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Aman: Folks, are you interested in sports nutrition, or even nutrition in general? Or do you wanna be a student in the public health space? Well, our guest today, Samantha Harris, is gonna walk us through the entire landscape, on this episode of the I AM GPH podcast. Samantha began her career at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where she acquired a bachelor's of science in health communications, while being a student athlete on the rowing team. In fact, Samantha also used to be a rowing coach. After graduating, Samantha moved into the nutrition space as a diabetic assistant at Hy-Vee Rx and a research manager at Consano Clinical Research and also a current student at, the NYU School of Global Public Health, studying public health nutrition. Samantha, welcome to the I AM GPH podcast. It's good to have you here.
Samantha: Thank you, thank you. It's good to be here.
Aman: I hope I said the names of those companies right by the way.
Samantha: Yeah, Hy-Vee is a grocery store in the Midwest, it's like a big chain. Everything else I believe was correct.
Aman: Okay, awesome, Hy-Vee.
Samantha: Yeah.
Aman: All right, Samantha. Let's get started. I'd love to start with your story and with regards to NYU and where you are right now, why did you choose to come to New York? What did it offer you, that made it an enticing option for you to pursue your career out here?
Samantha: Yeah, so, on top of public health nutritions, my end goal is to be a registered dietician, which is a medical license, and there's not many programs that offer that, you need to have a master's degree. And so, you can either do a master of science or masters of public health. And I was really more interested in going the public health route as far as my master's, and so that narrowed it down even further. And then when it came to, my choices, really, I went to the University of Wisconsin, which was great and I loved it, but it's a college town and I really was ready to live in a bigger city, I felt like there were more connections to be made, there are more opportunities, it was just overall a better fit for me. And then the program at NYU just matched all my goals and everything I wanted to do, so I went with it and so far am having a great time.
Aman: Wow, well. Is there anything different about New York out here that stands out specifically? So you mentioned it was a college town, but what are some things that stand out to you about the place?
Samantha: I think for beings, like New York is New York. It's huge, it's massive. Everyone says everything's at your fingertips, but with that being said, my program is tiny and it really feels like a family. And so even though I'm in this huge space, we have three different professors and I know them all on their first name basis. And we have one PhD student and I work with her every day. So they'll all have connections within the city, so I can go out and enjoy the big city, but also I'm in this tiny, family community of a program, which just brings the best of both of them.
Aman: Mm-hmm, wow. I love that. The small tight-knit community aspect.
Samantha: Yeah.
Aman: Awesome. So you said you wanted to be a registered dietician and hence you're in the master's degree because of that. Where did that start for you? Why is that journey, the final goal at this time for you?
Samantha: Yeah, so like every 18 year old, I go off to school, I was really good in the STEM field, didn't fully know what I wanted to do. So I was like, "Okay, I'm going to be an engineer." I have a bunch of engineers in my family, I knew I didn't wanna be a doctor. You know, medical school sounded terrible to me, and so I kind of didn't think about all these other in-betweens. First semester of engineering, I was pretty good at it, but hated it. And I didn't like any of the job opportunities. So I took a semester of like a bunch of other courses, like anything from nutrition to PT, to speech language pathology — all sort of like STEMy fields. And in the same semester, my older brother who was also an athlete got diagnosed with type 1 diabetes, which is an autoimmune disease, where you now rely on insulin to be your pancreas, so your body's not working. And while that was happening, I had this great nutrition course and everything just kind of came into play at the same time, and I realized that my dream job did exist as someone who loves to cook and food and all of that sort of stuff. I just didn't know it was out there. So everything just kind of fell in place.
Aman: Wow, I love how that journey just came into play. You mentioned in our offline discussion that, we must create our own opportunities, and as you mentioned, you carved out your own path and discovered that. How would you recommend others that are perhaps currently on the same journey as you or would like to hop on the same journey as you are currently on?
Samantha: Yeah, so there's a bunch of different ways where I feel like you can pave your own opportunity and part of that is knowing your strengths and knowing what you can offer someone. There were two different jobs, where I literally went up to the person and said, "I love what you're doing, I think I can help you make it better," in like a very polite professional way, you know, I didn't say it that frankly. And it was like, "I would love to help out, I believe you'd be a great resource and a mentor for me and you could teach me so much, but at the same time I also believe, I can use my skills to help you." And from that, I've had some great opportunities, anything from like someone who's a little bit older and social media and getting more in the 21st century or to public health perspective and being like, let's bring this into the modern time and keep everything doing and make everyone else know why it's relevant.
