Jacqui Gingras

Ryerson University · Department of Sociology

This special issue emerged from a sense of disconnection experienced by the members of the guest co-editorial team who seek to advance food justice as food studies scholars on one hand and fat liberation as fat studies scholars on the other. We assert that, despite their similarities and shared commitments to social and structural justice, there ha...

What is the result of bringing unrealistic and overwhelming conditions of motherhood into the context of a global pandemic? This article aims to explore the impacts of maternal expectations and experiences in the context of COVID-19. Through first-person accounts of eighty self-identified mothers parenting through COVID, we aim to explore “good” mo...

What is the impact of bringing unrealistic and overwhelming conditions of motherhood into the context of a global pandemic? This article aims to explore the impacts of maternal expectations and experiences in the time of COVID-19. Through first person accounts of eighty self-identified mothers parenting through COVID, we aim to explore good mother...

The aim of this chapter is to firstly introduce the core values, theories, and methods of Critical Dietetics and, secondly, to discuss the implications of the core values and theories for critical dietetic praxis within traditional practice areas as well as through advocacy and activism.

The primary aim of this chapter is to provide context for the historical development of Critical Dietetics.

Recently, a small but growing literature has emerged investigating and outlining what a fat studies pedagogy might entail. Missing from much of this literature is a discussion about how the material body becomes a site through which “obesity” discourse is resisted or reproduced in the classroom. The authors attempt to fill this gap by focusing in p...

Purpose: Dietetic internship coordinators are key players in selecting internship applicants and in shaping their experiences and professional identities throughout the internship. Coordinators’ experiences of their work have not yet been explored in the dietetic literature. Methods: Four current and four previous internship coordinators each parti...

This book is about teaching for professional practice and explores ways to engage students in the classroom. It draws on the principles of rigorous scholarship and focuses on interactive learning between the class and the professor and among the students. Each contributor addresses the need to connect theory with community practice, deploying diffe...

Objective. To explore how food insecurity affects individuals’ ability to manage their diabetes, as narrated by participants living in a large, culturally diverse urban centre. Design. Qualitative study comprising of in-depth interviews, using a semistructured interview guide. Setting. Participants were recruited from the local community, three com...

We explored the characteristics of Ontario-based dietetic internship program applicants who were successful upon their first application attempt, and we made comparisons between those who were successful and unsuccessful on their first internship application attempt. A 32-item online survey was distributed to graduates from nutrition programs in On...

This paper outlines the beginning of a movement that seeks to explore new ways of framing how we educate, practice and research in dietetics i.e. the professional discipline of nutrition. The 'critical' in Critical Dietetics refers to critical social theory, a paradigm adopted by many disciplines in order to expand traditional theoretical framework...

This paper explores beginning dietetic practitioners’ perspectives on the process of becoming dietetics professionals through the use of vignettes to illuminate the complex process of professional socialization. Embedded in these vignettes are three themes related to the socialization process that occurs in the early years of dietetic practice: con...

Community–university research partnerships (CURPs) are increasingly common, yet much of the existing research documents the experiences of individual projects or analyzes research methodologies associated with CURPs. Comparatively little is known about the role of university research centers in the design and implementation of CURPs. Even less is k...

This study seeks to explore the lived experience of students who applied to an Ontario-based dietetic internship program and were successful upon their first application attempt. A 32-item online survey was distributed via email to all students who graduated from Brescia University College, Guelph University, and Ryerson University between 2006 and...

Objectives: Interprofessional whole-person care has been depicted as being able to enhance patient health outcomes, increase health care provider satisfaction with care delivery, lower health care spending and decrease wait times for receiving care. Limited research has been conducted into exploring patients’ experiences of being recipients of this...

Mainstream dietetics buttresses a conventional weight management agenda that is associated with weight preoccupation, body dissatisfaction, size oppression, and troubled eating. Coterminous with this agenda is healthism, which taken together, impede dietitians’ engagement with a health at every size (HAES) paradigm, a paradigm driven by concern for...

