March 10 is Registered Dietitian Day and in general, I’m not a fan of fabricated days such as this whether they’re created by Hallmark or someone else.  My thought is that the work people do, the accomplishments professions make collectively should stand for themselves.  And if it doesn’t, it just means that we’re not doing our job well enough.

But I’ve changed my mind on this subject, and here’s why.

We are in what a colleague of mine coined as the “age of amateurism.” With the rapid expansion of the internet, there is an abundance of opinion available on every possible topic.  You want to sheet rock and mud and tape the interior of your garage? Just google it and you’ll get more than 7 million hits.  Seriously, I checked.  You want great hotel suggestions in Maui.  Just tweet your request.  Sitting at the bar playing trivia and you don’t know Lady Gaga’s real name?  Just go to Wiki.

What we’ve lost in this information age is the filter, the test of whether the information is accurate and true.

While this might be okay in the bar trivia game or in sheetrocking your garage (afterall, you can redo it if it doesn’t go well the first time), when it comes to your health, you may want to reconsider who you consider your source of information, guidance and advice.

After all, would you want the Golden Gate Bridge to be built based on a blueprint found by searching on the internet?  Would you want the airplane your family is traveling on for vacation to be repaired by someone who started the job yesterday after 20 years working as a stock broker?

When it comes to health, seek the advice of trained, credentialed health professionals, and when it comes to advice on nutrition, seek the advice of trained, credentialed nutritionists, namely registered dietitians.  After all, you have one life to live, one shot at this.  So do it the right way, the first around.

This is the reason I now support Registered Dietitian Day and National Nutrition Month – because it reminds consumers to look to the professional for accurate, reliable advice.

Visit www.nuval.com to experience a system built by trained, credentialed nutrition and medical professionals that helps you choose more nutritious foods.

It happens to Al Gore all the time.  He publicly talks about “green” companies that he thinks are doing things the right way, and gets questioned as to whether he is promoting those companies because he has money invested in them.  Gore’s answer is that his critics have it backwards — he is putting his money where his mouth is by investing in companies he believes are making a difference in the environment.

The analogy can be drawn to the work that both Dr. David Katz and I do with NuVal LLC.  He is a medical doctor, but also the inventor of the algorithm that fuels the NuVal scores.  I’m a dietitian, a trained nutrition expert, but my views related to the world of nutrition guidance systems are always suspect in light of who signs my paycheck.  The suggestion is always there that Dr. Katz and my opinions are not valid because we are biased.

But isn’t it just possible that, like with Al Gore, the egg comes before the chicken?  Is it unrealistic to believe that before taking my job with NuVal, I did my homework, studied the landscape, and decided NuVal was the best tool out there with the potential to change consumers’ lives, and that I wanted to be a part of making this a reality?

In my professional opinion and my opinion as a consumer, a shopper, a mom who sometimes struggles to get healthy food on the table like all of you, NuVal is the best – the best system, the best guidance, the best tool.  And that’s true no matter who signs my paycheck.

Visit Guidance on Nutrition Guidance to read Dr. David’s Katz’s views on the topic, and check out www.nuval.com to see how this system can change your life.