Episode 5: Eating Healthy on a Budget

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Chet Tschetter

Hello and welcome to the podcast. Wellness matters for direct support. This is a podcast developed by the University of Minnesota Arts Institute on Community Integration. It's focused on the importance of health, wellness and self-care for direct workers. My name is Chet Tschetter. I work at Eisai as a national workforce consultant, and as well as I'm one of the Coeditors for Frontline Initiatives, which is a magazine we publish along with the National Alliance for Direct Support.

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Chet Tschetter

I'm here with my colleague and co-host Mark Olson.

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Mark Olson

Hi, everyone. You probably know us by now, but I also am a trainer curriculum writer at Eisai. I did direct sport professionally for a lot of years, 30 plus years in recreation, residential and vocational supports and advocacy support. And currently I do a lot of direct support for a family member. So it's it's it's something that goes beyond just doing it professionally.

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Mark Olson

There are people out there that are doing direct support just because it's a part of meeting the needs of their family. So just wanted to note that folks like that are included as well. Our guest today is Jenny Breen. She has been a professional chef and a advocate for sustainable food systems and food justice, and has worked directly with farmers and producers here in the Twin Cities area.

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Mark Olson

he University of Minnesota in: 2011

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Mark Olson

She works to build strong networks within health and food systems for greater access to food. Support for sustainable farming, which meaningful to me an understanding of cooking as a health strategy. Her first cookbook, Cooking Up the Good Life, emphasizes local sees know Whole Foods, cooking for families and was released in April of two thousand eleven from the University of Minnesota Press.

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Mark Olson

She currently teaches at the University of Minnesota, including courses called I love some of the course titles that you made here Food Choices, Healing the Earth, Healing Ourselves. Food matters. Cook like your life depends on it. Both of those are taught through the back and center. Here at the University of Minnesota, she also teaches a nutrition cooking class called a Food Systems Approach to Cooking Through Healthy Foods at the Healthy Lives Institute and College of Food and Agriculture, and Natural Resources Sciences, here at the University Minnesota.

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Mark Olson

Also known affectionately as C fans or mu U. Sometimes we'll call it just jokingly.

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Jenny Breen

So there that there's a slight correction on that last one. It's no longer healthy foods, healthy lives. It's just through food science and nutrition.

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Mark Olson

Just through food science.

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Jenny Breen

So it's a it's an actual like required class for nutrition students now.

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Mark Olson

Oh, wonderful. Great wonderful nutrition students. What's really nice about that is people who are providing information about nutrition. Hey, it makes sense for that to be a big part of it.

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Jenny Breen

You would think that that was obvious.

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Chet Tschetter

Yes.

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Mark Olson

Well, it's obvious now because it's there. She contracts as a public health culinary nutrition educator with local health departments, school districts and nonprofit food and farming organizations, as well. Jenny's philosophy about food. I loved reading some of these things. Okay. Food does a lot more than provide us with nutrients. It has memories, culture, all ties. We use it to celebrate.

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Mark Olson

Think about that. All of us do those things and we have food involved. Think about any of your celebrations that you have. She's not interested in the diet wars. So vegan versus keto versus paleo. She believes people have, different preferences. And some people do better on some diets than others. Yeah, well, it's just important that plants and avoiding processed foods are a part of how we approach life and, and food.

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Mark Olson

To the extent that we can. So whatever diet that person is using, how can you get that involved? She recognizes that people have time, skill and financial restraints, although it doesn't have to be super expensive to eat more nutritious food. For example, we talked about how frozen fruit and veggies are much more budget friendly and are nutritious.

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Mark Olson

We'll get into that a little bit more as well. She also recognizes that our food system is set up in a way that makes it harder for people to eat in ways that support health. Shall we be talking about that? Cooking philosophy includes keeping it simple. And this is this is perfect for me. And one of the questions I'm going to ask later is really about this.

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Mark Olson

Keeping it simple. Cooking once and eating a two or 2 or 3 times off of that, it sounds like is is kind of one of the philosophies Jenny Jenny entrusts. And I you know, I think that is one of those things that I know a lot of folks that will be cooking on a weekend day, and then during the week, they can eat off of it a little bit.

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Mark Olson

Welcome, Jenny. Thank you. And per your request, and I will start by sharing stories about our lives related to food. And I'm going to throw chat under the bus and have her go first.

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Chet Tschetter

Oh, thanks a lot, Mark. I'm ready for this one. I grew up a farm kid in South Dakota, and we were pretty much meat and potatoes sort of people and vegetables were optional. Fruit was always around. There was always dessert. And so that's how I grew up eating and ate for many years. I've since learned to shift that, to include more plant based and have a different sort of balance.

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Chet Tschetter

But that was that was my upbringing. And that's for me, for a long time. If there wasn't meat, it wasn't a meal. But I've shifted that.

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Mark Olson

Okay. In my story with food probably. There's a number of those some similar things to that with the meat and potatoes kind of thing. You know, family comes from Wisconsin farmers. So, you know, not a whole lot different there, a lot more dairy probably than than South Dakota. But, we when we moved to the cities when I was a very small child, my parents were not making the most, as far as, financial, you know, existence for our family.

