African American Representation in Food & Nutrition

Yaa Boayke: [00:00:02] On today’s panel, we have Aminta and Shalese. Aminta is a weight loss coach and registered dietitian, she helps women create a body they love so they can feel sexy and confident. Aminta specializes in helping black and Caribbean women learn portion sizes so they don’t have to give up their cultural foods to lose weight. And Shalese is a registered dietitian from Atlanta, Georgia, with experience and clinical and medical sales. She has a passion for helping women lose weight with the keto diet. Her Grandma and patients suffering with seizures first sparked her interest in the keto approach to healthy living. Welcome to the panel episode, ladies.

 

Shalese Pugh: [00:00:39] Thank you.

 

Yaa Boayke: [00:00:41] Yeah, so this panel is really, really near and dear to my heart, being able to have very strong, intelligent and so, so passionate dietitians on this episode makes me so excited. So I want everyone to kind of get to know you guys a little bit better. So let’s start with your ethnic background.

 

Aminta Bullard: [00:01:04] Ok, so I’ll start. This is Aminta speaking here. Well, both of my parents are Trinidadian. Trinidad is a very ethnically diverse place, so it’s probably about thirty five percent East Indian. Thirty four percent African descent. And then the rest are Middle Eastern, other Asians, Europeans mix. So I’m coming from that type of background and experience, but I identify as a black Caribbean American woman.

 

Yaa Boayke: [00:01:36] Incredible and Shalese?

 

Shalese Pugh: [00:01:38] I am African-American.

 

Yaa Boayke: [00:01:43] Love it, same. It’s funny because my dad has Ghanaian roots, my mom’s from the South, but I definitely associate more with her side. So it’s kind of interesting how everyone decides to associate themselves. So a big part of growing up with different cultures and different experiences is being able to interact and communicate with people over food. So growing up, can you each share what role that cultural food play in your household?

 

Shalese Pugh: [00:02:14] So as you just said, your mom is from the south. I am from North Carolina, the south. So just food is everything at all events, at church events, for holidays. It’s all about the food, great comfort food. So a lot of heavier types of foods. I mean, it was ingrained, that’s something we always had. So the sweet tea, my grandma used to make it on the porch. So we used to do sun sweet tea that was cultural for us. Cornbread, corn, and my grandma will put corn in the cornbread, sweet potato pies. You got to have the sweet potato pies, mac and cheese, collard greens, okra. Those were the foods that I grew up eating.

 

Yaa Boayke: [00:03:07] Yum, okra. You said the magic word, love okra and Aminta?

 

Aminta Bullard: [00:03:15] Yeah. So cultural food definitely played a big part in our household growing up. You know, definitely the centerpiece of the family dinners, the big family holidays with all my string band of cousins, as we call it. And, you know, I think for my parents, it was definitely a way for them to stay connected to their homeland because I grew up eating Trinidadian food like all my life. So I, I did taste and eat some African American foods. But it really wasn’t until I went to college in the south, south connection. I went to college in the south and in Alabama and there were just some things I had not really heard of, like biscuits and gravy. I’m like what and, you know, they had the greens in the cafeteria and this and that. Our version of the greens is callaloo, you know what I mean? So it was really interesting to branch out and broaden my horizons when I went to college. But, you know, again, that connection from my parents and even helping us to stay rooted in our heritage. So even now, if you go into the kitchen, like there has to be a bottle of Trinidadian pepper sauce, must.

 

Yaa Boayke: [00:04:40] And you know what’s so interesting, especially being in the United States and being women of color that are dietitians, it’s very easy for the black experience to be considered a monolith. Right? So if people were to look at all of us, you guys are only listening to our voices, you would think, oh, they’re black women, they eat soul food. But most people don’t realize we’re not a monolith. There are people that really associate themselves with their Caribbean heritage or their West African heritage or their East African heritage or their South African heritage, which is why it’s so important for dietitians that have various cultural backgrounds to be a part of this health community so we can share our understanding of what it’s like to eat a certain way, because Aminta and, like I don’t eat similarly. And of course, like looking at Shalese and Aminta, you guys don’t eat similarly. But people would assume and this is why it’s so important to be culturally aware and not make assumptions around food. So I love that you guys share how different your food experiences are. And a big part of that is like education. Right? We need more education around how much variety there is within the African American, Caribbean American, African, I honestly just draw people from Africa like African descent, like the differences in the food, but we’re not necessarily getting that. So when you are enrolled in school, do you feel like the classes adequately educating you and your peers about people who share your ethnic background? Why or why not?

