Episode

Episode | Quick Take

Author Judi Nath stops by once more for a chat about another of her new books, this one titled Digesting Foods and Fads. We discuss the book’s content, why Judi wrote it, and how we can use the book’s content to become better teachers of human anatomy & physiology.

• 00:00 | Introduction
• 00:42 | Introducing Judi Nath
• 03:56 | Sponsored by AAA
• 03:12 | Digesting Food and Fads
• 18:11 | Sponsored by HAPI
• 19:00 | Stories for Learning
• 29:14 | Sponsored by HAPS
• 30:21 | Million Dollar Words Explained
• 39:13 | Staying Connected

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Episode | Transcript

The A&P Professor podcast (TAPP radio) episodes are made for listening, not reading. This transcript is provided for your convenience, but hey, it’s just not possible to capture the emphasis and dramatic delivery of the audio version. Or the cool theme music.  Or laughs and snorts. And because it’s generated by a combo of machine and human transcription, it may not be exactly right. So I strongly recommend listening by clicking the audio player provided.

This searchable transcript is supported by the
American Association for Anatomy.
I'm a member—maybe you should be one, too!

Introduction

Kevin Patton (00:00):
Speaking about food, the poet and playwright Oscar Wilde once said, “Everything in moderation, including moderation.”

Aileen (00:11):
Welcome to The A&P Professor, a few minutes to focus on teaching human anatomy and physiology with a veteran educator and teaching mentor, your host Kevin Patton.

Kevin Patton (00:26):
In this episode, I chat with Dr. Judi Nath about her new book, Digesting Foods and Fads.

Introducing Judi Nath

Kevin Patton (00:42):
I once again have the joy of chatting with my friend Dr. Judi Nath. You may recall that in Episode 110, that is th e previous episode, Judi came in to talk with us about her new book, Sins Against Science: How Misinformation Affects our Lives and Laws.

Kevin Patton (01:02):
Well, she has another new book recently published called Digesting Foods and Fads. And she’ll be with us again in a moment to talk about that one and how these two books originated. Before we get to that, I want to remind you about some things that you should know about Judi Nath. She’s an award-winning biology professor who’s taught anatomy and physiology among other subjects at Lourdes University and Penn State University.

Kevin Patton (01:35):
She’s an author of textbooks in several subjects including a popular series in anatomy and physiology. And she’s been an active member of the Human Anatomy and Physiology Society, HAPS, for, well, literally forever. Okay, not literally exactly, but certainly from the very early days of HAPS. And she served HAPS in many ways including as president of the organization. Her work on behalf of A&P teaching and learning has been recognized in many ways, including receiving the HAPS President’s Medal which we celebrated in this podcast way back in Episode 94.

Kevin Patton (02:19):
There are more details about Judi, her recent books and her publisher McFarland Books in the show notes for the introduction segment of this episode. That is Episode 111, 111, and Judi’s website at judinath.com. And that’s a J-U-D-I-N-A-T-H dot com.

Kevin Patton (02:42):
We’ll chat with Judi in a moment. But before I do…

I want to address a rumor I’ve been hearing about that. She and I were once on the same Olympic bobsled team. Really? I don’t know how that rumor got started, but it is false. We were never on the same bobsled team. I just want to clear that up.

Sponsored by AAA

Kevin Patton (03:12):
A searchable transcript and a captioned audiogram of this episode are funded by AAA, the American Association for Anatomy. I’ll bet you didn’t know, simply by going to anatomy.org, you can find all kinds of resources. I mean, some really cool stuff like a virtual dissection database of images, and a virtual microscopy database, and anatomy ethics resources and a journal about teaching A&P and a bunch of webinars. And well, the list is so long. It’s just too long to go through it right now. But next time you have a few minutes, check it all out at anatomy.org. You’ll be glad you did.

Digesting Foods and Fads

Kevin Patton (04:04):
Well, I’m here again with Judi Nath who is an author of a couple of trade books that are not textbooks but they’re books that are marketed for the general public but are particular interests to A&P faculty. And so, she’s going to talk to us about the second of the two books that she’s discussing. In a previous episode, we talked about Sins Against Science, the subtitled How Misinformation Affects our Lives And Laws. We had a really nice chat about that and learned about how that book can help us as A&P teachers or just help us as human beings living in our society I think is very helpful, and how we as A&P teachers can approach other human beings living in our society.