Aman: Okay. What's one of the tips that's worked the best for you?
Samantha: In regards to like creating my own path?
Aman: Mm-hmm.
Samantha: This is gonna sound really repetitive, but networking, you know people really, it's not about sending a cold email, or cold call, it's about really knowing the person and knowing what they do and knowing their strengths. And so talking to them, it could be, both of my opportunities that I kind of paved my own way started as informational interviews. I was like, "Can I have 30 minutes? Can we just talk to listen and hear what you did, get some strengths, weaknesses." And then from that a connection was built and I was able to build upon that. So really does come down to, just treating everyone as humans and trying to learn from the people who are above you.
Aman: I love that, I love that. Gonna apply that myself actually going forward. So you've done a bunch of things, as we have discussed in the beginning as well, where you're a researcher right now and you're working on the project in Cambridge. What do you do to keep that diverse taste, what can students do to keep that diverse taste in their PH path for example?
Samantha: Yeah, so the thing is, public health nutrition and public health in general, it's public health. It literally touches everything that we do. And so I feel that there are so many things that I'm interested in that I don't like saying, no. I do say no because of time and trying to manage everything that I do, but if there's an opportunity that genuinely sounds interesting to me and I know will help give me a new skillset or opportunities and I have time for it and whatnot, then I like to say yes and see what I learn. And if I do it, and I find out that maybe this isn't something I wanna do, I learn that, but I wouldn't know that until I've tried. So I try to keep my general within public health and within nutrition. But within that, there's so many little subsets. It's all about learning and opening the doors, 'cause once the doors are open you can keep them open.
Aman: Yeah so, I love that, I love that. And you seem to have had a journey that has developed on top of each other over time. So what doors have opened up for you ever since? The informational interviews, networking, the hard work and doing something and discovering that path — what doors has it opened for you and your future?
Samantha. So many. So many, so many. Almost all of my opportunities I've had here at NYU came from, one like informational interview, sit down chat with our PhD student. And she's a registered dietician and kind of where I would love to be in 10 years time. And we had a sit down and talking and she's like, "I'd love to get you involved in our conversation." Then she like sent me saying, "Hey, there's this research opportunity I think you'd love." And one thing just leads to another and that kind of opened all of these doors for jobs I'm currently in. And that's from one interview, you know? Pre the school year starting, when we were all on Zoom, I had never been to campus, I'd never met anyone in-person, and that was one meeting. And that basically shaped my entire experience that I've had so far.
Aman: Wow, wow, that's so awesome. So you have this journey where you have network with people and you're currently in the public health program, so how are you leveraging the public health background right now with your future opportunities?
Samantha. Yeah. How am I leveraging it? That's a great question. Public health, I just try to bring it into everything that I do, because I feel like it is such a big thing and you can't tackle public health from, like up top, it kind of needs to be grassroots. And also, it just needs to be a bunch of little changes, 'cause you're not gonna get everyone to flip overnight. So I just gotta remember, how will this affect large populations? Is this being discriminatory or is this hurting one population? Is it marginalizing? Is this accessible to a lot of people? And just asking like some more basic questions before I move forward with projects and concepts to see how I can make it more accessible to the greater good.
Aman: Yeah, so you mentioned the word community quite often. And so what are you learning right now and what opportunities are these opportunities doing for the community aspect of things in your life right now?
Samantha: Yeah, I mean, community, to me, I feel like is the backbone. I grew up in a very strong community, I'm very close with like my family, and I have a very large family, and to me, that's part of my community. And so I just try to think, okay, if someone else didn't have that, they wouldn't have the sports system, so how can we make that? Like, I don't really give them a support, like that doesn't sound, I don't wanna force things on people. But how can we give people the resources that maybe I was able to just call up an uncle or call up a friend and ask a question 'cause they knew they had that answer. Try to make resources available to people who may not have that. I also feel that when I say community, I mean personal connections and you know that one-on-one. And so I'd say GPH, to me, is a really tight-knit community, where everyone has a positive attitude, they wanna help out, they're there for the greater good of people. And so I find that really helpful in just everything that I do because my program itself is tiny and then GPH itself, compared to New York, is also really small, but I know I could go knock on any door and say, "Hi, I have a question" and they'll be more than happy to answer it.
