Bites By Beth

09/23/2026

🩺 CLINICIAN TRACK: Food as Medicine Symposium Day 1: Beyond Conventional Care

When the patient already saw 4 different specialists and 7 different drugs, and is not better. Now what? 🌿

"Beyond Conventional Care: Integrative & Functional Medicine Approaches" brings together clinicians who live in the space between conventional treatment, complimentary therapies, and what the patient in front of you actually needs. That means connecting the dots and using a specific set of strategies to get to the root cause.

Moderated by Sanford Levy, MD, with Siri Chand Khalsa, MD, Leonard Kaplan, DO, and Jennifer Jennings, DNP.

Whether you're integrative-curious or integrative-committed, you'll leave with tools you can use. 💪

🗓️ Day 1, October 15, 2:00 PM
📍 Buffalo, NY, in person or virtual
🎟️ Registration link: https://theticketing.co/e/bnmcfam2026
💸 Community wellness orgs + nonprofits: code FAMNON26 for 50% off
10.25 CME over 2 days.

09/23/2026

COMMUNITY WELLNESS track Food As Medicine Sympoisum:

Thursday, October 15:

• Sarah Seweryniak, CHHC: Why stress can undo a healthy diet, and what your nervous system has to do with gut health and autoimmunity
• Vivek Nandur, PhD: What ancient traditions like Ayurveda and fermented foods got right about the gut, liver, and brain, and how modern science is catching up
• Lindsay Springer, PhD, MS: Not all produce is created equal. How freshness, growing conditions, and variety change what your food does for you
• John Persons, CEO, Tops Markets: Plant-Based Living

Friday, October 16

• Tara Felser, MS, RD, CDN, and Katelyn Collins, MS, RD, CDN (FeedMore WNY): How home-delivered and medically tailored meals keep older neighbors healthy and connected
• Jared Byer: Dining with Dinosaurs. Turn food scraps into fresh eggs and vegetables with a little help from backyard chickens
• Shara Armprester, MS: Beyond the Cycle. Reframing menstrual health as preventive care, dignity, and equity for girls and young women

Join us in person at the UB Jacobs School of Medicine in downtown Buffalo, or virtually from anywhere. Community members and nonprofit partners qualify for a discounted registration rate.

Register: link in bio FAMNON26 for 50% off
🥗🍉🍒🍇🍎🍓🍊🍑🍍🍌🍋🍏🥑🫐🍆

09/22/2026

🎤 KEYNOTE Food as Medicine Symposium Day 2: Dr. Alex Ford

Equity isn't a checkbox. 🙌

Dr. Alex Ford, DO, RD, is one of the rare clinicians who is BOTH a physician and a registered dietitian, and he's opening Day 2 with "Delivery of Equitable Lifestyle Medicine to Support Whole Health in Underrepresented Communities."

We all know lifestyle medicine works. The harder question is who actually gets to access it. Dr. Ford has dedicated his work to address that question, and he's bringing the answers to Buffalo. ✨

Come ready to be challenged.

🗓️ Day 2, October 16, 8:30 AM
📍 Buffalo, NY, in person or virtual
🎟️ Registration link in bio
💸 Community wellness orgs + nonprofits: code FAMNON26 for 50% off

Niagara Medical Campus

09/22/2026

We said it out loud on the radio: Buffalo can be a Blue Zone. 🎙️

Last week Purnima and I joined the WNY Peace Center Radio Show on WBNY 91.3 FM to talk about the work. Food as medicine. Food access. Food policy. Systems level change. The stuff that actually decides whether a whole community gets to be healthy.

We covered 40 Days to Wellness, Live Well Thrive Well, the Food as Medicine Symposium, and what it would actually take for Buffalo to become a place where healthy is the default, not the exception.

Huge thank you to WBNY 91.3 FM and the WNY Peace Center for sharing the mic and the conversation. Grateful to share a city with an organization that keeps showing up on access, advocacy, and services for all.

Buffalo, we are just getting started. 🫶

09/21/2026

🎤 KEYNOTE Day 1 of the Food as Medicine Symposium: Dr. Kristi Artz

Let's talk about the question every health system is asking wrong. 🔥

Everyone wants to know the ROI on food as medicine. Dr. Kristi Artz, MD, FACLM, CCMS, is coming to Buffalo to tell us - we're measuring the wrong thing.

Her keynote, "From ROI to Return on Whole Health: Why the Care Model IS the Treatment," reframes the entire conversation. Because here's the thing: you can't bolt nutrition onto a broken care model and expect a miracle. The model itself is the intervention. 💡

If you've ever had to justify this work to a CFO, or perhaps you're on the C-suite - this is your session.