Kevin Patton (04:52):
But this time, we’re going to turn our attention to this other book that she recently released. And this one is called Digesting Foods and Fads. So, Judi, thanks again for being here.

Judi Nath (05:04):
Thanks, Kevin. It’s always a pleasure chatting with you.

Kevin Patton (05:07):
We might need to make this a regular part of the podcast because this has been a lot of fun.

Judi Nath (05:13):
I agree. This is… I’m hip!

Kevin Patton (05:16):
Let’s look forward to doing that. So, send your questions to Judi by way of the link in the show notes at the episode page. But for now, we’re focusing on your book, Digesting Foods and Fads. First question is I think that title is pretty self-explanatory, but why don’t you explain it anyway and give some little peek behind the scenes of what that really means?

Judi Nath (05:45):
Okay. What that really means is that the publisher wouldn’t let me use my original title which was called Diet My Ass.

Kevin Patton (05:57):
I love that. And that would have … If you were to think of bestseller list right away instead of later on.

Judi Nath (06:04):
That’s what I was aiming for, exactly. But they didn’t think it sounded academic enough. And that it might be off-putting to some people. I had this whole series, Science My Ass, Diet My Ass, you name. It was going to be this whole series. But that didn’t get to happen.

Kevin Patton (06:24):
Oh, my God. Well, whoever made that decision has not been in academia for a long, long time if ever because I think that would’ve clicked.

Judi Nath (06:36):
Yeah, I do too. And so, I started in one of my files that I just keep on my computer, Diet My Ass blogs. And I thought, “Well, I can post these on my website and just say Diet My Ass blogs. But I never got to that because I started blogging during the pandemic which is a whole other story. But I wanted to come up with a title that was close to Diet My Ass and Digesting Foods and Fads seemed to work.

Judi Nath (07:03):
And the book had its genesis simply because I was frustrated with the knowledge we don’t have just everyday people. My friends, family, everybody in my sphere, we don’t have about sound nutritional practices. And I’ve just seen so many people jumping on diet bandwagons and taking a supplement for this and a supplement for that. And I just started jotting down my thoughts about, “That’s not right. What you’re believing there, that’s just not right. And why in the world would we humans have evolved to take all our nutrition from something that was manufactured? That makes no sense.”

Judi Nath (07:50):
So, I started writing. The real pen to paper occurred during a faculty meeting. So, they are useful faculty …

Kevin Patton (08:02):
That’s when a lot of the best ideas come while you’re daydreaming during, excuse me, concentrating during a faculty meeting.

Judi Nath (08:13):
Exactly. It was great though because it started as a group effort because my colleagues at my table were more interested in what we are writing and I just started writing thoughts and passing them around. And pretty soon, they’d make their way all the way around the table and everybody had their thoughts on it, went ta-da.

Kevin Patton (08:31):
All right.

Judi Nath (08:32):
This was how it started.

Kevin Patton (08:34):
So, it started with a collaborative session of brainstorming.

Judi Nath (08:39):
All on paper. We were being very quiet.

Kevin Patton (08:41):
And just silence, right. And it was a productive faculty meeting.

Judi Nath (08:45):
It was the most productive one I ever attended.

Kevin Patton (08:51):
Well, I’m glad that happened because it eventually ended up resulting in a book. One thing I want to ask before because it’s weighing on my mind, I keep looking at the cover of the book. And just before we started our chatting, I complimented you on the cover. I really like the bold colors of it and just the way it flies off the page and so on. It is food that’s not just sitting there, it’s flying too.

Judi Nath (09:18):
It’s flying, yeah.

Kevin Patton (09:20):
So, it’s pretty engaging. So, this is just from the publishing side of things. I’m curious, did you have any input on that cover or how did that work?

Judi Nath (09:34):
I did. So, I had found some images on some stock sites and forwarded those to the publisher for their consideration. And they greatly encouraged me to send them any thoughts or scrap art to put together for a cover. And I thought this this spoke to me. I like bright colors. This is bright colors and everything on there looks like something I should be eating. So, that was enticing.

Kevin Patton (10:07):
Yeah, I think that’s really good. But I hear a lot of stories from authors who their publisher doesn’t really want them to spend their time on the cover. Maybe they’re behind on their other deadlines or something. But even me, I’m often behind on my deadlines and they let me work on the cover. And that’s what spurs me on to beat my deadlines. So, I’m glad that you had that opportunity to do that because it turned out really well.

