All Dietitians

Low Sodium Chicken Soup by Melissa from Indiana

Growing up, DaVita dietitian, Melissa’s interest in food went far beyond her taste buds. “I was interested in nutrition and food science,” she explains, “and found I could also help show people the benefits of diet changes.”

Since receiving her degree from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio, Melissa has enjoyed finding new ways to motivate and teach people about dietary changes.

Considering today’s average American diet, this has never been more important. At her dialysis center in Indiana, Melissa has noticed a big increase in the number of dialysis patients. “We have about 40 patients and have doubled in the number of patients in the past five years that I have been there,” she says.

While maintaining a healthy diet is certainly serious business, Melissa tells us, at her center, “It’s a very fun place to work and the staff and patients are like a family.”

Melissa says that she knows that her healthy-eating message is getting through to her patients. According to Melissa, “I was shopping at Wal-Mart and cut down the soup aisle to get to another area of the store. In the soup aisle, I ran into one of my patients who started joking with me about being in the high-sodium soup aisle. The next time I saw him at the unit, he announced to all the patients that he saw the dietitian buying high-sodium canned soup. He definitely heard me say to avoid canned soups and wouldn’t let me forget it!”

Skip the high-sodium canned soup aisle and warm your soul with Melissa’s Low Sodium Chicken Soup.

Recipe

• Low Sodium Chicken Soup