 

Aminta Bullard: [00:06:27] Ok, so thankfully, I went to an HBCU for undergrad, as I mentioned, I think. So cultural competence was definitely interwoven into the nutrition curriculum. And, you know, my professors, they did make mention of my ethnic foods. I actually did happen to have one professor who was Trinidadian. So I got lucky. On the graduate level, though, it was a little bit different. It was a little bit different over there. There was more of the push for the mainstream diet on that side of town.

 

Yaa Boayke: [00:07:07] That’s super interesting. And Shalese? How about your experience?

 

Shalese Pugh: [00:07:10] So I like that not only are Aminta and I from different backgrounds, but we also went to different places for college. So I went to a predominantly white institution for undergraduate and graduate school. So as you can imagine, it was only one or two of us in my undergraduate and I was the only one in my class in graduate school. So you can imagine, no, there was not a lot of education around, I took one class where we had to do a presentation around cultural foods. And actually, it’s funny, she’s actually my friend. I’ve known her since I was five years old and grew up in the same neighborhood and we ended up in the same class. I’m a year ahead of her, but we were partnered together and we had to make something Hawaiian. But as far as celebrating African-American, I didn’t feel that. I just what stood out for me the most during college was my professor. He was in the Peace Corps and he talked about how when he was in, he went to Africa, he came back lactose intolerant because that was to me, that was the only thing that they talked about as far as being an African-American, was that once you’re over 30, you’re more likely to become lactose intolerant. And so he was saying as a Caucasian male, because I was over in Africa, I ended up coming home and I’m lactose intolerant. And that’s kind of what has stood out. I’m probably 15, almost 20 years out of college. And that’s just something that has still stuck with me as far as what was taught. So that was as far as it went. Now, in grad school level, especially being in the area that I was in, it was a predominantly even the town, predominantly white town. So there was only a small percentage of African-Americans.

 

Yaa Boayke: [00:08:58] Wow. Yeah. Myself, I had a similar experience to Shalese, my undergrad, very, very few minorities, my DPT program. I can count on my hand the number of people that looked like me in my program and even wrapping up, I still haven’t seen more people join since being in it. And we have just one class. It’s a blanket class, multicultural foods. So they give you the express experience in 16 weeks. And obviously that’s a disservice, right? Like what? How much can you learn about different cultures over the course of 16 weeks? So it’s interesting where the gap lies. I love it. I love hearing that at your HBCU, you prioritize that and it makes me wonder if that’s kind of the next move. Adding more dietetics programs at HBCU’s. I’m not sure off the top of my head how many programs exist, but I’m guessing it’s not nearly as many as the traditional predominantly white institutions in the US. The other thing I would like to talk about more back into schooling is when you were enrolled in school, did you feel like. Or sorry, we’ll talk about the workforce, once you were in the workforce, would you say that you were running into professionals who looked like you? And if yes, how did that make you feel? And why does this matter? If no, how did that make you feel? Do you see this as a hardship or disadvantage? Why or why not?

 

Aminta Bullard: [00:10:28] So I live in the Washington, D.C. area, so there are a lot of black professionals here, so I’ll start by saying that. But I want to take it back a little bit to my public health internship. When I was back in grad school, I was able to do one of my rotations with the USDA here in the D.C. area. Now, one of my preceptors was a lady named Donna Johnson Bailey, and she was a black woman, which I was pleasantly surprised. I wasn’t expecting this at all. And the other thing is that she was also a master in public health with registered dietitian certification as well. So she was what I was trying to become and I see her there. She’s leading projects, etc. and it was really inspiring. She was the only black woman in that division also, I might add. But that was the first time I even envisioned myself as being able to, you know, get a federal position and make a change on the federal level, doing something in policy. And that made a huge difference for me. It became my dream. You know, that came my dream from that day forward. I did eventually was able to work in a federal position as well. So, yes, representation matters. Five thousand percent.

