Happy Pride Month everyone! I am so happy to be supporting my LGBTQ+ friends and family. I have been asking myself recently how, as an ally, I can better support the LGBTQ+ community. I wanted to take a nutrition approach since that is my future career path, and do some research on ways to provide nutrition education to LGBTQ+ individuals, specifically people who are transgender.
Webster's Dictionary defines Transgender as being a person whose gender identity differs from the sex the person had or was identified as having at birth. For transgender individuals, receiving medical care can be extremely difficult, and nutrition education is probably the last medical concern that they would have. I wanted to see what information was out there, if any, in regards to nutrition recommendations as well as nutrition counseling techniques specifically for transgender individuals.
Dietitians are very educated on how to calculate a person's estimated energy needs and ideal body weight, but the formulas that are used are based on the person's sex. So how would you provide this kind of information to a transgender client? Would you use their assigned sex at birth for the formulas? Or their current gender identity? Would that make them over or under consume? And what if they are taking any kind of hormones? Could that affect their caloric needs? These are the questions I asked myself and I wanted to see if there were any currently recognized recommendations.
The Academy of Nutrition & Dietetics is well aware of the disparities that transgender individuals face, and there are current practice applications in place to educate dietitians on how to care for transgender patients. Some studies have already been conducted to see if transgender individuals are currently meeting dietary intake requirements, and how nutrition considerations can be made based off of anthropometric assessment, surveys, and dietary recall. As far as nutrition recommendations, there is some limited information provided online by outlets such as Gendergp.
There is still a lot of research that needs to be done regarding nutrition care for transgender individuals, but knowing and understanding the current health disparity and lack of knowledge is a great start. I can only hope that the field of Dietetics continues to grow and be more inclusive and welcoming of all types of people.
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