like a medical office, and this was a place where you could smell food, and classes, and a community garden with 22 plots. It was nutrition with a food component,” Stanton said. “I feel like it’s very hard to make the recommendations of a dietitian become practical without that component, and for lots of people that’s probably more important than talking — so that’ll be missing.”

The Nutrition Center is still searching for real estate in Pittsfield that would allow counselors to teach cooking to their patients.

Stanton, who owns the West Avenue building, has put it on the market for $410,000. He rents out space to several other private businesses and said it was not clear what would happen to those spaces.

Since Fairview Hospital ended its affiliation with The Nutrition Center, Stanton said, its monthly patient load has decreased from a high of around 70 down to 15, while in Pittsfield counselors are now seeing about 60 a month.

Fairview Hospital has been ramping up its nutrition programs over the past several years, according to Doreen Hutchinson, vice president of operations.

“It wasn’t like we just got up one morning and said, ‘OK, this what we want to do to Peter and his nutrition services,’ ” Hutchinson said. “It became a natural next step … because this now makes sense with all the things we’re trying to do as an organization.”

Hutchinson did not expect that the loss of The Nutrition Center’s anchor in South County would pose any dearth of counseling opportunities for patients.

“We think it’s not going to be a gap, that we’re going to be able to fill and meet the needs of the people there,” she said.

To reach Amanda Korman:
akorman@berkshireeagle.com
(413) 496-6243

By Amanda Korman, Berkshire Eagle Staff

Morgan Kulchinsky watches as Joy Clifton puts… (Caroline Bonnivier Snyder / Berkshire Eagle Staff)

Friday February 3, 2012

PITTSFIELD — To fight against McDonald’s, healthy food has got to cook in a pinch — and on a pinched penny.

Gathered around the kitchen counter in the Christian Center, a handful of people under the tutelage of a Nutrition Center educator indicated that such a thing may already be among us: At the class for low-income individuals and families, participants compared the sweet potato fries they’d just baked to the best of the fast food kingdom.

At the Thursday session, Joy Clifton, 53, tossed dashes of salt and pepper into the pan of sweet potato slices and then juiced lemons for a dressing to top a colorful cabbage salad. The Pittsfield resident is trying to eat more healthily both because she has diabetes and because her sister was recently diagnosed with cancer, she said.

“Now we’re starting to eat better — we don’t eat meat, eat more vegetables, and stay away from gluten,” Clifton said. “I’ve been looking for places to learn how to keep the body free of cancer.”

Clifton is planning to learn cosmetology at McCann Tech, but for now she’s living on a fixed income and said she appreciates tips on how to eat well on a dime.

Focusing on vegetable-packed snacks this week, the class, which runs Thursday afternoons through the beginning of March, will also cover managing weight, baking healthy desserts and cooking flavorful sauces.

The Christian Center serves over 1,000 families in Pittsfield, many of whom are dealing with poverty, substance abuse and other disabilities, said director Ellen Merritt.

And while a bowl of tangy cabbage salad can’t solve those problems, it can help those with diabetes and hypertension looking to polish their diets.

Morgan Kulchinsky, the Nutrition Center culinary coach who’s been teaching the class, said showing the broader community how to cook has always been her passion.

“It’s an interesting challenge to choose recipes that are cheap and healthy at the same time,” she said. “Eating healthy can be delicious, and it doesn’t have to take a whole lot of time.”

In between chopping a deep purple cabbage, Doug Frye, 45, and Damon Fleischer, 49, traded advise their doctors had given them about managing high blood pressure — ditch the salt, drink more water.

Across the counter, Helen Gagnon, 54, who recently became dependent on insulin to manage her diabetes, was pleased to take in the litany of new dietary tips — the benefits of extra virgin olive oil, for instance, and how to control meat portions by equating them to the size of your own palm.

“I want to learn what’s safe to eat and what’s not,” Gagnon said. “This has been wonderful. You can never learn too much.”

To reach Amanda Korman:
akorman@berkshireeagle.com
(413) 496-6243

Inspiring a Healthy Relationship with Food
and Sustainable Culinary & Agricultural Practices.

The Mission of the Nutrition Center is to foster collaboration between individuals and organizations involved in food related activities in the Berkshire Region. We are a resource center designed to address and support the needs of the community.  Our purpose is to facilitate enjoyment and curiosity about where food comes from, how it is prepared, the eating experience, and how these processes relate to health and well being.  By creating a comfortable environment, we hope to foster participation in hands-on food related activities. Ultimately, our goal is to inspire a consciousness about the connection between food and health.

They will create a healthy, tasty meal while learning about cooking and nutritious eating.
Students will be exposed to new foods, flavors and experiences in a safe and peer-supportive environment. They will grow to be curious and adventurous with new foods.
Classes taught by trained chef Morgan Kulchinsky.

Registrater by calling 413-429-8110 or email
info@thenutritioncenter.org with questions or to register.
94 West Ave
Great Barrington, MA 01230

Experience
Practicing family physician in Pittsfield, MA
Has led numerous community workshops on the connection between food & health
Currently serves as director of medical education at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Stockbridge, MA

Specialties/Interests
Community health and wellness
A whole foods approach to diet & nutrition
Mindfulness and stress reduction
Exercise & optimal health

Dr Nelson received her MD from the University of Massachusetts Medical School, and completed training in family medicine at Boston Medical Center.  A longtime advocate for community wellness and preventive health, Dr Nelson has led numerous workshops that underscore the relationship between food and health.  She currently serves as the director of medical education at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health in Stockbridge, MA, and is a practicing family physician in Pittsfield, MA.

Educational Nutritional Resources