Judi Nath (10:34):
Well, thank you.

Kevin Patton (10:36):
I guess another question is in your other book, Sins Against Science, you had built up a file over many years and kept adding to that file and winnowed down your topics, and went from there. With the Digesting Foods and Fads, a lot of this book … well, I don’t know what proportion it is … but some of the book is really going through basic ideas of nutrition. And that includes all of those things that we talk about in an A&P course, right?

Judi Nath (11:11):
Exactly.

Kevin Patton (11:12):
So, what is it you’re doing in that part of the story?

Judi Nath (11:15):
So, in that part of the story, I think about what I teach in Anatomy and Physiology and all of our textbooks have a chapter on nutrition. It’s been my experience that many A&P professors just gloss over that chapter. And I’ve been guilty of that as well in the past because we had a nutrition course. We actually had two nutrition courses that students could take, Nutrition and Nutrition Science.

Judi Nath (11:46):
But yet, here was this chapter in our A&P books that actually are in all of the A&P books. So, you’d think that we would teach it, there are HAPS learning outcomes associated with the nutrition chapters. And I actually have a bent for nutrition because at one point in my life, I thought I was going to become a registered dietician. So, I took all those courses but I never did my practicum. So, I have all the coursework but not the clinical experience.

Judi Nath (12:20):
So, is that like the ABD? I don’t know. But anyhow …

Kevin Patton (12:27):
Yeah, there’s probably an acronym, I thought of that.

Judi Nath (12:28):
Yeah, I don’t know what it is but I really liked nutrition. And so, as I was writing this book, I had my own A&P book open and looked at just the different topics in that chapter, and made sure that at least those topics were covered. But here’s truth in advertising. While I have that other book called Sins Against Science, Digesting Foods and Fads aka Diet My Ass was first. And that book was getting huge because it was also including some things like genetically-modified food that I also have in Sins Against Science.

Judi Nath (13:13):
And a colleague in the English Department was reading it. And she said, “You have two books here.” “Oh, okay.” So, I went back to just my Diet My Ass topics and then this book was born. And many of the topics also came from my background in medical anthropology which I always drew upon when I was trying to counter arguments with people close to me about why it is you’re eating the food you’re eating. And we have to go back and look at how we evolved as humans. So, that was a long-winded answer.

Kevin Patton (13:54):
No, that’s perfect. I mean, that tells us the kind of story that we’re going to read when we read the book. And what warmed my heart is I first started looking at it was that it does reflect what’s in all the major A&P books and what we as A&P instructors are used to seeing even if we don’t spend a lot of time and a course teaching it which I always do. No, not really. I’ve glossed over it, too. I’ve been guilty of that.

Kevin Patton (14:24):
And now, it’s out to the world. Everyone knows that that has been the fact. But it’s like any topic in A&P, we have so much time and effort where we’re going to spend it, and we have to make choices. And unfortunately sometimes, one of the areas that probably has the most impact on our own individual lives plus the lives of other people that our students are going to be dealing with as patients or clients, we end up kind of glossing over and maybe we shouldn’t, maybe we should start making some different decision.

Kevin Patton (14:59):
How do you feel about that? Do you think that we should maybe emphasize a little bit more than …

Judi Nath (15:06):
I do, because the as A&P professors, I think we become so systems-focused. And we don’t really touch upon the fact that nutrition touches every single one of our systems. And this might be a plug for teaching core concepts. For example, I’ve often said I could teach an entire course of A&P by looking at diabetes. And if there is one condition in which nutrition plays a huge role, that is one of those conditions.

Judi Nath (15:43):
So, it’s pretty important. But if you want to drill down with our food, we need to look at the biochemistry of our food. And because so many people in the general audience have never taken a biochemistry course, you’re going to lose them. And so, when you want people in the periphery, not A&P instructors, but so many people who’ve never had a biochemistry course, take a look at whatever new fad thing they’re eating or drinking. They don’t know the biochemistry behind it to know that that’s a fad or a fallacy.

Judi Nath (16:26):
So, bringing it back to anatomy and physiology, I think there’s something like 400,000 students a year that take A&P. There might be more than that, I don’t know because it’s housed in so many different departments. If we could have them at least have a good solid foundation in that chapter in the textbook, then they themselves would see the interrelationships between the food you eat, where we get it, our planet and our lives and the health of our lives.