The purpose of this study was to examine the lived experiences of university students with type 1 diabetes mellitus. University students participated in a 2-part focus group. Transcripts were analyzed thematically using an open-coding approach. Data analysis was guided by a framework analysis method and emergent themes were triangulated between stu...

Obtaining dietetic licensure in Ontario requires completion of a Dietitians of Canada (DC) accredited four-year undergraduate degree in nutrition and an accredited postgraduate internship or combined Master's degree program. Given the scarcity of internship positions in Ontario, each year approximately two-thirds of the eligible applicants who appl...

At the 2010 ASDAH (Association of Size Diversity and Health), Conference a decision was made to trademark Health at Every Size (HAES). Trademarking is a means of protecting intellectual property (IP). It is denoted by the superscript letters ™, which indicates that a trademark has been assigned, and a superscript ®, which indicates that the tradema...

In this autoethnography regarding the writing and sharing of an educational autofiction, I explore the vulnerability inherent in moving from the imagined to the real in a pedagogical context. Autoethnographic fiction is a scholarly method with the potential to disrupt traditional, science-based discourses dominant in health profession education. Th...

Two colleagues, Ann and Jacqui, came together, within the safety of an imagined actors’ studio, to explore the challenges that Ann faced in planning a new graduate program in public health nutrition. They met before, during, and after program implementation to discuss Ann’s experiences, and audio-taped and transcribed the discussions. When all thre...

Purpose: To elucidate the complex phenomenon of dietitian professional socialization, we examined factors that influence people's decisions to pursue a career in dietetics and how education and training processes influence the professional socialization of dietitians. Methods: Participants (n=12) had less than three years of work experience and...

Although experiences of burnout are well documented among some allied health professionals, there is limited research that explores similar experiences among dietitians. This study aims (1) to describe the varied qualitative dimensions of burnout that are particular to dietitians and (2) to identify the factors that might be deemed protective again...

We examined the demographic characteristics of applicants who applied and were unsuccessful in securing an internship position, what these applicants did afterward in their efforts to obtain an internship position, and which career paths they pursued. We also searched for any differences in eligibility between applicants who had not obtained an int...

A team of researchers undertook a collaborative qualitative study to explore beginning dietitians' life experiences and the meaning ascribed to those experiences in the context of dietetic practice. Data were collected using Seidman's three-step in-depth phenomenological interviewing method with 12 beginning dietitians who were graduates of the thr...

Within the formal setting of professional dietetic practice, storytelling may be used to communicate factual nutrition information in a way that acknowledges the socio-cultural and emotional experience of food, eating, and the body. Previous research has suggested that storytelling enriches undergraduate nutrition students' understanding of informa...

The process of professionalization has been widely studied in nursing, but little is known about it in dietetics. We explored the process of professionalization using an integrative review of nursing literature. Three research questions were addressed: 1. What are the stages of professional socialization? 2. Who are the participants in the socializ...

The process of professionalization has been widely studied in nursing, but little is known about it in dietetics. We explored the process of professionalization using an integrative review of nursing literature. Three research questions were addressed: 1. What are the stages of professional socialization? 2. Who are the participants in the socializ...

While this is an obviously contentious statement, we take this as the starting point for our analysis and efforts to expand the currently truncated obesity debate beyond its medicalised and reductionist focus on disease, risk and pathology. In saying that there is no such thing as obesity we don’t mean to imply that no one is fat. What we are sayin...

Dietitians provide nutritional care in various contexts and it is expected that dietetic subjectivity shapes and is shaped by health/nutrition discourse, but this has not been sufficiently explored. The purpose of this study was to fur-ther understand dietetic subjectivity, dietitians' experiences of their education and relationships between educat...

Burnout is the result of unmanaged stress that has been shown to affect those working in the healthcare professions. Although much research has been conducted on burnout among nurses, physicians and other health professionals, there is limited documentation on the phenomenon among dietitians. The purpose of this study was to establish the prevalenc...