 

Yaa Boayke: [00:12:06] Shalese?

 

Shalese Pugh: [00:12:07] And so I agree with Aminta, representation definitely matters. So for me, I live in Atlanta, so there Aminta said is that there’s a lot of black professionals here in Atlanta. But what was interesting for me was that when I worked in WIC, that was my first job after grad school, there were a lot of black dietitians at WIC. Now, when I transitioned to the children’s hospital. I’m the only one. I’m the only one in my office. So that I mean it did seem as if there was OK, what happened? Because I saw a lot in WIC and it could be because here in the state of Georgia, if you work there, they had a program where you could end up becoming a dietitian and so they had a state internship. So maybe that was why. But I did feel like, OK, I’ll see more at the hospital. No, I was the only one. And then a few years later, my friend Jessica ended up becoming a dietitian and she worked there and then she worked at another campus. So I was the only one at my campus. She was only one at her campus. And so you just feel like man, where are the African-American dietitians, where are we?

 

Yaa Boayke: [00:13:21] Yeah, it is, it’s really insane that it’s 2021, I mean, thank goodness we have a female VP, but we’re still so backwards in some of these other areas and hopefully knock on wood, we’re progressing in that direction where you can show up in a clinical setting and see more representation because there was also just the barrier to entry. Clinical positions are coveted and they’re very complex and complicated and the whole process of who you know and how to get in. I’m hoping there’s just more programs that funnel more people of color into clinical positions, because that’s where we need a lot of support. I mean, WIC as well. We need support with that as well. But it would be great to go to a hospital and have someone walk in the room and they’re like, closely mirroring you.

 

Shalese Pugh: [00:14:11] So can I just add one more thing to is, especially when you’re doing your internship like Aminta, she had somebody that she saw that she’s like, that’s what I aspire to be. I think as a woman of color, you want to see somebody like you that’s doing different roles within dietetics other than, like I said, if I just saw them doing WIC, then I might think all of us pretty much it for me and for some of them, that’s what they aspire to do. But I had different goals and dreams for myself. I just didn’t want to stay at WIC, you know. And so I didn’t know all the different aspects that you could go into being a dietitian.

 

Yaa Boayke: [00:14:48] That’s a thing that is really tough, getting more preceptors. Right. So more preceptors of color, being able to find a directory where we can all easily be connected. So diversified dietetics is an awesome resource for those of you listening. And if you are a person of color who wants to feel more connected, that’s a great community to check out. What advice would you guys give to non POC, non-people of color who work in environments with few African-Americans? So we just talked about how important it is to feel comfortable and obviously representation would help. But we know we’re years and years, hopefully not a decade, away from that really happening. And obviously, the podcast, we have lots of listeners that are going to listen in, most of your peers, which is what? Eighty three percent white females who want to be better allies, who want to figure out a way to make an environment that’s more comfortable. So what advice would you share with them? And why does this advice matter?

 

Shalese Pugh: [00:15:57] I would, especially when you’re talking to clients, asking them about the foods that they eat within their own culture, just because we might have all grown up in the south, we still might be totally different from how you are eating and not just throw out eat salads, because I know plenty of people, they’ll say I’m not even a salad if. I lose weight and need a salad. That’s, for us, can I lose weight and eat my collard greens. Is there a way that you can tell me how to eat a healthier version of fried chicken? You know, we have fish on Fridays. What can I do to still enjoy my cultural foods? And you’re not going to come in here and tell me, you know, I could just eat a salad and maybe drink a smoothie. They immediately will maybe tune you out. You actually listen, showing your client that you’re listening to and also you’re speaking as your peers, that you’re listening to them, that you’re hearing about their difference. Don’t just assume that you understand because you are in the same geographical area.

 

Yaa Boayke: [00:17:05] That’s a good one. So good. And Aminta?