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Mark Olson

So we did a lot of canned vegetables, and to this day, I struggle with vegetables because I grew up on canned vegetables. And it just really turned me off of vegetables. So when I get some really good green beans, like I did in an event yesterday where they've been cooked properly. They're all dainty and they have some nice seasonings on them, it's like candy to me.

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Mark Olson

I just love them, but I don't get enough of them and I don't know how to cook them and get that type of type of cooking for me to do it at home. So that's one of the things that's always one of my struggles. So, with that, we'll get into our questions. We're going to talk about on this podcast.

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Mark Olson

Our main focus is direct support workers, folks working in disability services or any other type of senior set senior centers. Any place where somebody is, is, supporting other people. And one of the things that we're trying to do is deal with the self-care of the individual. That's the supporter and, help them to become more resilient people.

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Mark Olson

So how do we help folks do direct support do that? And how does food fit into that?

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Jenny Breen

Starting with an easy one. Okay. So you some of the things that you mentioned in describing me and, and my philosophy have to do with the food system, I think it's really important. And when I teach, you know, the food Choices class is a great example. I'm teaching about the entire system because we need to understand how that system works in order to understand the context that people are operating in when they're trying to feed themselves.

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Jenny Breen

Right. Which looks really different for different people. But we all exist within this system that is set up to support big industrial agriculture, which is mainly producing a very small diversity of things. Right? A few different animals and corn and soy and wheat, and then it's set up to process those foods very cheaply and then make those foods incredibly available all over the place, also very cheaply for people.

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Jenny Breen

So we're already we're we're kind of starting at this place that's really difficult. Right. Because most direct care workers and many of us don't have a lot of extra money. And so we're always working on some sort of a budget, and we're having to think about, you know, how can I stretch my dollar? And cheap food is a really easy way to do that.

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Jenny Breen

Unfortunately, there are all these impacts that cheap food has, starting from the, you know, the agricultural system and the way that massive industrial production of food impacts the environment, which then, you know, has all these other effects on us individually. Right? The the chemicals and the toxins that might be in the soil or even in the air. So that affects people.

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Jenny Breen

And then the processed food that people are consuming is just really, really, really, making people sick. And, you know, I think I can't say exactly, but around 80% of the conditions that medical professionals are treating right now are diet and lifestyle related issues. So these are not, you know, infectious diseases, these are chronic conditions. And that is directly connected to this, this highly processed, really low quality food that people have.

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Chet Tschetter

That has been advertised and packaged to just be so beautiful and attractive. Absolutely.

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Jenny Breen

And, and, you know, frankly, our government is subsidizing the production of that food. So it's it's available. I mean, you talked about, you know, meat and potatoes and even the dietary guidelines, certainly the ones that we all grew up with. You know, when we saw protein on there, all we saw was meat, correct, right. We didn't know there was anything else that was a protein.

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Jenny Breen

And even still and then that bottom huge bottom section with the bread and pasta, that's just not we know now that that's not a healthy or sustainable way to eat for our bodies and for the earth. And what I love to teach and what I think is really meaningful and important to people, is that those two things are very connected.

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Jenny Breen

So what's not good for the earth is also not good for humans or vice versa. What's good for us is also good for the Earth. So there's a really great opportunity to make choices that are have these really positive impacts.

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Chet Tschetter

I really love that. That's a really great way to just think about it visually. Yeah.

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Jenny Breen

And I actually have some wonderful visuals that I show my students. It's, you know, where it shows kind of how those same things, but, you know, fruits and vegetables and whole grains that are so good for us have the least environmental impact and again, vice versa. So the meats and even the dairy and some of the some of the fat and obviously the sugar and sweets, those have the most environmental impact.

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Jenny Breen

And also obviously the biggest impact on us humans. And for young people that I teach, there's a big motivator in understanding environmental impact. There's that's a motivator for a lot of young people where maybe other things might not be for some people. Maybe in our generation, you know, health might be more of a motivator. But in any case, I think it's really important to understand that you will feel better if you eat in ways that make you feel better.

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Jenny Breen

And so even if it's just, you know, you wake up stiff and your joints are sore or you're tired, you just don't have energy. Or, you know, maybe people feel like they're carrying too much weight around. Those are all, again, really related to what you eat and what you put in your body. And so so that's, I think, a place to start is giving people context and saying like, this is really important.

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Jenny Breen

The other thing that I think is really important and it's it's hard to, you know, when you're dealing in the in the immediate with the budget and, and sort of choices that you have to make. It's hard to recognize that the choices that you make now are going to have an impact down the line. And so what I usually say, and of course, with nuance, depending who I'm talking to, you can pay now or you can pay later, but you don't get away without paying.

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Jenny Breen

Right. So if we pay now, our health is going to sustain us later, and we're probably going to not be facing a lot of the health costs, financial and physical, that we deal with later. If we don't pay now, that is the payment, right? That people will be dealing with health conditions, chronic conditions, discomfort, pain and the costs that go along with those.

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Jenny Breen

So it's kind of like an investment. Well, it's definitely an investment. Again, it's hard to make investments when you don't feel like you have a lot. But the other thing is that it doesn't actually have to be that expensive. It's just a commitment of time and intention. So you have to learn, you know, what things you can do to set yourself up to eat well and be nourished.

