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Top of the class

Chiropractor offers an adjustment - of diet

Crystal River High School Health Academy teens get a taste of healthy eating when a nutrition promoter comes calling.

By PAULETTE LASH RITCHIE
Published November 10, 2005

CRYSTAL RIVER - When Dr. Nancy Irven comes to visit, Crystal River High School Health Academy students can be fairly certain that food will be involved in some way. Her most recent visit was a food bonanza.

Irven is a Crystal River chiropractor who also specializes in nutrition. She has worked closely with health academy director Judy Powell for years teaching students how to eat well. She is passionate about healthy eating.

Irven begins by asking students to keep food diaries. Then she dissects the diaries and indicates which food choices are bad and good.

Ninth-grader Stephanie Shrader, 14, had some good choices: water, green beans, peanuts, turkey and chicken. The pretzels, orange cream bars, raisin bran cereal and doughnut would be better replaced by other foods.

Classmate Jontrell Hutcherson, 15, had a lot of sandwiches, chips and fries on his list. The meats on the sandwiches were acceptable, but not the breads: Irven considers enriched flour to be little better than glue.

She lumps it with hydrogenated fats, which she calls plastic, and high fructose corn syrup, the ingredient that keeps us from feeling full so we want more plastic and glue.

"You are eating a lot of food that is degenerative," Irven noted to Jontrell on his diary. "You need real food, water, fresh vegetables and fruit."

Kids can't just be told what to eat, though; they need to be shown. Irven brought a lot of examples of good things to eat. The students chowed down, impressed with the tasty options.

She offered them grapes, oranges, apples, celery, carrots, peanut butter (the natural kind - ground peanuts and salt). She provided natural peanut butter and all-fruit jelly sandwiches, and peanut butter, honey and banana sandwiches made with a flourless sprouted-seed bread the students appeared to enjoy. She also offered whole grain crackers with cheese.

Next the students will go to a grocery store to examine labels and see where to find the things they tasted.

The students seem to realize they need to change their eating ways.

Zach Jones, 16, admitted he hasn't been doing a great job of picking the right things. "I'd say I've been eating badly," he said. But he has gained new knowledge. Not just vegetables are healthy. "There's meat and cheese and smoothies too," he said.

Zach declared that he intends to change his ways. "Oh, yeah. Ooooh, yeah," he said. "This food's pretty good. Oh, yeah. It's real good."

"The biggest thing is convincing the parents," Powell said. The students "are already convinced."

As second period was about to end, Kasie Yentes, 15, admitted she didn't particularly want to go to her next class.

"Nothing can beat this," she said.

[Last modified November 10, 2005, 01:20:16]