 

Aminta Bullard: [00:17:10] So this comes more from a coworker perspective because we do have our colleagues and our peers that we work with professionally. So my advice is that if you’re someone who really, truly believes in equity, if you are someone who truly believes that there is only one race, the human race, then I really implore you to have a moment of truth with yourself about the things that you were taught, whether outright or subconsciously growing up about blacks, people of color and how that might be affecting you subconsciously now. And one way to think about this is, you know, do you speak up when your friends and family make inappropriate and racist comments? That’s a good sign, whether you’re as nonracist as you thought you were. You know, there’s that common comment, well, I do have a black friend. OK, but, you know, do you really stand up for what’s right? And the reason why this matters is because it will spill out as microaggressions and passive-aggressive behavior that we experience in the workplace, that we’re here smiling but having a good time on the podcast. But these are things that we experience on the daily. And so that’s my advice for you really have a come to Jesus moment with yourself.

 

Yaa Boayke: [00:18:49] Absolutely. I 100 percent agree with you. And if you are someone that’s in a position of power, look at your hiring practice. Look at how you’re recruiting for your internships. Are you going out of your way to fill in the gaps that we’re talking about? If you’re only recruiting and going to schools that don’t have much diversity and your internship classes always look the same. What are you actively doing to attract talent? Are there grants and stipends you can offer? Because that is another thing that’s wildly unfair, right? Some people are more advantaged, like have a head start. They have an advantage in terms of being able to pay for these costly internships and look at what you can do within your team to also make improvements. I think what you said, Aminta, is so spot-on is that self-reflection and figuring out is there any bias that you’re holding that you haven’t really come to terms with. And that’s a good exercise to repeat frequently, not even just like a one and done.

 

Aminta Bullard: [00:19:49] I had a conversation with a white woman recently and basically she validated what I had to say in my experiences. But I know that people listening to this right now might say, well, that couldn’t be, you know, I’m a good person. The person who’s the head of my internship program is a good person. Why would she ever keep somebody out? But my undergraduate program had an internship program. But guess what? There were a majority of white people in our internship program, people were barely able to get accepted to the internship program at my HBCU that was headed up by a non-black person at that time.

 

Yaa Boayke: [00:20:39] Wow.

 

Aminta Bullard: [00:20:42] I said it. I did. Mm-hmm.

 

Yaa Boayke: [00:20:47] Wow. And this is what we’re talking about. That is so terrible. I’m just going to have to just say it. It’s terrible. It’s unfortunate. But these are the things that we have to have a real conversation about. Can you look around your clinical office right now where, if you’re listening to this podcast episode in your office and say, what can we do to be better, be better practitioners on the floor, do better with recruiting and hiring because you have to proactively do this. This isn’t passive work because there’s not a lot of us that are going to walk around with this credential. So until the numbers shift, people actually have to get off their butts and recruit better for new RDs and recruit better for dietetic internship programs, I’m just going to say it because it’s really hard work to do it. And if you’re a person of color where you’re barely getting a lot of access to resources, it can really feel like you’re climbing from literally a pit to come up, which is so unfortunate. And we need to have a light shining down so we can have a guided path. Part of that means having more allies in this and not just an Instagram post, not like a little poll, not retweeting Kamala Harris and stuff to show like ally-ship not, oh, my God, I’m doing this one thing. I donate it to this cause. No, like, literally what can you do? Can you take on an intern right now? If you have a social media business and you’re marketing your business on social media, can you recruit someone? If you’re an internship director, are you being aware that the fact that your classes always look the same? Aminta, that story is mind-boggling. You went to an HBCU and a majority of the interns were white, like what.

 

Aminta Bullard: [00:22:34] Girl, it still blows my mind to this day, but, you know, I try to just move past it with grace because that actually is what pushed me to do my coordinated program. That’s why I have my masters today. I am a better person for it. And it has grown me professionally and opened a lot of opportunities for me. So that door being closed opened many more for me. So I’m grateful.