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Jenny Breen

And a lot of that is really about planning and shopping smart and prepping and cooking. You said eat, cook once, eat three times. You know, lots of people. The two barriers that everyone believes that they have are time and money. Right. We have to cross the board. Doesn't matter what you do. And while I know that that's true, I know when I was in grad school 15 years ago and I was researching this, the average amount of time that people watch television because we didn't have, you know, tick tock yet was about six hours a day.

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Jenny Breen

So even if we, like, break that down one hour a day, right. We there's time in there. That's not to say that people don't deserve to just check out for a while. I get it, we all do. But there is time in there to sort of plan and put your list together and think about, you know, if I cook a big pot of beans and I can make soup on Monday and I can make enchiladas on Tuesday, and I can throw those beans in a salad or scramble them with my eggs on Wednesday, I've got three days covered with an incredibly nutritious, very affordable protein.

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Jenny Breen

So, some of it is just learning. Oh, these are my options and these are the things I can do with them. So there's a skill component, right? Learning basic cooking and and how to put things together and a planning and sort of strategic component. And that's what I love to teach people is those kind of those two things and how, how what you get for that investment is, is big.

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Mark Olson

Is one who can probably say that, I didn't invest as a young, as a youngster. I'm investing now. I can I can attest to that fact because there are health conditions that I now have that I wouldn't have had had I done, as you're talking about and are really focused on that nutrition a little bit more, I'm learning.

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Mark Olson

And I think that that's the thing that you're never too old to learn.

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Jenny Breen

No, no. And and again, our system was not set up to set you up right. Or your parents right. Most of our parents, certainly didn't learn that stuff at home or they, you know, or it may have been just a part of their environment. A lot of people grew up in farms, eat meat, but they also ate a lot of vegetables, and it was seasonal.

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Jenny Breen

And it was just sort of, you know, there was canning. And so it was happening without really acknowledging that actually, that was a really healthy strategy. Now we have to go back to those strategies. But we we certainly in our generation as kids didn't learn these things anywhere. I mean, I took home EC in middle school and I made fudge and brownies.

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Jenny Breen

Maybe we have a lot of missed opportunities. There are opportunities now to change that. It's just that we now have a generation of people who can't pass that information on. So I'm really interested in training teachers and training future health professionals because they can actually really make an impact, but they're not learning that currently. So, you know, we're all kind of in that boat of if you didn't learn it as a kid, you're having to kind of figure it out now.

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Mark Olson

And I can also attest to the fact that my nieces and nephews are much more attuned to those things than I ever was.

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Jenny Breen

Oh, that's.

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Mark Olson

Great. So it's been happening. And, you know, probably their Gen Z, they're, you know, they're, you know, millennial Gen Z in that kind of range between them all. And they, they really focus on that concept that you were talking about of how is this impacting the environment and how is it impacting me. So it's happening. What you're doing is, is helping.

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Mark Olson

It's just, you know, how it's getting there and how often it's getting there.

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Jenny Breen

Well, and I think, I mean, I have students all the time who are, hip young people who say have never thought about this before. So it's time we start thinking about it like we can't, you know, the earth can't wait and people can't wait. So we have to make these connections.

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Mark Olson

Okay, well, thank you.

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Chet Tschetter

All right. So we know that social media, plays such an important, part in our lives. The things we see on the news, on our on our phones and magazines, all of that, it seems to be giving us really conflicting and confusing messages about what it means to be healthy and eat healthy. What are some basic principles people really need to follow?

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Chet Tschetter

Oh yeah.

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Jenny Breen

It is confusing. And even before social media it was confusing. So it's really, really confusing. And part of that is, again, back to that food system I was talking about where different interests have a large influence. Right? So the the big food companies, folks, they don't care about your health, right? So whatever they're telling you is because they're trying to make money.

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Jenny Breen

So I say, and and it's very simple really. And I don't know if you all know who Michael Pollan is. He he wrote several books. The Omnivore's Dilemma was kind of one that made him famous, but he's written other books just about this question of what should we eat? And, you know, how complicated should it be? And he says, eat food.

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Jenny Breen

Mostly plants, not too much. So I don't you know, I actually think that getting more complicated is not helpful. Right. With there are you mentioned all the different kinds of diets, right. Keto and paleo and vegan. And there are principles in each of those diets that are great, right, where there are whole foods and where it's plants and where people are cooking at home.

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Jenny Breen

That's great. That's a good component. But to say that any one diet is the right diet for everyone is ridiculous. We are individuals. Our bodies are all individual. There is virtually no way to really, really prove that one ingredient or one nutrient has one specific effect on people. That's just not how nutrition and so how food and bodies work.

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Jenny Breen

So nutrition science is a little messy because you can't figure things out that way. Nutrients come in combinations and different combinations of food have different effects. And you know, so people have to really learn how to tune in to their own bodies and understand what affects particular foods have on them. But I would say for the most part, if people can emphasize, I say plant forward or plant predominant, I don't like the word plant based because honestly, everything is plant based when you break it down.

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Jenny Breen

I think that's a term that can be used as in sort of a righteous way or shaming way, and I'm not that interested in that. So but plant predominant. So really emphasizing plants, fruits, vegetables, whole grains, legumes these are all plants. And quality. Quality is such an important word that I think can hopefully help people understand this.

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Jenny Breen

So you can have two chickens or, you know, two containers of eggs or even two, you know, different broccoli plants that are raised in such a way that really change the quality of that food.

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Chet Tschetter

And many times you can taste it.

