A Nanny's Notes on Nutrition

Hannah rolled a stroller through Washington Square, settling cross-legged on a bench. She brushed her light auburn curls back against the wind and peeled the foil from a yogurt cup.

“It’s kind of a pathetic excuse for lunch,” she says, swirling dark berry jam into the single-serving yogurt container. She had waited until the 11-month-old in the stroller was asleep before she ate. “Maggie loves yogurt,” Hannah said, “I can’t get away with eating it in front of her.”

Hannah managed to enjoy a few spoonfuls before Maggie woke up – and immediately spotted the yogurt. She reached out her tiny pink-sleeved arms and squawked at her nanny, who leaned forward with the spoon. She nudged Maggie’s coat collar under her chin. “You have carrot all over your face from lunch!” Hannah says, wiping the girl’s flushed cheeks with a thumb.

 Hannah takes care of Maggie four days a week and occasionally cooks for the family. “Today I made turkey meatloaf and roasted vegetables for the mom, and creamed spinach and shredded chicken for Maggie,” she says. She makes plant and protein-based meals – generally no grains, gluten, or refined sugar – following the lead of food and health gurus like Micheal Pollan, Chris Kresser, and Lauren Geertsen (Empowered Sustenance). She reads their work in her spare time, studying to become a nutritional therapy practitioner. 

A few of Hannah's health premises:

Food is medicine.
All disease starts in the gut.

“Eat food. Not too much. Mostly plants.” – Micheal Pollan (In Defense of Food)

Maggie reached for the yogurt  again – Wallaby’s whole milk ‘Purely Unsweetened’ mixed berry. “I like Wallaby because they source from pastured cows,” Hannah says as she fed Maggie another spoonful. Dairy from grass-fed animals is an important first food that helps nurture a baby's gut microbiome, she says.

Half a container of yogurt is not a typical lunch for Hannah. “Normally I’ll have a salad that’s way to big,” she laughs, “Like in a bowl you’d serve to a group of people.” She adds whatever vegetables she has in the fridge to a heap of mixed greens, cooks a couple strips of local bacon - she likes La Divisa Meats in Reading Terminal - and then fries kale in the bacon fat. Recently, she added sacha inshi seeds (high in protein and Omega-3s, and well on their way to ‘superfood’ status) for extra crunch. 

“I have to have every texture,” she says. She tops with avocado oil mayo mixed with apple cider vinegar, and she always salts with “real salt” – anything that’s not iodized (she gets her iodine from kelp flakes instead).

Hannah wasn’t raised eating giant salad for lunch. She grew up on Long Island, cooking with her Jewish family and eating the “Standard American Diet.” By the time she was in her 20s, she ate more consciously, realizing that healthy food improved her mood and energy level. Now, eating well is a priority. “Family members ask me how I can afford to buy grass fed beef and raw milk,” she says. “I don’t have cable, I don’t buy expensive clothes or makeup.”

She’s also not excessively strict about her diet. "You have to have a balance," she says. It was Valentine’s Day, and her boyfriend had surprised her with chocolate and flowers after her yoga class that morning. “He got me these super couture strawberry hibiscus white chocolate truffles,” she says, and pulled out a small box of pink hearts from the stroller pocket. The white chocolate shells encased gooey, rich dulce de leche. She loved them. “If I’m going to have refined sugar and soy lecithin, it better be really good.”

Christina's Cake Pop

It was 66 degrees around lunchtime yesterday in Rittenhouse Square. Many took advantage of the abrupt flash-forward to spring, leaving Center City offices to walk leisurely and coat-less for the first time in months. Those who’d given up on scoring a bench seat perched on the concrete edge of the square's fountain. It was dry - it’s still February after all - and a toddler rode his scooter back and forth, rustling leaves from the edges.

Sunlight struck a pink can in front of a young woman who sat eating a cake pop. Christina savored the last morsel of her Golden Oreo Truffle on a stick.

“It’s delicious," she says. “Tastes like one of those vanilla Oreos.” It’s covered in dark chocolate and specked with rainbow sprinkles - her dessert following a turkey avocado sandwich with arugula from Cosi. “If you’re going to have something healthy, you gotta balance it out,” she laughed and pushed her hair back from her temple with a delicate forefinger.

Christina walked to Rittenhouse Square from her center city office at Five Below, where she works as a real estate coordinator, scoping out potential new store locations. “I help from before we get the site to when the store opens,” she says. She started working for the company last summer and commutes from her home in South Jersey.

Normally, she packs a lunch to save money – usually brown rice, tuna, or leftovers from dinner the night before. And when she wants to switch it up, she goes out. Mac Mart’s buffalo chicken mac and cheese, Continental’s grilled chicken sandwich, and tacos at Revolution Taco are a few of her favorites.

She'll take her lunch hour at noon and walk around the city, stopping into shops and food stores at random. “I’m a sweets kinda gal,” she says, sipping from her lipstick-stained straw stuck in the top of the Dr. Brown's Black Cherry Soda can. “It’s almost like Dr. Pepper, but probably better."

She couldn’t resist browsing the dessert section at DiBruno Brother's one day, where she found the cake pop made by the Philly-based company Marie Bee. Though she doesn’t want to make it a regular indulgence, “It’s turning out to be,” she says, smiling –  cake on a stick seemed like just the treat for a mid-winter spring day.