Kevin Patton (17:00):
Right. Well, you do a great job in the book of making those connections or helping the readers see those connections. And what I like about that is something I alluded to the last time we spoke, and that is I can see how Judi Nath lays that out so that we can draw connections so that when I get into a teaching situation with my students or with friends and family, I have a model that I can draw upon.

Kevin Patton (17:31):
And I may not copy exactly how you did it, but it’s certainly going to influence how I did it. Because as you pointed out last time when we were discussing this general approaches, we’re always out there learning new stuff and seeing how other people are doing it and taking the bits and pieces that fit with our story. And so, it’s kind of like this … It’s not oral history. I guess it’s oral natural history of the body that we’re kind of picking up little snippets of that story from our fellow storytellers and putting that in.

Kevin Patton (18:04):
We’ll be back with more of our chat with Judi Nath in just a moment.

Sponsored by HAPI

Kevin Patton (18:11):
You’re listening to this podcast right now at no cost because all the distribution fees are sponsored by the Master of Science in Human Anatomy & Physiology Instruction, the HAPI agree. This program at Northeast College of Health Sciences is designed to help those who already have an advanced degree get caught up in evidence-based teaching strategies as they refresh and review all the major topics in the typical anatomy and physiology course. Check out this online graduate program at NortheastCollege.edu/HAPI. That’s H-A-P-I or click the link in the show notes or episode page.

Stories for Learning

Kevin Patton (19:00):
One of the things I value about this book is that this is part of the library I’m building in my mind of these different stories that are directly useful to me. A lot of the books I read, sometimes I’m reading them just because they sound interesting or somebody has recommended it. And so, I’m reading it and I get partway into it and think, “Oh my gosh, I can use that in my course.” Either it’s some fact or some explanation of a fact or even just some analogy that even the author isn’t using it in the context that I’m going to be using it in, it triggers something.

Kevin Patton (19:36):
But this one is pretty in your face that every page is going to be useful in an A&P course. And something that I think applies to both these books in and that is, in the past, something that I’ve done a number of times in a number of different kinds of courses is I’ve had flexible assignments. Sometimes I’ve even call them extra-credit. But when your colleagues find out that you’re calling it extra-credit that’s like, “Oh my gosh, he has lost his mind.”

Kevin Patton (20:11):
But I do have these flexible assignments where they can pick and choose different things to learn from. And I’ve assigned a book, sometimes there’s like two different books. You can either pick this one or this one. And I will have them engage in it. It’s not just, “Read the book and give me your reaction.” It’s, “Here’s a little activity surrounding the first quarter of the book. Here’s a little activity.”

Kevin Patton (20:40):
And so, they do engage with things and we do have objectives and so on in there. And there are things that, typically, I don’t have time in the rest of the course to really emphasize the way I think they ought to be emphasized. And so, I remember a book a number of years ago on receptors in the nervous system and stories about how receptors were discovered, the kinds of receptors that there are. It was a very interesting book and the author had to explain a bunch of stuff because your average person is going to have no clue where to start with that kind of story.

Kevin Patton (21:17):
But I see both of these books in that realm. I could see assigning maybe both books and say, “Okay, pick one or the other,” or, “Maybe in A&P1, we do one, maybe do Sins Against Science. In A&P2, we do Digesting Foods and Fads or the other way around.” And of course, I’m going to tell my students the story behind the title because that will engage them even more because that’s a much better title.

Judi Nath (21:42):
All my students know that title.

Kevin Patton (21:46):
And I bet that threw them in, didn’t it?

Judi Nath (21:49):
It did. It got to the point where, “Fr. Nath, put this in Diet My Ass.” “Okay.”

Kevin Patton (21:54):
Let’s see, something you might want to consider is printing off a bunch of dust jackets with that title on it and send your students to the bookstore. And have them ask for the book.

Judi Nath (22:06):
Just class them up.

Kevin Patton (22:06):
Yeah, class them up. But anyway, I’m way off topic there.

Judi Nath (22:10):
Sorry.

Kevin Patton (22:11):
No, that’s fun.

Judi Nath (22:13):
I helped to take you there.

Kevin Patton (22:16):
That happens a lot when you and I chat. But anyway, if it’s not you, it’s me doing it. What I’m saying is that’s something for the listeners to consider is is that something that if you’re not really covering a lot of nutrition and how it affects all these other things in our life and all the other things that we’re teaching in A&P, then maybe assigning it as reading and getting the students to engage a little bit with the book might be helpful.