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Jenny Breen

Oh, for sure, you can taste it. I mean, I you know, I'm a person who really loves local, fresh food and absolutely, you can taste it. Obviously, affordability is connected to that unfortunately fresh whole, you know, sustainably produced food tends to be more expensive, although that's changing some. We have more and more ways of accessing that food. Farmer's markets, for example, are a phenomenal way to get fresh, local, seasonal food pretty affordably.

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Jenny Breen

Folks who are on snap now, at least in Minnesota, and a lot of other states can triple their Snap money at farmers markets. So I managed a farmer's market for several years. You can come and spend $10 on snap and get $30 to spend at a farmer's market. So we are working towards I mean, it's absurd to me that we should have to do this, right?

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Jenny Breen

Like, in my mind, healthy food is a human right and there should be nobody who doesn't have access to it. But because of our systems, we have to create policies and we have to kind of and go in the side door. But there are lots of people and organizations and, and politicians and experts who are working on making those changes.

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Jenny Breen

I would say also just, I had another thought about this question of social media. I mean, focus on preparing, taking control of what goes into your body. And again, it doesn't have to be complicated. You know, there are you all told your food stories or a little piece of your food stories. Everybody has a food story.

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Jenny Breen

That's a really meaningful place for a lot of people to start. What did I eat at home? What did my grandmother or my mother or my father, you know, my community, prepare that that was meaningful, that was nourishing. Listening to our bodies is another skill that, I mean, I, I watched my kids listen to their bodies when they were young, and I see so many people, even college, you know, high school and college students who stopped learning how to do that.

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Jenny Breen

Right. They started looking at social media and or whatever and thinking, that's how my body should look. And it doesn't matter how I feel, I'm just need to look this way or this is what I should eat because that person eats that way. And so this is what I'm going to do. And the fact that I don't have energy or that I'm starving or that's not I'm going to ignore that because the social pressures too, too hard.

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Jenny Breen

I just heard a story on NPR the other day about just the impacts of isolation and Covid on young people, and they said that disordered eating was like tripled during Covid. So especially in young women. So you're talking about so many young women who are isolated and just looking at images all day on social media and thinking that that's what they need to do and having no perspective.

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Jenny Breen

So I'm really about how you feel and what gives you energy. And also, you know, and like you said, not only can you taste it, but you can feel it when when you are feeding yourself food that's nourishing and energy producing, you can feel it. And it doesn't take long to to feel the difference. If you haven't been eating that way, and then you start to make changes, even little changes.

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Jenny Breen

It's amazing how quickly you feel that.

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Chet Tschetter

Not only in your body, but for me, it was like in my brain. I felt like a fog lifted where I quit eating a lot of sugars and processed food.

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Jenny Breen

Well, and and our gut and our brain are directly connected. So this idea that physical health stops at our necks is silly, right? There's such an incredible connection between what we put in our bodies and how our brain, both physically and mentally, operates. So mental health and diet are incredibly connected.

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Mark Olson

I was just touching my toe, was pointing at a spot on because that is true. Mental health and diet are very, very much tied together.

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Jenny Breen

Absolutely.

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Mark Olson

Diet is tied to all of it. Now, one of the things that I've learned since, you know, like I said, I'm always learning and that's that's, you know, is an older person. It's like, that's important to me is to always learn things. And one of the things I've learned is about carbohydrates and the the complex carbohydrates. It is so much better if you can find it and find complex carbohydrates that you really enjoy.

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Mark Olson

I mean, I always grew up on the white bread that's all processed and all of that. But over time I've started to shift to more of what I used to call the bread that has sticks and twigs in it. I really like the bread that has that, that heartiness to it. And so, you know, a lot of the flatbreads and the and then, the, the breads that like the thin, crisp and the, all the crisp breads come out or it's very low sodium, very low carbohydrate, or if there's a carbohydrate that has got carbohydrate, but you've got fiber that offsets it and it ends up being much healthier and more filling.

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Jenny Breen

Right. And that's what I mean when I say Whole Foods and I think, I mean, that term carbohydrate for some people starts to feel a little overwhelming. You start talking about, you know, you start using terminology, especially if you're not a medical student or but, you know, in the medical field, but Whole Foods is really what you're talking about.

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Jenny Breen

So whole versions of anything, any plant, whole versions of that plant are going to be really high in fiber, really, really like slow to digest, which means they give you sustained energy over time. And generally, although I don't like to talk a lot about calories generally lower in calories because they're not processed, there's not stuff added that's hidden.

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Jenny Breen

And you mentioned low salt. And the truth is that if you're eating whole foods and I mean really so those those crackers, at one time they were a whole grain in what we call intact whole grain that didn't have anything added to it. That's just that food. And if we are cooking with Whole Foods, we have 100% control over what goes into our food.

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Jenny Breen

So any salt, which if we're just adding it ourself, we don't have to really worry about it because we can't add excessive amounts of salt. So when we start with a whole food and then we prepare it, there's never anything added unless we add it.

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Mark Olson

Well, and that's, that's very true because, you know, I love potatoes, but I always have to put a little bit of salt and, but it's way less it's way less salt than I would get if I were to buy the frozen French fries.

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Jenny Breen

Well, in salt you need salt, right? Just like just like a lot of nutrients and minerals. We need salt. But when food is processed, there's just no limit to how that how it shows up and how many versions of it. And so being able to control that is really, you know, it's a very natural way to consume food.