Relational-cultural theory (RCT) proposes that relationships are central to healing and growth (Miller and Stiver, 1997). Relational cultural theorists describe the three characteristics of growth-fostering relationships as mutual engagement (defined by mutual involvement and commitment to relationship), authenticity (the process of feeling free an...

In this chapter, we examine how dietitians use empowerment discourses as a means for ensuring compliance among those seeking and receiving their nutritional expertise. The question posed by the West Midlands branch of the British Dietetic Association (2005) ‘Can we empower our patients to increase their compliance to treatment?’ suggests that dieti...

Inquiring into the theoretical underpinnings of dietetic curriculum provides a means for further understanding who dietitians are (identity) and what dietitians do (performativity). Since dietetic curriculum exists as a structural influence on the dietetic student identity, it is worth inquiring into how such a structure is theoretically informed,...

Nutrition students' expectations for and experiences of their education were explored, as was the influence of the educational process on the students. In this qualitative research guided by a phenomenological approach, eight students in the first year and six in the final year of an undergraduate program completed semi-structured interviews. Altho...

Ryerson University has undergone major restructuring in a short period of time. Since 1993, Ryerson has become a degree-granting institution and expanded its post-graduate degree programs as a means to further its commitment to high-quality education. Ryerson's change in status and enhanced focus on scholarship provides a watershed moment for the S...

Cultural food narratives and the pedagogical process to initiate such narratives offer meaning to our food memories, nostalgias and reminiscences. We theorize subjectivity and belonging through a performative process of "narrative conversation" enacted between student and teacher as co-learners seeking to dwell deeply among the interstices of langu...

As dietetic students, we learnt of a category of patients who presented with ‘simple obesity’. Notwithstanding the notoriously high failure rates of treatment, it was these patients who were (and often still are) deemed most suitable for students to advise when first on placement. The advice given would be underpinned by the so-called energy balanc...

The virtue of trust is often spoken of as central to the work of dietitians working in nutrition counseling, especially in the context of disordered eating/eating disorders nutrition therapy. Indeed, dietitians are purported to be the most trusted source of information on nutrition and food by professional associations such as Dietitians of Canada....

This study was conducted to determine the body image of a group of female chronic dieters. Participants were asked to complete a body image questionnaire, and their results were compared with age- and sex-matched reference norms. Chronic dieters possessed significantly lower appearance evaluation, lower body satisfaction, and higher self-classified...

Chronic dieting syndrome can have negative physiologic and psychological consequences. Metabolic differences between female chronic dieters with normal and with low resting energy expenditures (REEs) have not been fully examined. To determine whether differences existed between 2 groups (n = 15/group) of female chronic dieters aged 21-49 y with eit...

The present investigation was undertaken to describe selected factors associated with the maintenance of body weight in three groups of women: relapsers (regained weight after losing weight), maintainers (maintained weight loss), and controls (weight stable). The following physiological variables were also assessed: resting energy expenditure (REE)...

Body image dissatisfaction is a serious, prevalent condition in western culture. It is estimated that 50% of women dislike their bodies and fear being overweight; two manifestations of a negative body image. There has been a trend in recent years for more and more individuals to experience a discontent with their bodies. Body image dissatisfaction...

…the self as vision; at all times perceiving all arts, all senses being languages delivered of will, being transformed in truth— for life's sake surrounding moment and image writing poems, in love making, bringing to birth. —Rukeyser, 1978, 303 In just 90 minutes I will begin teaching an undergraduate course in the Faculty of Agricultural Science:...

1. Abstract Dietetic education, the baccalaureate process of preparing students for professional roles as dietitians, has maintained a rather conservative view of knowledge for its entire existence (over 100 years). Contemporary social problems such as food insecurity, violence against women, homelessness, and child poverty have immediate intersect...