Kevin Patton (22:45):
And I always think that even if it’s … It is covering some of the same material that’s in their textbook but I think that’s a really good thing because then, they’re seeing it in a different way. And I think sometimes students, just when they hear that it’s not the textbook, then that push them up a little bit. So, you got the great title that you’ve revealed to them. And the fact that it’s not part of the textbook, it’s like, “Yeah, I’ll read that.”

Judi Nath (23:12):
Exactly.

Kevin Patton (23:12):
And then they get into and find that it’s much more conversational.

Judi Nath (23:18):
I think that’s key that you have the liberty in a general audience book to be much more conversational and say things that you would say in a class but you can’t write in a textbook.

Kevin Patton (23:33):
Oh my gosh, I need to wipe the smile off my face here. As soon as you said that, that’s exactly what I thought when I picked up this book. And I was reading that. And as textbook authors, we often get comments and suggestions about, “Oh, I tell this story about whatever, you ought to put that in the textbook,” or, “I use this example, you ought to put that in the textbook.”

Kevin Patton (23:56):
Here’s this interesting fact that it’s detail they don’t need to know, but it’s interesting and it helps engage them. You ought to put it in the textbook. And I say yes to every one of those in my head but you just can’t, it doesn’t fit in a textbook. And so, this is the kind of book that most of us wish our textbook was, even I wish my own textbook was like this. But of course, then it would weigh 300 pounds.

Kevin Patton (24:26):
Exercise is good too. Besides eating right, exercise is good. So, if we had even bigger A&P books, that would be … No, I’m not advocating for that.

Judi Nath (24:35):
Unless you want to stave off osteoporosis because weight-bearing exercises will do that, it increases the block of your A&P book but nobody will adopt it. So, that’s the problem.

Kevin Patton (24:53):
Well, yeah. Well, shoot, yeah, that’s not going to help anybody if they don’t adopt it. So, this book I think somebody could adopt as a supplement to an A&P textbook. And it’s going to have those stories that we wish they had in it. And it’s going to really pull the things from the textbook that they’ve already learned. Because something that I’ve been harping on a lot in past episodes of this podcast is the idea that students forget stuff and they need to relearn it. And the forgetting is good and they need to bring it back and relearn it.

Kevin Patton (25:24):
And so, I could see something like this being a way for students to relearn the stuff that they learned about what is a carbohydrate? What kind of carbohydrates are there? What are the jobs of carbohydrates? What about the different kinds of proteins? How are proteins built? How do we get them in our body? And all those things, they picked up sometimes in bits and pieces throughout the course.

Kevin Patton (25:49):
And this is a way for them to take all those bits and pieces that they’ve forgotten by now then pull them back together and say, “Oh, yeah, saturated fats, I remember what that is.” And pull that all together and see how it plays out. And, of course, the further into the course they are, the more of those little pieces that they have learned separately and not quite figured out how they fit into the big picture.

Judi Nath (26:16):
That’s it exactly. And that was one of my goals that no matter who was reading this, they can put it all together because our curricula are fragmented. You learn this here, you learn that there, you learn something else there. But it takes a really good teacher to bring that all together. And not that this is a plug for you and me being really great teachers, but sometimes there is not that capstone course or that capstone teacher for students in science to bring it all together.

Judi Nath (26:52):
And that’s sorely missing. It’s not going to happen in our world of academia. But if you can bring it all together and make it applicable and there’s nothing more applicable than the food you eat every day, it’s so much a good plan.

Kevin Patton (27:07):
Yeah, right. Yeah. So here’s the capstone course for at least that part of it at least. And like you say when we were talking about if you can just talk about diabetes and teach everything about A&P, I mean, you’re doing a lot of that in this book. You do bring in a lot of other kinds of concepts besides the ones that are obviously, digestion or nutrition-related.

Judi Nath (27:32):
Right.

Kevin Patton (27:32):
I think a lot of the folks I interact with in the A&P teaching community strive to be that kind of a teacher. But I think we all realize that we can’t really do all of that.

Judi Nath (27:44):
Right, we can’t do it all. And lots of this book was written from my own shortcomings, things I wanted to say and teach and couldn’t. Or honestly, even though I’ve been teaching for almost 30 years, there’s still stuff … Again, that’s a biological term stuff but there are still things I’m still learning about topics that I’ve been teaching that they’re not necessarily new concepts, but I thought about them differently, I went, “Aha.” And we have that aha moment.