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Jenny Breen

Right? I love salt, I hate stuff that isn't well salted. Right. That matters to me. I'm a chef like you got him. You got to taste.

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Mark Olson

Yeah. It brings yeah. It brings out flavor.

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Chet Tschetter

And when in when you're cooking at home, you do have so much more control. It's fun to eat out and be at restaurants, but you never quite know what. What all has been put in the food.

00;30;06;17 - 00;30;27;01

Jenny Breen

Yeah, yeah. And it's I mean, if that's right, if you have the luxury of being able to eat out, then it's certainly worth enjoying from time to time. But that's a one real opportunity for saving money. Another one, getting back to the original or I don't know if you asked this question, but I know it's a question around, you know, how do we nourish ourselves?

00;30;27;01 - 00;30;28;24

Jenny Breen

Well, on a budget.

00;30;28;26 - 00;30;31;09

Mark Olson

That was the actual next big question. So let's go to it.

00;30;31;10 - 00;30;50;24

Jenny Breen

All right then. You can tell this stuff I think about all the time. And it's a question, right, that when you're teaching future health providers and they say, well, but what am I supposed to say to a patient who doesn't have the money to eat organic, right. For example, that's a really common sort of response.

00;30;51;02 - 00;31;18;15

Jenny Breen

So the first thing I say is let's not start with organic food. All right. Let's back up and say Whole Foods. Foods that come from nature and that are in the form they come in nature. And probably there are a couple places where people can really start. One is sugar sweetened beverages, in terms of cost, but also just in terms of what a difference it makes.

00;31;18;15 - 00;31;43;12

Jenny Breen

If you can get sugar sweetened beverages out of your out of your rotation. Because I didn't know this until I started working with nutritionists and with my doctor colleagues. How many sugar sweetened beverages? Some people drink in a day that has a significant impact, and diet beverages are not better. And this is where the calorie question is. It gets kind of fuzzy.

00;31;43;18 - 00;32;09;15

Jenny Breen

It's not just about calories. It's about how your body processes these things. And and, what are they called? Artificial sweeteners? They do all sorts of other things that do not benefit you, enough that not at all. In fact, they, they have similar impacts as sugar. So you have a similar response to artificial sweeteners that you do to sugar.

00;32;09;18 - 00;32;37;26

Jenny Breen

So your body does kind of does the same thing around the processing of the sugar. And so it it's not like a good switch. But the other the other place where you can really make an impact is to scale back on your animal protein because it's expensive. And so and I you are not alone, Chet, in saying like, if it didn't have meat, it's not a meal.

00;32;37;26 - 00;33;15;10

Jenny Breen

I encounter a lot of students, a lot of people for whom that's true. And also they thought that that was the way they were supposed to eat, right? Like we grew up learning like you got to have protein on your plate at every meal and protein, meaning, you know, beef usually, maybe chicken. And those are, again, if it's a quality source of meat or chicken or fish, that's a perfectly fine part of a diet, but it should not be the predominant part of your diet.

00;33;15;10 - 00;33;46;07

Jenny Breen

And so if you can just sort of move that meat over to the side or just make it an ingredient rather than the center of the plate, or, you know, have it less often. So I have students who have meat three times a day or, you know, at least every day. What if you had it a couple times a week and, you know, those are significant changes and those are significant changes that you'll feel physically, certainly environmentally and also financially.

00;33;46;07 - 00;34;00;19

Jenny Breen

So those are some things that people can start to do. And again, for folks for whom that's new, that means learning some new skills around cooking with other kinds of ingredients.

00;34;00;21 - 00;34;18;15

Mark Olson

Well, yeah, the other proteins, as you know, it's always intrigued me because, you know, I grew up in that meat and potatoes life, too. And so, you know, I, I've explored other proteins. And, you know, I found that there are some beans and legumes and things like that, that if I cook with those and add those in, it's a nice alternative.

00;34;18;15 - 00;34;39;13

Mark Olson

I still, you know, just historically to socially just, you know, I mean, but I, I've learned to try and say, you know what, I'm going to go vegetarian today, and I'm going to eat, you know, non-meat products all day, you know, and just periodically do that to help, too. And, you know, it's gives at least it's giving me exposure.

00;34;39;15 - 00;34;42;14

Mark Olson

Give your body that opportunity to try something different.

00;34;42;16 - 00;35;06;22

Jenny Breen

Yeah. Yeah. And that's and and sometimes that can be really intimidating. Which is why I love to teach because I think it can be less intimidating when you're cooking with other people and you're just sort of experimenting. And I can tell you that maybe not 100% of the time, but let's say 98% of the time, people are surprised at how delicious the food we make is, even though it doesn't have meat in it.

00;35;06;25 - 00;35;31;07

Jenny Breen

And I'm not I'm not anything. I don't have a label in terms of the way that I eat. I don't eat very much meat. It's never been something that, for me has been that appealing and just it hasn't worked for me. But I'm not a vegetarian. I'm not vegan. I don't have a particular diet that I tell people they should follow.

00;35;31;09 - 00;35;42;01

Jenny Breen

I think that there's just too many problems with that. But I do love to introduce people to the deliciousness of cooking without meat.