Aman: Love that, love that. So Samantha you're in this space, which is highly extensive and a lot of folks wanna learn a lot about it. So what I'd love to hear for the audiences, that are not even a student and a prospective student, what are some three myths, for example, that you'd like to debunk, with all the research you have learned in your area?
Samantha: Wow, there's a lot of things. So I do a lot of research on a lot of different topics, I think when it comes to like sports and sports nutrition, as someone who was a D1 athlete, I still love sports nutrition, and I do see myself going down that route, but with a more public health aspect. With sports, I would say, you are probably getting enough protein, you need to eat more carbohydrates — carbohydrates will make you be faster and a better athlete, so stop focusing on your protein and start focusing on carbs. That's probably the general population, but like specifically sports also. Another really common one is, fat doesn't make you fat — it's all about the types of fat and eating a more healthy balanced diet. And then the third is that, eating healthy does not mean what you think it is: eating kale and salad, every single day, eating healthy can be culturally relevant. It can be cheap. It can be affordable. It's really all how you make it. So there are ways to fit all foods in a diet and health is not a one size fits all and it's not a skinny, little human that looks nothing like you, has no background or genetics similar to you. Health fits you at your, there is health in all sizes, in all shapes, in all forms and your diet can reflect that.
Aman: Love it. What are the fats though? I like to hear more about the fats. So which ones are the ones that folks should look into and which ones are the ones they should stay away from?
Samantha: Yeah, so you've probably heard that trans fats are bad, this is very true, I would say that. So you should stick to healthy fats, which are gonna be things that are liquid at room temperature, and there are some saturated fats that also aren't terrible for you. So things like avocado, olive oil, canola oil. Canola oil is actually very healthy for you. Fatty fish is really good for you, and all of these fats actually help lower your cholesterol, they don't raise it. So fun fact, that all of your hormones, so everyone knows you have hormones. Every hormone in your body has cholesterol in it and they're based off of cholesterol, so eating those healthy fats will actually help your hormones regulate themselves.
Aman: Wow.
Samantha: That kind of went like all over the place.
Aman: Yeah, I got it. Folks replay this part and make sure you take notes, very important. So let's take it to the flip side then Sammy. What are the three most important things with regards to health that you'd like to share with the audience?
Samantha: I think one of them was debunking, the same thing, that the most important thing, is that health is more than what you see on the outside and health, there is health on all sizes, so it doesn't matter, your skin tone, your race, your gender, your identity, your build, how much weight you have, health is a bigger indicator than what you look like. It includes so many other factors. So don't let someone tell you that there's one size for health, that'd be just flat out not true. Two, another thing that I think is super important: I am a big believer of that food as medicine and food, one community eating with other people is great and is actually, there's a lot of studies, about the benefits to eating with other people. But food is medicine and a lot of these epidemics we're in like obesity, cardiovascular, type 2 diabetes, can be prevented with a proper diet. And a proper diet, again, is not kale and quinoa — there is a lot of other things to that. And three don't underestimate water.
Aman: Okay.
Samantha: Water is, just drink water, it's good.
Aman: To that, I will take a sip.
Samantha: Yeah, great, it's really hard to be over, it's possible, but it's very hard to be over hydrated.
Aman: Well what is over hydrated?
Samantha: So over hydrated essentially means that, did you ever take a science class, where you learned like, the cells either shrivel or will swell?
Aman: Mm-hmm.
Samantha: So like hypotonic is when it swells, so over hydrating is when your cells hydrates so much, that they basically burst, which is really bad, 'cause we don't wanna kill ourselves. So the biggest issue is over hydration is that you're messing up your sodium levels compared. So it's equally as bad as dehydration in different ways, and it's possible, which is very hard. And most people are chronically dehydrated, so drink water.
Aman: Wow. Well folks, that was the fun facts with Samantha, going forward. And that's awesome, I think that's something we should all reconsider and actually, redirect our lives into that direction and knowing these things, because it's so basic yet so complicated in our current world for that matter. So what are some resources that folks should follow to educate and take care of themselves, where should they be looking today?
