At the age of fifteen, natural foods chef Amy Ruth Finegold started researching how the right combination of healthy foods could promote good digestion. She began watching the Food Network to learn how to cook and experimenting with new dishes on her own. The birth of her son Jake triggered her mission to make healthy cooking a lifestyle habit.

As a self-taught chef, Amy Ruth has twenty years of experience in healthy cooking and she believes that her years of experience “are more beneficial than a formal school.” She also believes that eating the most nutrient dense foods such as avocados, sunflower seeds, nuts, hummus, and raw vegetables are best to eat on a daily basis. Organic healthy foods can be on the expensive side, but Amy Ruth notes that there are healthy foods, such as lentils, that you can find at an affordable price. It takes a little thought, but it can be done.

Planning is key and according to Amy Ruth, “taking a few hours on a Sunday to prep healthy snacks” is a good choice and you can warm up snacks, such as roasted sweet potatoes, to snack on while studying, which is a much better option than sugary foods. Amy Ruth currently has two cookbooks on the market (Super Grains and Seeds and For the Love of Oats) and her favorite recipe is her Blueberry Heaven Muffin, which is the muffin that convinced the national food chain Whole Foods to sell her baking mixes, which ultimately helped her land her book deals.

Since Amy Ruth is pouring herself into nutritional science, any future cookbook that she would write would be very different from her others books.  She is interested in helping people with digestive problems utilize food as a natural treatment mechanism and although her cookbooks contain healthy recipes, they are not specifically designed for this group. Amy Ruth is doing what she loves most and that is teaching people how to feel better through food. She serves as a nutritional coach to a diverse group of clients and also helps parents plan meals for children with special dietary needs. She will also be registered as a Nutritional Therapy Practitioner (NTP) by the end of the year. Amy Ruth’s best advice is to “take time for yourself” as she believes that young women need to take care of themselves through nutrition.

Contributor: Judy McDevitt