00;35;42;04 - 00;35;55;12

Mark Olson

Well, and that's that's goes right into the next question. Beautiful transitioning. Do you have any suggestions for people who never really learned how to cook, or maybe who don't have a lot of the kitchen type equipment ideas handy to them?

00;35;55;15 - 00;36;17;28

Jenny Breen

Yeah. So first of all, you don't need fancy equipment. Really, really not, you know, a good a good frying pan and some basic tools. You know, a good knife is probably the most important investment to make for cooking and a good cutting board. Maybe. But really, like, you can get by without a lot of fancy equipment.

00;36;17;28 - 00;36;45;26

Jenny Breen

And actually, I think most of that fancy equipment is superfluous to really cooking. Well, what you need is some basic skills and some kind of just an understanding about how to make things taste good. Right? So I really encourage people to just start thinking about building their pantry. Obviously taking classes like the ones that I teach are is a great way to, to start, right?

00;36;45;26 - 00;37;12;25

Jenny Breen

Because you can get inspired, you can learn some basic sort of formulas or templates that can really translate. So instead of teaching, I do, obviously I wrote a cookbook, I write recipes, and I love to teach and know people love recipes, but what I really love to teach people is how to cook without a recipe, and how to just sort of understand how to build flavor and what combines well to make things taste good.

00;37;12;25 - 00;37;39;00

Jenny Breen

And some basic sort of proportions and ways that things go together. So like a basic salad dressing, you know, you got your oil or your fat and you've got your acid and then all the other things are just building flavor. And so you can add mustard or you can add tahini or you can add, you know, honey, or you can add marmalade, or you can you know, and you can make different variations on a recipe without having to have a recipe every time.

00;37;39;06 - 00;38;02;09

Jenny Breen

And that's where having a pantry really becomes important. And again, it's one of those things where it is an investment on the front end, but then you don't have to go out and buy olive oil every time you cook, and you don't have to go out and buy canned beans or canned tomatoes every time you cook because you've got things in your pantry, and then cooking in bigger quantities.

00;38;02;11 - 00;38;21;02

Jenny Breen

So I'll cook. If I'm going to cook beans, it's silly to just cook them for one meal, right? Because it takes no more energy or time to cook a huge pot. And so I'll cook a big pot, and then I usually take some of those beans and put them in smaller containers in the freezer. So they're, they're, they're cooked.

00;38;21;02 - 00;38;45;13

Jenny Breen

It's the same thing as having canned beans. If you can't do that, can beans are a fantastic option and they're relatively inexpensive. I think, you know, maybe a dollar to $1.50 for, 15 ounce can of beans. That's not bad because that's a, power packed can of protein and fiber and things that you won't get, in certain other foods.

00;38;45;15 - 00;39;09;04

Jenny Breen

And then I've got my big pot of beans. Like I said, I'll make soup. And maybe I make enough soup that I can freeze half that soup and pull it out at another time, or, you know, in our house, we would maybe have that for dinner, and then people would take it for lunch the next day or, you know, and then you take some of those beans and you turn it into sometimes I'll even take leftover.

00;39;09;11 - 00;39;31;15

Jenny Breen

I make some pretty thick bean soups. I'll take those and turn those into burritos or enchiladas. I don't even have to make a new dish. I just let it thicken and cool and then throw it into something else. Or I'll scramble those that honestly in my eggs. I also, again, just anywhere where you can add vegetables and, you know, vegetables.

00;39;31;22 - 00;40;02;04

Jenny Breen

It's true, they are expensive, but you know, if you're scaling back on the meat, that might be another place to invest. If you're scaling back on the sugar sweetened beverages, that might be another place to invest, because the payoff is so huge. Getting your green vegetables, your dark leafy greens, you know, broccoli and kale and lettuces and getting your orange vegetables, your squash and sweet potatoes, that is invaluable in terms of the nourishment that it gives you and how it sustains you.

00;40;02;06 - 00;40;26;03

Jenny Breen

So it's a combination of just, again, the planning and the the sort of being intentional rather than just walking into the grocery store without a plan. Because most people, that's what a lot of people do. And they end up either hungry, they're shopping hungry, so they're buying stuff they want to eat right now, or they're buying pre-made stuff because they just don't know what they're going to do, or they're buying stuff that they end up not using.

00;40;26;03 - 00;40;50;08

Jenny Breen

Which food waste is a huge problem in this country and around the world. So having a plan and that might mean picking out recipes, but it might just mean sort of picking out some formulas. Again, if I've got my beans and I've got some, let's say I've got some quinoa or some rice cooked and I've got some, maybe I roasted a big pan of vegetables at the beginning of the week, and I've got those.

00;40;50;10 - 00;41;13;14

Jenny Breen

I've got a meal in five minutes. If I make a salad dressing or sauce, I've got an amazing meal in five minutes when I get home. So the idea is to sort of, again, put some time in on the front end, and once you start doing that, it becomes easier, right? It starts to become familiar and more habit and routine and and then it doesn't take as much time.

00;41;13;16 - 00;41;30;05

Mark Olson

Well, one of my things my brother does, and I envy him this ability because he he loves to cook and he he's one of those that that will just go to his pantry, as you say. And he can just look what's in the pantry and say, I'm going to throw this, this, this, this and this together. You know, a little bit of olive oil on the pan.

