Nutrition con sabor: Interview with Krista Linares
Founder of Nutrition Con Sabor, Krista Linares is a Latina registered dietitian nutritionist who wants to see Latine culture better represented in the nutrition and wellness world. We love the content she creates under her Instagram handle @latina.dietitian, as it touches on the many frustrations we experience in a world that is constantly whitewashing nutrition and demonizing our cultural foods.
Panocha Zine (*): What made you want to get into nutrition?
Krista Linares: I became interested in nutrition because I was managing my own health concerns. I was diagnosed with PCOS and food allergies in the same year, leaving me completely confused about what it meant to eat well. I entered the field of nutrition really to give myself the space to understand and get answers.
(*): Why is it important to consider the person's culture when discussing nutrition and working on a plan that fits their nutritional/emotional needs?
Krista Linares: Food is so much more than just fuel. We all have foods that are especially meaningful for us, and many times these are foods that are part of our heritage. A nutrition plan that ignores these foods is destined to fail. The main trick with nutrition changes is setting up behaviors that can persist for a long period of time, and this means that clients shouldn't feel deprived or like they have too many barriers to success.
(*): What are some misconceptions about our cultural foods that bug you?
Krista Linares: The main one is the myth that our cultural foods are less healthy or need to be made better somehow. Our traditional foods are very nourishing--think corn, rice, beans, squash, etc. But the narrative has shifted to either villainize very nourishing foods like corn, or to mischaracterize what Latine food even is to make it seem less healthy. It really hurts our conceptions of ourselves and our culture when we're constantly surrounded by messages about how our food needs to be made healthier, especially when the truth is that our food traditions are very nourishing.
Q. You create a lot of content geared toward demystifying these misconceptions. How has that helped you reach a wider community? Do you think it’s helping to change the perception people have about their cultural foods?
Krista Linares: I think framing nutrition this way has given people who feel tired and exhausted by restrictive diet culture a space to learn about nutrition in a way that's safe and encouraging rather than shameful. It's helped me reach people who may otherwise not be interested in following a dietitian on social media, because my content isn't just about tips to be "healthier" but is about showing pride in our heritage.
(*): Lastly, it feels like more of our foods are being commoditized as people learn the nutritional value behind our cultural food. What is your take on this?
Krista Linares: It's neither all good nor all bad. As long as we are very vocal about these foods' Latine origins and uplift their Latine creators, it can be positive and would reinforce my mission of encouraging our community to embrace our heritage foods as a source of nourishment. However, oftentimes these foods become strikingly removed from their Latine origins in the process of becoming popular. For example, most people don't think of Chia seeds as a Latine food. Chia seeds are popular now but our community doesn't get any benefit from that.