Latest / Nutrition Connection by Dr. Kristen Hicks-Roof / 66: Dr. Zach Conrad PhD, MPH - RESEARCH / FOOD SYSTEMS
Transcript
- Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: Hi and welcome back to the Nutrition Connection Podcast, the show where science meets storytelling. I'm your host, Dr. Kristin Hicks-Roof, dietitian, researcher, and lifelong advocate of the role of nutrition, health, and wellness. Each episode, I bring out dietitians and nutrition experts to share their story, work that touches nearly every aspect of our lives. So whether you're a student, a seasoned professional, or someone simply curious about food, nutrition, and health, this podcast is just for you. The views, thoughts and comments on this podcast do not reflect those of my employer nor the employers of my guests. So let's go ahead and get connected. Y'all, I'm really excited to bring on a guest today. We have a niche guest. So we have Dr. Zach Conrad. He is an associate professor at William & Mary. Welcome to show Zach. Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: Thank you, it's great to be here. Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: So was excited to bring you on because your research is so fascinating to me. It's an overlay of nutrition and sustainability and economics and all these factors that as clinicians, we deal with on the patient side, but you're kind of dealing with it on the back end to say, how do all these puzzle pieces fit into sustainable food systems? So I know we're gonna dive a lot deeper into your research, but let's start from the beginning. what really inspired you and made you want to become a scientist and particularly related to the public health and the food systems. Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: Yeah, yeah. Well, first of all, I like being a niche guest. That's pretty cool. Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: I love it too. Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: Yeah, I got to add that to my title. Yes. So I, you know, I originally got still am interested in this line of work because I, I realized pretty soon on, fortunately in my career that the food touches basically every aspect of our lives. And I think a lot of people think of that as just intuitively relating to your health, which is true, but whether we realize it or not, our whole society is structured around food. And so it's things like the raw materials that go into food, the processes that are used to make food, employment, the timing of our day, even what people do for work, the breaks that people take throughout the day. So it's Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: and what they eat during their breaks. Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: exactly, yeah, and how they eat it and who they eat it with. it's really, once you understand food, you really understand the way the world works. You understand everything from history to physiology to economics at least some level. So to me, I do this work because I'm interested in how things work. And that kind of gives me this very broad scale perspective on it all. Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: I love how you were, when you were talking about it, you're saying, right, we're always connected to food in one way or another. And that is part of on this podcast, I'm bringing in nutrition professionals, whether it's dietitians or researchers or other health professionals, because they're all connected in nutrition and nutrition is food, right? We get the nutrition from food, but food is so much more. than just nutrition. So whether it's a nutrition expert sitting on a food industry company and creating a product, or it's maybe from the agribusiness side in growing new food varieties. So you kind of take all these bits and pieces and put them together on the research side. So let's talk a little bit about your research. What are your degrees in? Because they're connected with nutrition, but are they in nutrition? And then what does your research do? What do you study? Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: Yeah. Yeah. So, just to, to step back really quickly, Kristen, so the, the nutritional aspect of, of food, just to make sure that gets emphasized, that it's, it's probably the, the number one most impactful thing you can do for your health. Right. But then consider too, that there are really of all of the foods that we could be eating that are nutritional and also edible. We only eat a select few. Right? So that's been true all throughout human history. So that's been something that's really animated my work. And now what I do, when I'm in a professional setting, I describe myself as a nutritional epidemiologist and also a food system scientist. So I'm interested in the foods that we eat. and how they impact health outcomes on a broad scale, on a population scale. But I'm also interested in how the foods that we eat contribute to sustainability outcomes. whether that's the environmental sustainability, social sustainability, economic sustainability, but then touching back on the health component, there's also a health domain of sustainability. And so what I'm really interested in is how those things interact. Right? So those kind of trade-offs between, if we shift towards healthier diets, well, that's obviously going to be better for our health outcomes, but is it going to cost more or certain foods going to be contributing more or less to overall sustainability, whether it's like greenhouse gas emissions or land use? And that list goes on. So it's those kind of those trade-offs and those nuances that I think are the most interesting and I think the most useful for really kind of understanding how complex our world is. And I've been fortunate through my academic career and my training to be able to kind of mirror those two different domains, right? This kind of epi side and then also this food system side. And so, When I was in, I don't know if you were really prompting me to go this far back, but I'm going to anyway. Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: Yeah, go for it. Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: So when I was in college, I double majored in biology and in physical anthropology. And in both of those areas, like I was just super focused on food. The bio was more nutrition than the physical anthropology was kind of more on. food systems and how human populations have interacted with their food systems over history. And then when I got into grad school, I also double majored. did a, yeah, it's kind of been a crazy, Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: You're crazy. Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: yeah, it is crazy. Well, when one of the reasons is because, not to divert too much, but one of the reasons is because, you know, it's actually pretty recent that we have some of these really truly interdisciplinary academic. curriculums. And even those are not terribly common. But but now it's more common than it was. So at the time, I was really just kind of piecing together this this curriculum. And so to create this kind of like, epi food systems, you know, I wasn't quite thinking about it at the time, but it was ended up being this kind of epi food systems curriculum that I was building. So and then grad school, I did a Masters of Public Health in nutrition. And then I also did a, uh, MS in essentially food systems. And then took, you know, that the basic nutrition physiology courses kind of like as part of all of that. Um, and then, and then through my, my doctoral program, you know, I, that really gave me the opportunity to kind of merge those together into this kind of really truly interdisciplinary holistic program. And then I continued to do that through, I had a postdoc at at Tufts University at the Friedman school, of nutrition science and policy where it was like an epi, purely epi postdoc. But then I did another postdoc at USDA where I was able to kind of bring everything together. My supervisor was really, really open and letting me bring in my food systems work. And so we were doing that and then we were doing some clinical trials and I was also bringing in some epi work. So I was like, by the end of it, I was really like kind of doing. doing it all and kind of merging it all together. And then, you know, from there in 2019, I started at William & Mary, which is in Williamsburg, Virginia. And so I started as an assistant professor and then created my own interdisciplinary research program and also an interdisciplinary nutrition curriculum there. And so that's where I've been since. Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: I say you're crazy having two degrees, because it sounds like you have two bachelor's, two master's, so maybe, Zach, the next question is, when are you going to get your second PhD? That could be one of them. Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: I know. Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: And then two, it's funny. We actually have a lot of similarity in the beginning. So I also have two bachelor's. I have one in nutrition, and I have one in microbiology. And when I first went for my doctorate, I was actually in a gut microbiome lab. I changed PIs halfway through. But it was really, it was kind of like you. I knew that there was this connection between the microbiology on and in humans. But then I also had this really interesting fascination with nutrition, more of like all the public health side, like communicating with people because they don't understand what microbiome, what exactly is in their microbiome, right? Like you can't talk about the genus of a species to a everyday person. So I think sometimes having these different degree paths, whether it's a major, a minor, or a different grad degree, I do think it helps to bridge because nutrition crosses over so many different professions, whether it's in the health professions or it's in agriculture or anthropology, which one of my great mentors, Dr. Judy Rodriguez, was a nutrition anthropologist, actually. Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: that's cool. Yeah, there you go. Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: And it was so fascinating because she would really talk about how people have relationships with food, the behaviors around eating in isolation versus eating as a community or eating as a group. so, yeah, that really has such an overlay, even with our everyday behaviors of what we do. Right. So your eating behaviors are likely different than mine. And that could be layered by the environment. It could be layered by what drives me. It could be layered by a lot of different things and some of that is very connected with the anthropology side. Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: Yeah, yeah. And I get, you know, I get a lot of questions from like students, but then also just kind of lay people who I speak to. And the questions are some of the ones that I get most often are, well, and this often happens after there's been like a new book release is so there's all of these like wild plants out there that are edible and are the theory goes more nutritious than the foods that we actually consume. Like what gives? What, why aren't we going around eating wild plants? Right. And that's just, I think the answers to that really shed light on, or one or are incredibly interesting, but to shed light on how our food system works and actually how it works so well in a lot of ways. You know, there's. There's cultural preferences about what we want to eat and what we don't want to eat. mean, insects are really nutritious, but a lot of us find kind of the ick factor and there's practical limitations too. You know, I mean, there are cultures that eat insects, but not primarily because they're, really hard to kind of harvest. I mean, they're small and they're hard to catch. so a lot of. Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: in the quantity. Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: Yeah. Yeah. The, the mass of food that you would need to collect, right? And then, you know, there's, there's plants that we don't eat that are really, really nutritious and they taste really good, but they, we just can't get them domesticated in a way that we can actually incorporate them into our agricultural system on a mass scale, right? Like it would, they just don't grow in a uniform way or, the same thing is true with, as you know, better than most with, with livestock species too. So all of these things like are perfectly tailored to. providing the most amount of nutrition to the most people at the most affordable way, right? And the work that I'm doing is trying to kind of tinker with like, how can we optimize all of that? Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: when it's really a lever system, right? We do the same thing in clinical practice. It's a lever system on medications and food and interactions. And how do you balance if the patient has multiple comorbidities, how are you balancing diabetes management with hypertension management, right? Because maybe you have different nutrition interventions. So there's parallels to what we do also in agricultural industry, right? Or what we do in nutrition decision-making, because I liked how you talked about And I was just at a conference the other day and it was like, these are all trade-offs, whether it's a land use trade-off for a nutritional trade-off or it's a food familiarity and cultural trade-off for a water use trade-off or the economics of being able to afford it. And you were talking about how there's foods out there that we can consume. You're right, right? There's algaes out there, there's microgreens, there's a bunch of other livestocks. there could be massive variety of food. I remember when I was a faculty at UNF, we were doing a feeding study with sorghum because sorghum is common in many other regions of the world, but in the US, it really wasn't in the human food supply, right? Back when I was doing this research and we were saying, how could you swap a grain for sorghum to maybe see that people liked it. Did they like it? Was it palatable? And then it also offers a nutritional profile. so, and now you start to see sorghum and kind bars and some of these other, you know, cereals and it's just cool that you can see crop varieties ultimately get into human market, but it's a system because if no humans Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: Yeah, it is. Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: buy the product, then what's the value of the crop? Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: Yes, I will say too, as an aside, I eat sorghum every day. I do because my wife has celiac disease and so I make my own bread, right? Yeah. Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: yeah, gluten-free grain. Yeah, so I mean, but back when I was doing research on sorghum, because during TechSANM, my whole first two years, I would tell you I was in a gut microbiome lab. And we were looking at different sorghum varieties for colon cancer prevention based on the anthocyanin content. And then when I became a faculty member, I was like, okay, that's like the depths of science, but what about the practical application? Like will people even eat it in scale? So we did an intervention in school food service at the university I was at just to like get a test taste. So yeah, it's just really interesting. your research, you talk about some of the research that you do in terms of what types of research, not intervention, what types of research do you do? And then you also do more than research as a faculty member. So maybe give us a little bit of your day to day. Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: Yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, so the way that you that you just phrased it is exactly the way that that I was going to phrase it as well is that I'm interested in systems, you know, I'm interested in and how things work and how they interact. so what the work that we do in my lab is we basically create these mathematical representations of food systems. So we call them models or computational models. there we can scale them up. I typically will work the largest scale that I work is typically at the US level. most of my work is nearly all of my work is really domestic. But then we can scale those models down to look at smaller food systems. So we've worked with, for example, some indigenous tribal nations in our area to model their food systems. And in some cases, we're talking about, you know, 200 people in a tribe versus when we're modeling out to like the US scale, you know, we're talking about, you know, 320, 30 million people. So it's, it's, it's very cool to be able to scale in scale out. And basically what we're doing is we're, we're, we're just trying to create, to approximate the way that a larger system works. And we're doing that on paper. Right. And so we're, basically pulling in data from a lot of different sources and we tinker with the data to get it all to kind of like happily commingle. And then we apply our statistical analyses to make sure that it's actually giving us an output that seems reasonable, right? And see that the model is actually like running. And then we kind of fine tune that through like a series of iterations until we finally end up with something that we feel reasonably confident can kind of represent this kind of larger scale system. there's this, there's the saying amongst modelers. So the quote is attributed to a statistician from I think like the 60s or 70s. And he said that all models are wrong, but some are useful. And it's really important to kind of keep that in mind because it really, first of all, it's very, it's very, humbling, you really need to keep in mind that you're not perfectly able to represent the system that you're interested in. But if you put in enough work, you can really get so close that when you actually use the model, it's really useful for whether it's clinical practice or public policy or epi modeling or whatever the case may be. So that's what we do in the lab is we're kind of pulling in data, feeding it into a computer model that we've developed. and then applying that to questions that we have about how the food system works. Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: So how would you explain your research to a health professional? How does this overlay to something that may impact them, whether it's on the policy side or the food system that they live in or maybe something that they teach? How would you describe that? Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: Yeah, so I think a good starting point for a lot of people is thinking about a, a nutrient that we're not getting enough of, say in the general population. So we could just start with something like, oh, like magnesium, right? So first of all, like we started right now with that premise that people aren't getting enough, but how do we actually know what people are consuming? Right. And I mean, I think, I think a lot of people would be surprised to learn that the way that we're doing it, at least at the U S national level is we're essentially, we're sending out these mobile examination centers across the country and they are statistically identifying a representative sample. And we're actually collecting, we're asking people what they eat. Right. So, so people are telling I say us, mean us as kind of nutrition professionals, they're telling us, well, I ate X, Y, and Z over the course of a day, right? Well, that's all well and good, but they're not able to say that they ate X amount of magnesium. I mean, they have no idea, right? Nobody, even a dietician would be able to tell you like that's exactly how much they ate. They'd actually have to go through the legwork of kind of calculating it. So people are saying like I ate X, Y, and Z. And one of those things was a cheeseburger. Well, how do we figure out what the ingredients of that cheeseburger are, let alone the nutrients? So we have all of these underlying databases that we use that we say, OK, they said that they ate this kind of cheeseburger. We think that that matches this particular recipe. And in this particular recipe, has X amount of lettuce on that cheeseburger. And then we'd say, OK, it's this type of lettuce. Let's match that to another database that we have that shows the magnesium content of different types of lettuce. And then we actually can end up with this value of the magnesium content of lettuce, the magnesium content of that cheeseburger that they ate, the magnesium content of everything else that they ate in that day, the magnesium content of the diets of the tens of thousands of other people that were in that survey. And then we have this kind of approximation of how much magnesium somebody consumed. We still don't even know, right, at this point, what the required nutrient intake of magnesium is, which is done through a whole series of other processes, right? And then this gets even more interesting because then the question is, so how are we going to, how's that relevant for national dietary policy? So how do we get people to consume more magnesium? And then can we produce enough of the foods in this country and through our trading partners that are going to actually provide enough magnesium? So it's one thing for us to say, like, everybody should be consuming more dark green leafy vegetables, but is there actually enough to go around? And if there's not, then so what sorts of policies do we need to extend to our farming partners? in the US and then overseas to encourage them through a whole number of different mechanisms to be producing more of the foods that contain magnesium. okay, so now we have enough, let's just say that, okay, we have enough magnesium going around through dark green leafy vegetables. Well, can people afford it, right? And should we encourage production in certain parts of the country versus others? based on any number of factors, some of which could be environmental related, like it grows better, it can be produced more sustainably, it can be produced more affordably. And the list goes on and on and on. And one of the things that we're interested in the lab, in addition to those things, is how is climate change impacting the nutrient content of crops? And therefore the nutrient intake of humans and therefore the health impacts on humans. So there's kind of a number of different ways that you can kind of enter that conversation, but that's kind of the way that I would typically talk about it with people. Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: Yeah, I think it was a really good example. I remember back when I was doing my PhD A mean, there was a researcher who had been studying magnesium for decades. And she was like, we just don't eat enough. But Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: Yeah. Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: there's researchers who spend their whole careers on some of these micronutrients that just maybe never get the national attention. I do think one good example is folate. You started having more modeling analysis of folate in the diet and then all of a sudden you start having policy changes to make sure that we're either enriching folate in cereals or fortifying it in different foods to really make sure that every American meets folate, especially because that's a risk of neural tube defects, right, for pregnant women. So I think there's, I wanted you to, I'm glad you walked through that example because I wanted to kind of walk people through who are on this who may be like, how is this relevant to me? It is. because that is gonna be what you may be talking with your patient. This all comes from the research that we must have to then inform the policy, to then inform clinical guidelines, right? Like there's this cycle. So, we kind already covered my next question, which is really how does scientific data impact your day to day? And that is your day to day, but what are you excited about or what are you most proud of, of? how your science that your team publishes contributes to the greater good. And maybe give us an example. Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: Yeah, yeah. something that we've really been kind of our. since I'm a niche guest, if I go even more niche, kind of the niche area of the work that we do in the lab is really oriented around this idea that I mentioned this to you initially of trade-offs. And so, some of our earlier work, we started to clue in based on some of the studies that we were running that... There was this kind of prevailing hypothesis that had kind of just been accepted as conventional wisdom. This has happened over the course of the past, say, 50 years. And if in the scientific literature, and then this has been certainly been the hypothesis that's been kind of dominating over the past, say, like 100 years, is that if you eat better, it's going to be better for sustainability, right? The idea is the premise is at first glance sound that they're all connected. So it makes sense that what's better for one thing is better for another, assuming that those two things are connected. And when we started to look at this, we started to see that that's not always the case. That sometimes when you eat healthier, that you'll see some environmental trade-offs, for example. And you certainly see trade-offs with economic metrics like diet cost. And so that's not to say that if you, every time that you eat healthier, that you're always going to see trade-offs or that there's always going to be a benefit. It's more that in different circumstances and different contexts, you kind of see these domains kind of rebalancing, if you will, right? And so we started to run some analyses that showed that, for example, if you eat healthier, what ends up happening with a lot of people is they end up wasting more food. And a lot of that is things like fruits and vegetables, which is interesting, right? Because what's happening with people is that, yes, they are consuming more healthy foods, which is why they have a healthy, one of the reasons that they have a healthy. diet, they're consuming more fruits and vegetables, but they're also purchasing more than they're consuming. Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: super guilty. You know how many times I bought bags of lettuce and they just went wilted? I was like, no! Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: Yeah. That's all that magnesium. Yeah. Yeah. Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: Yeah, magnesium, right? But I think, but that's where this like thought behavior are disconnected. Like you even see it in consumer research. Like I want to eat this food, but then I go and I buy with my dollar or I buy with my palette versus the desire for health. Health is never usually the primary driver of why people are eating the foods they're eating. Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: Yeah, yeah. I think that, know, when initially when we kind of share those findings, I think kind of some people, you know, say, well, if that's what you found, like, you know, they kind of throw their hands up. Well, then, like, what are we going to do if, you know, there's all these trade offs? my response to that is, that's what we that's how we craft societies, right, through things like public policy that we deal with these competing priorities and priorities that shift over time and in different contexts. So by no means should we just assume that there's always these trade-offs, right? The idea is really to try to optimize all of these different domains of health and sustainability to the best that we can. Well, not kind of throwing out the baby with the bath water, right? It doesn't mean that, why bother? It actually means the opposite. means, okay, we need to... put our collective minds together to try to figure out like what's the best possible scenario that we can bring to surface in this particular context versus that particular context. our work is really geared towards answering some of those policy questions about what's the best food, diet to be consuming to maximize these different domains of health and sustainability in different contexts and different situations in different time periods. Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: I think for all the health professionals and the clinicians who are listening, you likely get these questions all the time. Like, it may not from every patient, right? Every patient may have a different priority and some might be more, I don't eat X food or I eat more of X food to be more sustainable or they have different sustainability behaviors. So I think it's really fascinating because, you the more I really dove into some of this like nutrition food systems, Sustainability is such a complex system that it is a constant pulley system, right? That there is pros and cons that the same decision that you make, there's a pro and con depending on whatever the outputs are. So it's really fascinating. So make sure you check out Dr. Zach Conrad. Make sure you check out all his work. You can find it on Google Scholar. You can also just type in his name and you have your lab address. So what's been your favorite so far? What are you most proud of in your career? Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: the, think that the thing that I'm most proud of, also the thing that I think is like the coolest part of, of the work that I do is, you know, I do all of this background work on, research and modeling and systems. But then the coolest thing is, I have the opportunity to then. To then transfer that knowledge to young people, to my students and. to blow their mind in the classroom and then they get to use that and then build a career off of it. I mean, to set them, and that's what happened to me too. I mean, I had really influential faculty when I was that age and just set me on a course that I just, once the momentum got going, I mean, I was just like, I was just tickled pink to continue on down this kind of this trajectory of Look at life and food, if you will. so, you whether my students like go on to work in a food related career or not, the basic principles that I'm teaching them, I mean, these principles about how systems work, I mean, and really how to work with people from diverse interests and backgrounds and areas of expertise and everything. I mean, that's just something that's kind of at the core of learning. They get to take that and to make a whole life career based on that. that's been the really cool. Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: I feel like every faculty say that, but I really do think Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: Yeah. Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: it is part of the calling. You really do love embarking, letting these students learn, but then embark on their own journeys and how they integrate this content, which like you said, may be different depending on maybe how much exposure too, right? Whether it was one class or they did research with you or they got to present research at a conference. Like sometimes those experiences can really mold where you are today. I mean, I had awesome undergraduate research advisors that really helped to craft my love of nutrition and microbiology together, which was how I ended up getting my PhD position. So I think it is really important that you can have those mentors in university that can really Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: Yeah. Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: change the trajectory of where you're going to go. Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: Yeah, yeah, and it's also important for for I think young people to have that kind of interaction, the positive interaction with the faculty because like as as we know, you know, as you move on in, let alone your career, but in your life, you come across all sorts of people. And and some people are less helpful than other people. Right. And so you kind of like you end up kind of learning a lot about yourself in that process, that kind of trial and error of who you meet and who you take advice from and who is most impactful to you and influential and who you just, know, people might say things that it's a bad day for them and you just kind of need to brush them off or whatever the case may be. It's just so important, I think, for young people to have that kind of positive interaction from people who are in a position. to teach them things and to kind of lead them through the kind of early stages of their career. So it's really a privilege, I feel, that I have to be able to have that time with these people. Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: one and you talked about your interdisciplinary research because when you can work interdisciplinary, it really does help you no matter what field or career you go in, right? Because no matter what you do, if you're involved in nutrition, you're gonna be working with interdisciplinary teams, whether that's finance and accounting or it's... you know, marketing and business or it's clinical administration or if it's research administration and grant management, right? And so like we have to be able to work really well together. And I think that's something our society needs better to just have dialogue that you may have this perspective, you may have this and the science shows it's this lever. Neither of you are right. Neither of you are wrong. It's a lever system. Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: Indeed. Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: that like some people will feel a certain way because of something and that could be because of the lever system. So I think it also helps just like bridge more positive dialogues. I think we've gotten to a point where so many topics are contentious. Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: Indeed, mean, some topics are contentious because they represent a genuine problem with no easy solution. And then some topics are contentious unnecessarily. And kind of navigating all of that is, and discerning which is which is really a difficult thing. And it's not something that's like, there's no class on that. perhaps there is, but I'm not familiar with any kind of formal class. It's just kind of something that you need to kind of pick up as you kind of move along in your life and in your career. I mean, one of the, think the most challenging thing for me actually, when I was just to kind of make ends meet from this conversation perhaps is that when I... When I was finished with my, my education and training actually at multiple points along the way, I should say that I was, I was thinking like, okay, I have done this interdisciplinary training and I've built up this, these interdisciplinary skills. So for this next, step in my academic career, this next job that I'm applying to, that's what I'm going to lead with. And I learned pretty soon on. that you can't really rely on that. What you need to do in order, mean, you're in the game of selling yourself to the work that you've done and the work that you're going to do. You need to make a pitch. And that pitch of interdisciplinarity is not enough. You really do need to make specific connections for people. So I think some of the prompts that That's the questions that you've asked me today have been really good at that. It's kind of really, really nudged me to get kind of specific in how some of this work really touches on the work that dieticians do or other health professionals. And it's exactly that mindset that I often, I often encourage my students to adopt when they're applying for new jobs or applying for grad school is that they really, they really need to do the work for their potential employer. or the admissions office to paint for them how the work that they've done is going to contribute. And in a Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: It's hard. Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: very, it's really hard in like a really specific way. It's a very hard thing to do. Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: It is really hard and because with nutrition experts, they're so vast, right? There's so many different areas that you have nutrition experts and even within nutrition, like are you in a nutrition department? Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: health sciences. Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: Your health, okay. So that's another example, right? Nutrition may be in exercise physiology. It may be in health science. It may be in psychology. It may be in agriculture. It may be in food science. Like nutrition is interdisciplinary in its own. And sometimes describing what you do is really hard, especially with some of these niches like yourself. Like how does this fit into the bigger picture? And so you kind of started to give some tips and advice of like how you help your students, but What suggestions or tips would you have for someone who's maybe interested in an academic life like yours or interested in food systems and better, getting a better grasp? Because sometimes, I mean, it's well over my head and I'm in food systems sometimes. So what tips or advice would you have for someone like Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: mean, it's kind of a combination of having kind of a general plan, but also being flexible to not stick to the specifics of it. Right. And so, I mean, really having that general plan and then within that doing kind of the next best step. Right. So that you don't kind of get stuck on this imaginary linear trajectory that you've that you've kind of conjured up that when you thought about it, you thought like this is this is the straight path. That's so, know, I'm going to start here. I'm to end here. It's all going to be great. But then what really happens is you end up kind of bouncing around, kind of zigzagging. And if you can keep that general idea, it will keep you kind of moving forward. So you zig, you zag, and then you end up kind of getting to generally the place that you were hoping to be. But otherwise, you just kind of get stuck. Right. So if you're interested, You know, the advice that I gave is that if you're interested in kind of, well, I should say actually the conventional advice that is given, which I still think has its merits, but I'm to point out just some limitations to it. The general, the kind of conventional advice is to start specific, to focus on something narrow. And then as you move through your academic training to expand, to broaden that, to focus on kind of more and more systems approaches. I still think that's good advice, but for somebody like me, I always felt that like it was unsatisfying. What I was really excited about, what I was really excited about always was just the systems stuff. I mean, it's not that I'm not interested in the molecular level or the physiologic level because I am, but What really is my passion is what happens at these very broad scales. And so the way I did it was I actually started broad and then where my interests took me along that path, was able to kind of spin out into these kind of more specific areas to learn about how the body works or how plants work. Right. But if you're, if you, if you're interested in, in what's the kind of grand scale of things, it's just really difficult to focus on plant physiology and human physiology and then hope that you're going to be able to marry them together. Right. So some people do it. It's, it's a hard thing to do. So I guess my, my main, my main recommendation is to kind of keep in mind that there's these, these kind of two different approaches. start narrow, go broad or start broad, go narrow. Figure out which one works best for you. People are going to be different in that way. And just kind of be mindful along the process of kind of when you need to spin off into something that's more specific or when you need to broaden out to something that's kind of more grand in scale. But I think a lot of times what happens with with training and education more generally is that we kind of have these kind of ways of thinking. and these curriculums that get imposed from like essentially from all of us older people into all of these younger people. And for so many people that's just kind of, that's not exciting, right? And so finding a way to kind of just foster excitement and like in young people so that they're kind of like awestruck by something that's like really, really cool about food and nutrition and food systems. and encouraging them to let that blossom into something bigger, into a full-fledged career, I tend to think that that's the right approach. Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: and based on some of your experiences, mean, multiple postdocs, multiple master's degrees, like, and that is, that's your particular pathway, but sometimes follow your passions and do things that you really enjoy doing and that, you know, you're right, it may converge into something, a career field that you never even thought of too, right? Because... You took kind of these passions and you're like, how do I merge these together? And those may look different for everyone. think sometimes just having a career opportunity of like, I never realized modeling, right? I never knew how to do that. Like maybe that was something that you were exposed to that you weren't previously. same for, you know, health professionals. Sometimes if you're interested in food systems, get involved in the food system, whether that's at your Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: Mm-hmm. Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: local or your state or your national or Maybe it's just in your community of like, how does the food system work in your community? Are there farmers markets or how does agriculture get into your community? So a lot of different ways to get involved in the food system or like, you you're saying that it goes all the way up to the policy level. So there's there's jobs all the way through that with food systems, because every piece is a moving part to this massive system. OK, my favorite question. Zach, and I'm so curious of your answer because I have no idea what I'm going to expect from you. Sometimes I'm like, OK, I kind of know. you know, like sometimes it's like, OK, you're an expert. You're going to tell me is the next thing. But if you had a crystal ball, Zach, what do you think is coming next in nutrition? Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: Yeah, I mean, it's a good question. It's a hard one to answer because right now so much of what's happening is really driven by the political landscape. So right now, I mean, what's really, really big is ultra processed foods. Protein is still big. Fiber is increasing whole foods. You know, what was big? kind of yesteryear, know, precision nutrition, low carb, know, those types of things. I mean, we're kind of, we end up kind of shifting based on political priorities now more than ever. So what's, what's going to come next is really, really hard for me to say, but what I could tell you what I what sooner or later is going to have to come next, but it's really, really hard to sell because it's not kind of a sexy area of nutrition, so to speak, is databases. I mean, I Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: Yeah, you love databases. Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: do, I do. I wish I had my mug with me. My wife got me a mug and it says, this calls for a spreadsheet. Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: That's what I was like. Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: But I do love databases. But I mean, it's because I'm just privy to all the databases that are behind all of the information that we have and behind ultra-processed foods and high protein diets and sustainability. All of these things are really driven by their underlying databases. So now I say that that sooner or later is going to have to be the next hot thing. because we are getting to a point where we have the skills and the technical know-how to be able to answer some of the biggest questions that we all have about nutrition and about food systems. And If we don't lean into that, then those questions are just kind of going to end up being these kind of lingering questions that spur on people to conjecture and speculate. And then that leads to misinformation. And so if we're really interested in truth seeking, if we're really interested in knowing the way that the world works, it really does all start with the information that we're collecting, which is databases, and then figuring out how to link them together. And of course, I have to go into creating models. that's, know, I'm no PR expert. So how exactly do you spin that to make it like really fun and exciting? But there's gotta be a way. And I think that that's going to be the kind of next frontier. Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: I think you're actually already there in a way. It's just not explicitly stated because databases sit kind of on the back end, not the consumer facing, but you have data and insights from consumer purchasing behaviors. You have data and insights on agricultural production. You have data and insights on efficiency in a food manufacturer. And I think now what I also see is these AI technologies can handle massive amounts of data that now you can have computational models that can analyze things this fast instead of 10 days worth of, you know, the computer processing. So I agree with you. I think that databases are going to be foundational from everywhere of what data are we collecting? Where is it housed? You know, one of the things that I would love to see is databases of every single feeding trial. I know I've talked to you about this because I'm just like personally interested like How do we have databases of all the recipes used, all the ingredients that were used? What's the cooking methods? Because if we can do that when we do intervention trials in nutrition, all of a sudden we can actually have true replication because we can have recipes that are being used. Because right now it's like, oh, I fed people enchiladas. I'm like, all right, what is that enchilada? Yes, you can go back to database and say that is 20 % of tortilla, 10 % red sauce, but. your enchilada might have beans, mine might have sauce, someone else might have green onions, someone else may not like sauce. And so we right now are using this like assumptions of what is in that enchilada. But what if we actually had like very accurate dietary measures all the way down Zach Conrad, PhD, MPH: Yes, exactly. Kristen Hicks-Roof PhD, RD: to the individual foods being served in trials. So. Really fascinating. Zach, thank you so much for being on the show. If you like the show, make sure you like, subscribe, leave a review. Most importantly, check out the next episode because every episode I bring on a different dietician and nutrition expert to share their story, their research, and give you tips and advice on how to be successful.