00;41;30;05 - 00;41;35;02

Mark Olson

So I tell you that, and he makes these amazingly flavorful meals.

00;41;35;07 - 00;41;56;01

Jenny Breen

That's my husband says that. He says when you look in the refrigerator, you see meals when I look in the refrigerator, I see ingredients. So, yeah, there's a leap between ingredients. And then what? What am I going to end up with? And that does take some time and some practice. Absolutely. And that, you know, I teach nutrition students.

00;41;56;01 - 00;42;26;21

Jenny Breen

I have them for an entire semester. So 15 weeks and that is my goal. I don't care if they're going to be professional chefs. I don't care if they're going to, you know, do anything, you know, in, you know, the public sphere with their food. But if they can look, if they can build a pantry and then look in their pantry and come up with 4 or 5 good, flavorful, affordable meals to make, then I have succeeded.

00;42;26;24 - 00;42;28;05

Mark Olson

I have one more question. I think.

00;42;28;08 - 00;42;51;21

Chet Tschetter

I'm sure I've been thinking a lot about direct support workers while we've been talking as well, and I think this question kind of goes hand in hand. Something I experienced myself, but I think they likely do as well. When I am cooking for myself, and I, I am eating healthier than when I'm buying processed food or going out to eat or ordering something in.

00;42;51;24 - 00;43;12;26

Chet Tschetter

But it's really easy to become kind of overwhelmed with the time that it takes to plan and that time management, which you just kind of talked about. And a lot of the direct support workers are working really long shifts these days. And, really, you know, covet their time that they have, that they have for you. They're not at work.

00;43;13;02 - 00;43;20;21

Chet Tschetter

What are some things or some ways that they can really break things down. And maybe feel a little less overwhelmed with having to do everything right away?

00;43;20;21 - 00;43;46;09

Jenny Breen

Yeah. And I would say don't do everything right away. Just start and and pick one thing. Right. So maybe it's I'm going to roast one vegetable this week and I'm just going to put it in everything, even if it's a frozen meal that I'm heating from, you know, in my kit, in my microwave or, you know, I'm going to make salad dressing and then I'm just going to have salad with every meal.

00;43;46;09 - 00;44;11;29

Jenny Breen

It doesn't matter what I'm having, just going to have a little salad with that. I also think, you know, you don't have to do everything from scratch, right? So we you mentioned frozen and canned vegetables. Frozen especially frozen vegetables are fantastic option because they're generally they're already cut for you. And usually they're blanched. The one thing I like people to know is they're already cooked so you don't have to cook them again.

00;44;11;29 - 00;44;26;27

Jenny Breen

So you just have to if you want them to be, you know, have any texture. Just put them in long enough to thaw or let them thought and then just throw them in at the end of something because they will turn to moisture if you, you know, put them in another beginning.

00;44;26;27 - 00;44;27;23

Chet Tschetter

Great to know thing.

00;44;27;27 - 00;45;09;26

Jenny Breen

Right. But but that's, you know, a for for honestly 8,090% of the time it takes to cook is the cutting of things, which for a lot of people can be really meditative and really relaxing. And I really hope to help people find that as part of this journey. Is that because I know cooking is really stressful for a lot of people, and if you can see it as sort of a way of, you know, maybe decompressing at the end of the day and maybe you turn some nice music on and, you know, if you drink wine, maybe you have some wine or you, you know, you create an environment that feels relaxing.

00;45;09;26 - 00;45;43;10

Jenny Breen

And I, I understa and that we're often very hungry and feel like we need to rush, but, you know, maybe try and just take your time a little bit and do that prep. But also don't put so much pressure on yourself that you have to do it all. So if you, you know, if you have some frozen vegetables and or you buy, maybe you buy a cooked chicken already and then you just cut that up and throw it into a stir fry, or you again make soup out of it or, you know, make even make a sandwich.

00;45;43;10 - 00;46;10;13

Jenny Breen

And on some level, it doesn't always matter what you're eating. It matters that you are sort of setting yourself up in that environment. The other thing that's really important is, getting rid of the distractions. So you mentioned social media. I would say I do an activity with students where I have them track their eating, but also their environment for three days.

00;46;10;13 - 00;46;33;03

Jenny Breen

And I don't care about calories or quantities or anything. I just want to know, like, what are you eating and what's happening, and how hungry are you and how emotionally satisfied are you when you eat, right? Like those are the two things physically and emotionally satisfied and again, almost everyone is either eating in front of their phone or their TV.

00;46;33;05 - 00;47;14;21

Jenny Breen

Very rarely is anyone just fully engaging with their food and a lot of what happens then is that we eat twice as much as we really need because we're not paying attention. So it when students do mindful eating, which is an activity that we teach, which is really just sort of taking some breaths. So you're stimulating your, your rest and digest your parasympathetic nerve instead of your sympathetic nerve, which is the fight or flight you're telling your body, it's okay if you can relax, you can absorb nutrients and frequently people say, oh, I ate half as much because I noticed I was full.

00;47;14;23 - 00;47;37;16

Jenny Breen

I had had enough. So creating, like an important space around eating, you know, no phones at the table or no TV on. Just being present, which is really hard for some people, right? They're not used to just being present with themselves. Usually, you know, eating is what, 15 minutes. So people are like, oh, I don't have time to do that.