🗓️ Day 1, October 15, 9:15 AM
📍 Buffalo, NY, in person or virtual
🎟️ Registration link in bio
💸 Community wellness orgs + nonprofits: code FAMNON26 for 50% off

09/02/2026

Busy Season, Cozy Bowl: Creamy Orzo & Chickpeas for the Fall-Lovers

Some weeks feel like a sprint with no finish line. Emails, projects, meetings, more meetings. When can I actually get work done?! And somewhere in the middle of it all, I still want to feel good, nourished, and a little bit like I have my life together. Enter this creamy orzo and chickpea bowl. It came together on one of those "I have twenty minutes and a lot of feelings about fall" evenings, and it turned out so good I had to share it....

Some weeks feel like a sprint with no finish line. Emails, projects, meetings, more meetings. When can I actually get work done?! And somewhere in the middle of it all, I still want to feel good, n…

08/31/2026

1.5 million Americans will die this year from a disease that started on a plate. (that's about half of all annual US deaths) (reference: GAO 2021)

🍽️ 🥗 🍅Food is central to the experience; we all not only need to eat daily, but food is also the truest expression of culture and identity.

That's exactly why advice can feel so personal. Even well-intentioned advice can feel threatening at times, as if changing what's on our plate means giving something up. 🥦 🍎 🍲

But that's not what the field is about. It's actually the opposite. Food as medicine is a form of . Nourishing food is freedom that gives us not just more years, but better ones: more energy, more mental clarity, more time doing what we love with the people we love, and a greater . Of all the things that shape and a vibrant life, one of the most powerful is also the most ordinary: what's on your plate. Eating, one of the simplest daily behaviors shapes not just how long we live (lifespan), but how well we live, our .

🥦 🍎 🍲And, food as medicine doesn't just free the individual body. It frees communities from extractive systems, frees local economies from dependency, frees the planet from unsustainable production, and frees future generations from inheriting the same burden. The same plate that heals a person can also heal a local economy, a community, and a landscape. One choice radiates outwards. 🍽️ 🥗 🍅

🕊️ 🔓That freedom belongs to everyone; however it isn't a given for everyone. It's shaped by systems, policy, and access, which is exactly why this work has to happen at every level. While individual choices are important, the bigger and most important piece is that we work to change the and policies that determine whether that choice is even on the table. 🌅 🦋

💚 🌱 Join us this October at the Food as Medicine Symposium in for over two days of inspiration, connection, and learning. Expect 10.25 for healthcare professionals, real tools for turning insight into action, and a delicious plant-based meal to prove that better eating never has to mean sacrifice. ⚡ 🧠 ❤️‍🔥

Link in bio!!

07/30/2026

🍌🫐 THE BANANA SMOOTHIE DISCOURSE IS SO REAL RN

did a podcast clip really convince the internet that bananas are secretly sabotaging your blueberries?? we need to talk about this

spoiler: the study everyone’s citing never even put bananas and blueberries in the same cup. not once. 💀

grab your popcorn (and your banana, keep the banana) bc we’re breaking down what the science ACTUALLY says vs what got you to stop scrolling

mythbusting healthmisinformation

07/28/2026

MAHA wants to end chronic disease but just capped federal loans for the exact clinicians trained to treat it through food.

RDNs are now the federally required standard of care for malnutrition in every adult hospital patient (which has doubled in population as of this year.)

Meanwhile, a master's degree costs more and pays less than almost ANY comparable health credential, and gets zero of the loan protections doctors, PAs, and pharmacists get. (see the graph in my blog).

WE cannot fix the American diet without funding the workforce that delivers nutrition services and medical nutrition therapy. AND as a profession, RDNs are shrinking.

Link in bio for the full breakdown.

Make America Healthy Again has spent the last eighteen months building an enormous amount of infrastructure: an executive order, an 128-initiative strategy spanning HHS, USDA, FDA, NIH, and CDC, an…

06/22/2026

Plot twist: I cold plunged. On purpose.

It wasn’t to be performative or do a trendy health fad, I can tell you that. And it’s also probably something I will not add to my routine.

It is more so a moment that is the symbol of something much bigger. Boston Valley brought together a group of people who each carry their own story, their own hard, their own quiet resilience, and we chose to show up for each other. The individuals here helped me cold plunge for the first time, something I didn’t know I had the strength to do! I learned just how strong powerful and resilient I am.

Move. Breathe. Meditate. Plunge. Fuel. Together.

That is the formula. Not for a perfect day, but for the kind of healing that actually sticks because you do it in community, instead of alone. It’s an important reminder for myself to lean on my people.

I left feeling uplifted, and holding a deep sense of belonging to a group of unique people who share the same health beliefs. It reminded of why this work matters. Sometimes the focus on our mental resilience is what supports our physical well-being the most.

I cannot wait for the Fall retreat. Thank you to every wonderful human who shared this space with me. And to the wonderful instructors and hosts Cory Sampson Casey Sampson Joseph Bow joshua Anita Rastelli Hawley