Emily

Emily
Improving eating habits

Emily's ambition

My interest lies in nutrition and its relationship with general health, and that’s the main reason I have chosen Glasgow University as a place to develop and enhance my knowledge in this field. My ambition is to become a registered nutritionist and to help people across the UK to develop a positive and balanced relationship with food. The prevalence of diet related disease is one of the biggest, growing issues we currently face. Not only is it costing us an extortionate amount of money but it's also costing us precious lives! Obesity doubles your risk of dying prematurely; this is not a reality that I want the next generation to face.

Healthy food choices need to be more readily available and accessible to everyone, whether that’s in schools, workplaces, hospitals or universities. However, we can’t just assume that offering a portion of vegetables with a meal is going to change people's eating habits, especially because everyone has such a different relationship with food. I like to think that making very slight tweaks can have a big impact and that’s why I want to be a positive role model for young people, to promote a balanced and positive relationship with food.

Nearly a third of children aged 2-15 are either overweight or obese. I want to help make food and diet part of school education; the more information we share, the more informed we become.  I hope to volunteer in school projects offering food and cookery lessons to children and families. The work already being done in many communities across the UK is invaluable and I want to be a part of this movement for change.

In this technological era of social media and online activity we are bombarded with messages about how to live longer, how to modify our bodies and, more scarily, how to lose weight fast! Wouldn’t it be better to use these platforms to promote balance – no quick fixes or miracle cures, but instead honest, useful advice? By sharing simple recipes and demo videos of family meals on a budget I hope that I can help to encourage people to cook more food from scratch, food that won’t cost a fortune and could make a difference to your health in the process. 

Watch this space for what I get up to throughout my year at Glasgow University...