00;47;37;16 - 00;48;04;10

Jenny Breen

I have to, you know. No, we have time to honor our eating and our bodies. It's better for our bodies. Our bodies are going to absorb more nutrients. Very likely we'll eat less, or we will feel more comfortable because we will notice when we're ready to stop. So those are all things that you can do to relieve pressure on yourself and just gradually ease your way in and then, you know, try things.

00;48;04;10 - 00;48;29;09

Jenny Breen

Maybe you buy an interesting sauce at the grocery store and then just put it on some things and see if that makes some of these vegetables more interesting to you. Or, you know, just, try a new whole grain, just buy a grain and cook it. You know, the the nice thing about a lot of stores that you can buy in bulk, and that way you can just buy small amounts of things and try it out, and then you're not wasting your money.

00;48;29;09 - 00;48;48;05

Jenny Breen

If you bought something you don't really like, you know, it doesn't have to all be at once. You don't have to do everything. None of us, including myself, are perfect. None of us are doing it right all the time. I there are some days when I'm eating chips for dinner because that's all I got. You know what?

00;48;48;05 - 00;49;15;06

Jenny Breen

That's okay. I say to people all the time, whatever choice you make, make the choice with intention. Move on. Right. It's one meal. There is no value in beating ourselves up about something we did or some choice. We made that maybe wasn't the ideal one. We all do it. We're humans. We get to choose again every day.

00;49;15;08 - 00;49;15;21

Jenny Breen

So.

00;49;15;21 - 00;49;30;17

Mark Olson

And that emotional connection, I think, comes in there too. Sometimes the place you're at mentally and and, and, just sheer where you're at that day. So, you know what? I really, really want to have that ice cream bar today.

00;49;30;23 - 00;49;31;15

Jenny Breen

Absolutely.

00;49;31;17 - 00;49;35;00

Mark Olson

So I'm going to have that ice cream bar, and that's okay. That's today.

00;49;35;00 - 00;49;58;19

Jenny Breen

Absolutely. Everyone move on. And the emotional, the meaning, that food has in our lives is very complex. And sometimes it is emotionally what we're you know, what we're feeding. And that's okay. That's very it's important for us to acknowledge that we're all we're complicated humans. And food is, for most of us, pretty complicated, for all kinds of reasons.

00;49;58;21 - 00;50;24;26

Jenny Breen

And certainly social media is not helping keep it simple. It's making it more complicated. So I think as a parent, I felt and I have two daughters, boy, it was super important to me to make an environment that felt really like just non-judgmental and sort of everything was fine. However, in my house, I felt like everything that was in the house was a choice I felt okay about.

00;50;25;01 - 00;50;41;00

Jenny Breen

Right? So I made that choice. I decided what was available, and then that was the extent of what I did. But there's so much out. There's so much shame and judgment out there connected to food and bodies. There is no reason for us to add to that.

00;50;41;07 - 00;51;06;02

Mark Olson

We're recording this on the international Day of the woman. And and one of the things that I just want to tell everyone out there is, is, realize that your body is your body and whatever size it is, is what it is, and you do what you need to do for you. Don't let social media or someone else's image of what they think you should be driving you so much.

00;51;06;03 - 00;51;12;03

Mark Olson

It just boggles my mind that the that our media has that power.

00;51;12;06 - 00;51;47;07

Jenny Breen

Yeah, yeah, media has a lot of power. And our kids, you know, starting with this new generation slightly younger than my kids, will know nothing else. So we have we it's our responsibility, I think, to really, really empower them to just feel like they have control over their choices. And yeah, it's hard. It's hard because as I said, not only our food system, but all of our systems are very, very, biased.

00;51;47;07 - 00;51;58;19

Jenny Breen

They're not very equitable. And so there's a lot that we need to do on this side to give people the power to not be not be so negatively impacted by that.

00;51;58;23 - 00;52;09;24

Mark Olson

Well, the equality of food is something that we could do another entire podcast on, probably a whole series of podcasts. Yeah, if we really wanted to. So, Chuck, do you have anything else that you'd like to add before.

00;52;09;24 - 00;52;13;10

Chet Tschetter

We continue doing this has been a great conversation. Yeah. Thank you.

00;52;13;11 - 00;52;17;14

Mark Olson

Jen. Last word comes from you and then I'll close this out.

00;52;17;17 - 00;52;48;11

Jenny Breen

Oh well I hope, you know, we didn't talk so specifically about direct care workers, but, in my mind, all of these messages apply to everyone, and it's really more about sort of understanding the choices that you make and the impacts that they have on you personally and community and environment. And, you know, seeking out the skills and tools that you can to, to be in control of those choices.

00;52;48;14 - 00;52;50;12

Jenny Breen

And I'm happy to be a resource to people.

00;52;50;15 - 00;53;15;05

Mark Olson

Thank you very much. And we will have that resource information available of through our DSP, Wellness Matters, podcast links and everything. So, thank you all for joining us. Tune in for future episodes about taking care of our physical and mental health and emotional health. I want to throw that in there. Episodes are available of our podcast on your favorite podcasting services.

00;53;15;07 - 00;53;50;21

Mark Olson

This podcast is developed by the University of Minnesota's Institute on Community Integration. Wellness matters for direct support is for the health, wellness, and self-care of direct support professionals because your wellness does matter. Thank you and we'll see you on on the next podcast.