Food for Thought
A new breed of health counselors serve up recipes instead of prescriptions to help keep you well
by Kathyrn Belgiorno

Last year, after pledging onscreen to help her boyfriend (now fiancé), Morgan Spurlock, the director of the documentary Super Size Me, reverse the damage wrought by 30 days of eating Mickey D's, Alex Jamieson was bombarded with e-mails from filmgoers who hoped she could help them cleanse their own overtaxed organs. Her approach - to overhaul the body's system using whole foods- sounded promising, even though those who wrote her weren't necessarily familiar with what she does. "But," says Jamieson, "so many of them have had negative experiences with conventional medicine that they were ready to try something new."

Jamieson is what is known in the alternative healing community as a "holistic health counselor." She graduated from the Institute for Integrative Nutrition, a Columbus Circle area school that has been quietly turning out practitioners like her for more than a decade. While doctors write prescriptions to target your health problems, graduates of the IIN write recipes - and unlike dietitians, they stray from government food guidelines when giving advice. The institute sets itself apart from other nutritionist-training programs by covering ancient macrobiotic theories along with trendier programs, such as Atkins, South Beach, Weight Watchers and the Zone. In all, budding counselors study more than 60 different dietary theories in order to help clients find the foods and eating habits that can, ultimately, fill a tall order: obliterate cravings and regulate weight; alleviate conditions like asthma, PMS, candida and digestive disorders; and drive up energy levels and overall life satisfaction.

Sounds like magic, but there is a method here: For $75-$100 per hour, health counselors typically create a six-month program for clients (though the length of time varies) consisting of cooking classes, trips to a health-food store and one-on-one sessions. Some counselors will incorporate herbs, yoga, massage and acupuncture into their programs, depending on their backgrounds. In a client's first session, they'll take an exhaustive history of your health and eating habits; in subsequent twice-monthly meeting, discussions cover recipes, reading materials and foods that will help you meet your health goals. "It's really a matter of starting with the basics of nutrition, listening to my clients and spending a lot of time with them, more than any doctor would," Jamieson says. "I encourage them to add good things into their diets, rather than focus on what needs to be removed."

The institute's philosophy was borne of founder and director Joshua Rosenthal's history of chameleon like dabbling in different regimens (these are detailed in his 2003 book, The Energy Balance Diet) only to realize that his body would speak up for itself, once off the diet du jour. In this process, Rosenthal came to recognize that no amount of brown rice will make you healthy if you're not getting enough of what he calls "primary food": things like a fulfilling career and social life. "I think it's unfair to say 'Eat well and your life will work out,'" he has said. "You need to have the same kind of education around relationships as about food."

To that end, the school's official curriculum - spread over an eight-month term, with classes on ten weekends - includes not just topics such as diet therapy and cooking, but intuitive touch, counseling, communication and community. More practical-minded lessons, such as staring a business, are also offered, though not every student plans to take on clients. Graduates range from hippie-dippy types to erstwhile corporate heads. "I was a commercial photographer [when I attended] - I had published four books of my work, my career was successful, and I had no intention of changing it," says Holly Shelowitz, a health counselor with a private practice in Manhattan and Westchester who initially went to the IIN to feed a personal interest in nutrition, not to find a new job. "This [program] has changed the course of my life."

Manhattan fire captain Jim Johnson - who worked with Shelowitz to manage his diabetes and lose the weight and joint pain that dogged him - considered attending the institute himself after he benefited from its teachings. "I had been trying to follow a vegetarian diet, thinking that was healthy, but I had all these cravings for meat," Johnson says. On his first visit, Shelowitz asked him about his blood type and ethnicity and told him that he was probably meant to eat some meat. "I said, 'Thank you! Now if I really feel like a hot dog, I have a hot dog - organic, of course," he says.

Counselor's websites are loaded with anecdotes from satisfied customers like Johnson - and the good word seems to be spreading. When Shelowitz attended in 2000, classes were held in modest quarters near Bryant Park; now spacious digs in the Time Warner Center are required to accommodate a student body that has grown from 75 in 2000 to 800 today.

Mainstream medical bigwigs are getting on board too. Marion Nestle, Ph.D., former chair of the nutrition department at New York University, is scheduled to give a lecture there in April; Zone doc Barry Sears, Ph.D., and Walter Willet, M.D., an epidemiology and nutrition professor at Harvard, round out "visiting teacher" ranks swelling with acupuncturists and Ayurvedic healers.

"Their goal is one that is very germane: looking at the role of nutrition in how we use medical care in the future," says Sears - it's an aim that practitioners of any stripe would be hard-pressed to question. While the school's bold promotional literature may initially seem like bombast - midway through the term, students will "realize they know things about health and healing that doctors who graduated from medical school don't know - " Willet agrees. "[University degree programs] have usually fallen short in providing training for counseling in wellness and disease prevention," he says. "A large void exists for providing guidance in nutrition and physical activity… and the institute attempts to address it."