Connie Rizzo believes it is better to educate than to dictate.
As a medical nutrition therapist in the cancer resource department of the Mercy’s C.H. “Chub” O’Reilly Cancer Center, she knows it’s a slippery slope when trying to get patients to migrate from chili dogs to quinoa and from processed to home-cooked foods.
Rizzo says a person’s palate takes shape at an early age. The palate is programmed by what a person eats, conditioned to embrace and even crave the flavor of processed food.
Rizzo believes her job is equal parts educator, care provider and motivator as she faces the task of convincing the sickest patients to change lifelong habits.
“It can be a challenge,” she says. “After all, healthy foods are only beneficial if you find a way that individuals will consume them.”
Rizzo points to a mound of nutritional misinformation, specifically in the oncology field, as cause for many poor eating habits. But she also cites mounting scientific evidence showing patients who make basic changes in diet significantly improve their disease treatment outcomes.
In the most striking examples, she says nutritional changes have been shown to reduce the risk of common cancers by up to 30 percent.
“I’ve found people may want to eat healthier but are unsure how to accomplish it,” she says. “We need to get more creative, just making little changes to things we’re already doing. That grain you usually eat in the evening can be cooked in apple juice, served with walnuts and it becomes breakfast.”
And while those creative cooking skills netted her a 2010 MaMa Jean’s Keep It Clean cooking contest for her Waldorf quinoa salad, she says such individual accomplishments don’t tell the real story. Rizzo is a past president of the Missouri Dietetic Association and contributed to the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics publications. She says during her 33 years as a licensed nutritionist, oncology patients have been a consistent thread.
“It’s where my heart continues to reside,” she says.
That deep connection manifested itself in Hospice of Southwest Missouri, an organization Rizzo helped create after moving to Springfield.
The thread continues through her long-term involvement with Camp Bluebird, an annual three-day retreat for cancer survivors, where she aims to educate, support and encourage cancer survivors.
She has been a member of the online faculty of University of Phoenix’s Health Sciences and Nursing program since 2010 and has developed numerous community wellness programs, such as Wellness Wednesdays and Dietary Delights for cancer patients who have difficulty swallowing after treatment.
Rizzo expects the next big thing to be “nutrigenomics,” which studies the role specific foods play in activating genes that affect susceptibility to certain illnesses.
“It’s curiosity that really keeps me going,” Rizzo says. “My focus on patients is constant, even as things are changing all around. You just look for opportunities to expand coverage, for new ways to do things.”[[In-content Ad]]
