Discovering how food connects us INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — As National Nutrition Month winds down, a local expert urges everyone to think internationally, too. “If you think about it, food is something we all have in common,” Community Health Network Registered Dietitian Elilta Sawyers said . “From traditions to cultures to things that we pass down generation from generation. And so I think it’s important that we understand the benefits that we can all have when we kind of step outside our boundaries a little bit and try new things and all the wonderful health benefits that can come with that.” Sawyers’ comments came during a visit to WISH-TV’s Dayreak. To make the point, Sawyers shared insights from her own life and a trip with her daughter. “I had a wonderful opportunity to travel to Eritrea, which is where my family is from. I took my youngest with me and she was able to actually kind of expand her food identity and kind of be immersed in our culture.” Sawyers showed viewers an example. “This is called injera. It’s is a fermented kind of flat-like bread, and it’s primarily made from this (teff) flour, which is nutrient-dense… It is an ancient grain full of iron, calcium, magnesium, fiber, and a plant-based protein.” The result surprised even Sawyer: her daughter loved it. “I was not prepared for her to enjoy everything she liked. As a mother, I prepared to bring things that were more shelf-stable that she would eat, and to my surprise, she ate none of it. She liked everything that we ate there and that my grandmother cooked from scratch day in and day out.” Sawyers says the idea of expanding nutritional horizons need not happen half a world away, but can instead happen even across the shortest of distances. “Share! Share what you have, right? Share the traditions that you had growing up to the next person. You’d be surprised about what they’d adopt.” ...read more read less