 

Yaa Boayke: [00:23:01] Yeah, that’s an amazing reframe, growth mindset reframe. All about that. And the last question I have for you ladies, since we’re on the topic of career, what career advice or words of encouragement do you have for newer African-American dietitians or dietitians of color and RDs to be like me? I would love to hear some of your insights about that.

 

Aminta Bullard: [00:23:26] So my advice would be number one, learn how to network effectively with other black dietitians and prospective mentors, and what that means is learning how to follow up, not just saying, hi, I want to work with you. I want to know that you want this. I want to know that you’re persistent because if you can’t show me the effort now, how can I recommend you to someone else? We also want you to follow up after you’re gone. Let us know how you’re doing? We invested in you. You already know dietitians are overworked. So we took our time to invest in you. So we want to know, hey, how are you doing? How are you coming along in your career? Second, be bold and show up as your best self. Don’t let imposter syndrome get the best of you. For me when I’m scared and I feel myself shrinking I literally ask myself what would I do if I were a white man? And then I go do it, boom.

 

Yaa Boayke: [00:24:30] People are going to be ready for this episode.

 

Shalese Pugh: [00:24:37] So my advice would be that honestly, the world is yours. Whatever you can think that your mind can perceive that you can do, you can do it. Don’t put yourself in a box. Sometimes I feel like that as women of color that we may put ourselves in a box and it’s like, oh, I can’t do it. I can’t be a successful online dietitian I can’t have my own practice because nobody’s going to want to buy it for me. I don’t see other dietitians, women of color that are in this space there. I don’t see them making the six figures. I don’t see that. Well go out and do it. There’s nothing stopping you, especially with social media. I mean, there’s, what, seven billion people on this earth. I mean, whoever is meant to be attracted to you will be attracted to you. They are so many things that you can do, whether it’s sales, whether it’s clinical, whether it’s your own business. I mean, food service. I mean, we have so many different career options as school nutrition, as dietitians that we can do. Just don’t play yourself small or shrink yourself down because somebody has made you feel that way.

 

Yaa Boayke: [00:25:57] Yeah, you’re right. I like your point about social media, because what we’re going to do is we’re going to see has anyone done it and we’re going to allow ourselves to be the feedback if we can do it. And I love this idea of you can just do it if it’s in your mind, regardless if you see it or not. I think that’s so important because on social media, I’m so grateful that the tide has turned in these last few years that I’m able to find you guys and find other women of color. Still haven’t found as many as I’d like, but we all need to get on social media. The more we’re in there, the algorithm will push us all out into the universe. So if you’re listening to this and you are a student or you are a dietitian, put yourself online so people can see, wow, there are women of color doing this and men I know we’re also lagging in the men department as well. So if you’re a guy as well and you’re a dietitian, we want to see you as well. So thank you so much, Aminta. And thank you so much, Shalese.

 

Aminta Bullard: [00:26:55] Yeah, really quick, support. You’ve got to support one another. I mean, Aminta and I met through the DB program and we keep in touch and She and I still text. You know, she had some things going on. She was checking in on me. I mean, that’s what you want to have in a community. We’re not competition. I mean, she even texted me saying, hey, somebody was thinking about keto, I’m sending them to you, that’s what we should be. We should have a network where we’re uplifting one another and we’re looking out for each other. Hey, there’s an opportunity here. Are you interested in is this? Is this something you’re interested in? I think supporting one another is another big thing and not looking at your other fellow woman of color dietitian as, oh, that’s my competition.

 

Aminta Bullard: [00:27:45] Agree. There is definitely room for all of us.

 

Yaa Boayke: [00:27:49] All this makes my heart filled with so much joy. Ladies, this has been so good. I’m so grateful that the program united us all because I do think it’s so important and I’m wishing you both so much success and growth. I keep my eyes on both of you on social media. And if you guys ever need anything, please DM me, I love this circle that you’re forming and those of you guys that are listening, go follow them. We want to create a circle. We want to create a network. So be visible and do it for the future. We have to do it for the future. We have to show up not only for our clients but for people who want to be just like you two, as well.

 

Shalese Pugh: [00:28:27] Thank you.