The Training of the School Dietitian
- Author:
Mary Schwartz Rose, Ph.D.,
Department of Nutrition, Teachers’ College, Columbia University, N. Y.
Only a few years ago the term dietitian suggested a person who prepared special dishes for the sick in a hospital kitchen, or a managing housekeeper in some type of institution, who often held her position with 110 professional equipment except practical experience in her own home. With the rapid development of education in the household arts in schools and colleges, accompanying a period of great activity in the biological and social sciences, there has come to be at least partial recognition of the fact that providing food for human beings is a science as well as an art, and that the welfare of individuals or groups is, to a high degree, dependent upon the conditions under which they eat their food. If a school child has 110 regular meals, but boils coffee and takes it with bread whenever he happens to feel like it, it is no longer considered a mysterious dispensation of Providence that .lie turns out a dull pupil or a bad citizen. The small army of little folks who start to school every day without breakfast, are generally feeble and inattentive. Foreign children whose parents are ignorant of American food materials and how to use them, and who are in consequence fed corn and peas and beans cold from the can, have been discovered. Investigations into such conditions have not only raised the cry, “Bread with Education,” but have shown that undernutrition is due quite as much to ignorance as to poverty, and have helped to amend the slogan to “Bread as a Means of Education.” All this agitation has created a demand for trained women who know the full meaning of Bread and who are able to develop the educational features of school feeding, inculcating mot, only a respect for food as the builder and maintainor of the body, but also an appreciation of the beauty of neatness and order in eating, and a sense of the social value of partaking of food in company with others.
Lunch-rooms are being established in elementary and high schools. Jo carry 011 the work thus begun, suitable persons should be placed in charge of the rapidly increasing number of college dormitories, so that throughout the whole period of growth, some twenty-five years, students may have suitable food to keep tliem strong and well, and be led to form eating habits which will help to conserve their energies in later life and promote their social welfare. This again means a demand for trained women, with a large capacity for responsibility and the altruistic spirit of the true educator. The dietitian has a business which demands social aptitude, good judgment, initiative, executive ability, a liberal education supplemented by technical training in the household sciences and their application to the institution, and sound business sense. Such training implies maturity and practical experience as qualifications for success. Miss Alice Bougliton, of the Home and School League of Philadelphia, estimates that the school children of that city spend annually not less than $170,000 for food away from home. The establishment of penny lunches and three-cent mid-day dinners in a very few schools, has already brought $5000 of that sum under the control of wise administration, so that some children are getting a true nutritive and educational return on their investment. The location of the lunch-room or dining-room, the character and cost of the equipment, the choice of food and control of service, must be within the dietitian’s jurisdiction if she is to do her best work. Planning menus is futile, if it be impossible to get foods properly cooked and attractively and promptly served, or if one have no authority in case of the inevitable emergencies in purchase, preparation or serving of food; the careful calculation of fuel values is of no avail if the cook feels at liberty to water the soup because the dietitian has no direct authority over her.
The time required for technical training depends very much upon previous education and experience. With a college education including physics, biology, physiology, general and organic chemistry, psychology and economics, one or two years will serve to equip a woman for this kind of work, depending on her practical experience in household matters and the thoroughness of her preparation. Instruction in institutional management is still in its infancy, and provision of adequate practical training in this subject for the student is difficult. It is obvious that a course for any dietitian must include very thorough training in the nature of food materials, i.e. their source, manufacture and chemical composition; the nature of cooking processes and their effects on food materials ; the technique of cookery, including special applications to institutional problems. The difference of proportions in large and small quantity cookery, the necessity for serving a meal to several hundred with lightning-like rapidity, or the keeping of food hot for several hours at each meal arc all factors ? which make institutional cookery a branch by itself, and cause lunch-room cookery to differ from other kinds of institutional cookery.
The choice of food requires definite knowledge of the quantitative and qualitative requirements for food in the group to be fed, and this implies acquaintance with the laws of biology, and of the chemical processes of digestion and metabolism, in addition to the chemistry of food. It is necessary to study the food requirement in each stage of development?infancy, childhood, adult life, and old age?and under various conditions of activity, health, season and climate, with a clear realization that every individual is to some extent a new problem, for whom the general principles of nutrition must be applied in a particular way, especially on the qualitative side. On the quantitative side nutrition is fast becoming an exact science, and a working knowledge of the energy values of many kinds of food will enable the trained dietitian to select a wholesome diet adequate in fuel (the first requirement) without illegitimate cost; and a watchfulness over the tastes and individual needs of her group will enable her to secure one which is also well-balanced.
This problem of the menu is much complicated by problems of service; it is harder to present attractive variety in the diet if the price bo low, because many minor variations, which arc possible in the home where service it not so closely reckoned, are impossible for a large number on account of the labor involved. It seems a small task to roll bananas in chopped nuts for a salad for a family of two, but the labor is almost prohibitive for a group of two hundred. Ilence the study of food requirements from the scientific standpoint must be supplemented by special attention to institutional dietaries and instruction in the general principles of institutional management.
One of the most difficult things for the dietitian to learn is how to buy in the market. Courses in marketing are given, but markets fluctuate with season and locality, so that practical experience with rigorous scrutiny of the results, is necessary to success. In connection with this the student may learn how to keep her accounts in a business-like way and to use them as a criterion of success. She is responsible for the sanitary condition of the food she supplies, and training in bacteriology is the onlv effective means of making lier understand what sanitation really means. She must appreciate tlie dangers of dirty milk, uninspected cold storage plants, badly kept refrigerators, and unsterilized dislies passing among children to spread communicable diseases, especially of the skin. Besides sanitary cleanliness, it is desirable also to maintain an esthetic cleanliness for the sake of its psychological value. There are many indications that the school dietitian is destined to become an important factor in education in boarding institutions and in- the public schools of our large cities. Evidence is accumulating as to the beneficial effects of her work and she should bo encouraged to acquire the best possible scientific training, with the prospect of recognition as one of the important agents in the betterment of the race, on a par with those who teach in more conventional ways. Teaching a little Irishman to like macaroni or a little Russian to like hominy, may be as great an educational triumph as inculcating the laws of Latin prosody, and is a more potent factor in strengthening in the children that spirit of toleration which will make them all American citizens.
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