Samantha: So I think the biggest thing, when they're trying to take care of themselves is, there's two things. One, so registered dieticians are a medical license, anyone can call themselves nutritionists. Registered dieticians, can also called registered dietician, nutritionist, so RD or RDN. But when someone says they're a nutritionist, there is no medical license. Anyone can call themselves a nutritionist at any point in time, just because they feel like it. There is no credentialing behind it. So when you are looking for health resources related to dietician, make sure you are talking or looking for a registered dietician, that's the first thing. 'Cause they have the accreditations, so it'd be like going to a doctor versus going to someone who says, :I healed myself so I know what's best for you." That's like in simplistic terms, of how it, just make sure that they're licensed and credentialed. The other thing I would say is when it comes to looking for information, if you're more of looking for like scholarly stuff, look at where the funding comes from, because a lot of times funding will influence where the research goes. And so you wanna make sure that you're looking at, you know, say for example, studies on dairy. You wanna make sure it's not funded by the dairy industry, to make sure you're getting a non-biased view of what's actually happening. And also fun fact dairy is actually anti-inflammatory for you, not inflammatory. But that was just my example of know where your resources are coming from because you wanna make sure you're getting as accurate of information and following the science that you can.
Aman: I love it, masterclass with Samantha, love that. Great information. So I'd like to just pivot, towards the final section of our interview, and I'm curious to know because when you speak of all of these things, there's such excitement in your face and I love listening to all those things that you're mentioning. So what keeps you motivated, what keeps you going everyday to be in this field and continuing with it?
Samantha: Yeah, I feel like there are not, a ton of registered dieticians, a lot of people don't know who we are, or that we're just learning about it, but everyone needs to eat food. Everyone needs to fuel their body and so I feel that the more dieticians there are out there, the more... you know, everyone loves Googling what the best diet is. And the more that happens, we're not gonna go anywhere. So the more dieticians that are out there, the more difference we can make and helping people have healthy relationships with food, having a healthy diet, being able to better their health, being able to make all these differences. And I feel like, the more we can do the better it is because, Google is always gonna be there. And so we have to fight people who don't understand where like the information, where it's coming from, versus I'm spending eight years of school to get this medical license and will have credentialing and have to keep up with that and I'm studying to be a food doctor, versus just a two second Google search. So I feel like the more information that's out there, the more we can help better the society in general, I should end the say it with that, if that makes sense.
Aman: Yeah, are there any other things that you see in the world that keep you moving and keep you pushing that "Hey, I'm here for a reason, I love this"?
Samantha: Yeah. One of the big things to me is that people feel like they have to eat a certain way in order to be healthy and that just isn't true. All foods fit in a diet, ice cream is one of my favorite foods, and you shouldn't be told that you can't eat food that makes you happy, that's culturally relevant. Any of those things because it's labeled as unhealthy, when how you grew up eating food is probably pretty healthy, presuming you didn't eat McDonald's every day. There is a way to make foods that are relevant to you, happy and healthy and good. And the fact that everyone believes that they need to eat one way, just isn't true. So I feel like there's so many different cultures and religions and just like ethnic backgrounds in this country that we need to be able to tailor all of that. And food really can help prevent heart disease and type 2 diabetes and all these big things that cost tons of money. So I'd much rather help the world prevent those diseases, than have to then educate themselves on how to stay on medicine for the rest of their life.
Aman: Amazing. Now, Samantha, I'm gonna give you a magic wand.
Samantha: Okay.
Aman: And I would love to see, if I gave you that magic wand and you're able to solve one problem that exists in public health, which is the one problem you would choose to get rid of with that magic wand?
Samantha: Oh, there're so many problems. I feel like I need to be in "Aladdin" and have like three wishes. Mine is kind of a two-part answer, so that's how I'm gonna get around this one question thing. Food deserts are a huge one/big companies coming in and not understanding how the neighborhood functions. And so like either the food deserts in combination with the disruption of what the urban landscape looks like. So I would, with my magic wand, fix the urban landscaping in regards to food, whether it be not culturally appropriate or a food desert and they need access. Does that make sense?
Aman: Yeah, yeah. Unless you'd like to add something more to it, we'll give you another magic wand.
Samantha: A magic wand, wow. I would make fruits and vegetables as cheap as fries and hamburgers and all of that from fast food chains. Aand I would make the hamburgers and processed foods, and all that stuff, would make it as expensive as salads are — I would flip them. And then a lot of our issues would go away. That we're working on reducing.
Aman: Folks, that was an awesome masterclass, a class full of inspiration and great words of wisdom about the industry. Samantha, thank you so much for sharing all your knowledge and your guidance to all listeners and perhaps future and current students on this path, just like you.
Samantha: Yeah, thank you for having me, this was great, you know. Glad I could talk about public health nutrition.
Aman: Awesome, thanks for tuning in folks to another episode of the I AM GPH podcast. I will see you in the next one.