The Informed Table

Ten summers ago, on a balmy night in Bangor, Maine, I stood with a beer in hand and my best friend Sam beside me, waiting for Dolly Parton to walk onstage. To be truthful, I wasn’t a fan when I agreed to go. Sam, however, was a mega-fan who had even been to Dollywood, and…

For a lot of my clients, the cravings show up after dinner. Dishes are done, the day is winding down, and suddenly the Oreos or Doritos seem urgent. There’s nothing wrong with enjoying a favorite treat, but if you’re downing a bag of “sharing size” peanut M&Ms night after night, that pattern can catch up…

Last week I ate a slice of Costco pizza off a paper plate and had a small existential moment. How did I, a nutrition professional, end up here? Instead of beating myself up, I got curious. And I remembered that there’s a concept from business and design theory called Jobs to Be Done, which holds…

Most of the conversation around diet and menopause focuses on symptoms: hot flashes, sleep, mood. But in my view, the more important question underneath it is longevity. The menopause transition marks a real shift in cardiovascular, bone, and metabolic risk, and what you eat from here forward matters more. The Mediterranean pattern has the deepest…

I was 9 or 10, browsing the shelves of the UNH library, when I found her. Not a title first, a face, painted in dark, almost somber colors, her eyes turned away to the side like she was watching something just out of frame. That was Juniper, by Monica Furlong. The book tells Juniper’s own story,…

Less than 1% of women’s health funding goes to menopause research, according to Dr. Susan Reed.1 Half of humanity goes through this transition, and we’re still working with almost no dedicated data to show for it. That’s why I’m excited about Project Tapestry, a research initiative from Otsuka Precision Health collecting de-identified data from women across…

Last week I spent a weekend doing things my 15-year-old self would recognize: swimming in my friend’s parents’ pool, wandering a mall with no particular agenda. The only real update to the formula was the top-shelf Manhattans. The company was the same, too. Carrie and I met at new kids’ day when we were 15, she…

Last weekend I flew to NJ for a weekend with my girlfriends. One of my favorite parts of traveling solo is the ritual I do the moment I clear security: I case the San Diego airport for healthy takeaway. I wander past the same coffee kiosks, hunt down the one spot selling something fresh and…

A couple of months ago, my friend John, a retired physician, gave me an excellent book over lunch: The Score: How to Stop Playing Someone Else’s Game, by philosopher C. Thi Nguyen. I’ve been thinking about it since. Nguyen is interested in the games we sign up for without realizing it, and how their scoring systems…