Kevin Patton (28:21):
I can’t remember a couple of … This has happened a lot, but I can remember a couple of distinct instances where I kind of stopped in my explanation of something for a moment and thought to myself, “I never realized that connection before how this relates to what we just talked about last week or what’s coming up next or whatever,” like these eureka moments.

Kevin Patton (28:46):
And I think that we not only see that in our own teaching but when we read various books like when you talk about all kinds of books you can find that in, all of a sudden, something clicks, something like, “Oh, my goodness.”

Judi Nath (28:59):
Right, something clicks.

Kevin Patton (29:00):
Yeah. And we’re like, “Oh, we made a connection.” And we’ll be right back with more conversation with Judi Nath about her book Digesting Foods and Fads.

Sponsored by HAPS

Kevin Patton (29:15):
Marketing support for this podcast is provided by HAPS, the Human Anatomy and Physiology Society. Listen, I know, I talk about HAPS all the time. It’s one of my primary resources for learning new things as an A&P professor. And it’s one of my go-to places to connect with other A&P faculty from all over.

Kevin Patton (29:39):
Some of my closest and most helpful colleagues ever, I met in HAPS. Some I met at annual or regional conferences. Some at virtual town halls. Others through various committees I have served on. By the way, those HAPS committees, they’re the kind of committees where you really do meet interesting people and have interesting and meaningful discussions and do work that really means something. See what HAPS can do for you by visiting theAPprofessor.org/haps. That’s H-A-P-S.

Million Dollar Words Explained

Kevin Patton (30:22):
You know this that I haven’t finished both books. So, I keep going back and forth between them actually.

Judi Nath (30:27):
That’s okay. There are no rules.

Kevin Patton (30:31):
They’re both in front of me right now, but I normally have them set in two different places where I’ll stop and pick up something to read. And so, I’ll eventually go through them. I actually started the Digestion one. And I told you this before too, it just kind of opening up in the middle and reading a section and then I read another section because I just wanted to get a feel for what was going on.

Kevin Patton (30:57):
I don’t know if it was your grandmother I think you said that got to a point where she just always went to the end of the book and read. I didn’t do that because I don’t want to spoil the ending. And I hope there are no spoilers coming here. But I think I know how it ends up because that was in your original title.

Judi Nath (31:15):
Right. Exactly. Exactly.

Kevin Patton (31:20):
But anyway, this is one of those things that’s going to spark us to do that I think because we’re going to be seeing how Judi has thought, you as the author, has gone through this and told this story. And I think as you share some of the connections you’ve made, it’s going to spark some of the same connections but it’s also going to spark connections that you haven’t made yet and I haven’t made yet, none of us have made but that reader is going to be able to make that connection.

Kevin Patton (31:49):
And I treasure those moments when I have assigned books and other kinds of things to students and they’ve come back to me and said, “You know what, I never realized blah, blah, blah, whatever it is.” And I’m like, “Shoot, I never realized that either. That’s great. Thank you for telling me.”

Judi Nath (32:06):
Thank you.

Kevin Patton (32:08):
I often get students thanking you for assigning something and here’s why, but for that thing that they learned to be something you can learn too. And I think this book is full of those kinds of things. One other thing I want to mention and I mentioned this about the previous book as well. And no, it’s not the Krebs cycle. Oh, no.

Speaker 4 (32:27):
Oh no.

Speaker 5 (32:27):
Not Krebs cycle.

Kevin Patton (32:32):
Yeah, I could hear that worry in your voice like, “What’s he going to ask me about the Krebs cycle?” No, it’s not the Krebs cycle. It’s the lighthearted approach that you take to it. And as you said in your other book that that is intentional. So, I suspect it’s intentional in this book too.

Judi Nath (32:49):
It is. I want you to read it. Just as we are readers, we want to be drawn into it. We want to enjoy the reading. This isn’t assigned reading just to get the job done. It’s to come away thinking, “Wow, I know something now I didn’t know before and I’m a better person for it.”

Kevin Patton (33:10):
Yeah. Well, I mean, this circles back to your grandmother’s approach to reading. You said that she had gotten to the point where she just didn’t want to waste your time with books or going to have a lousy ending. And I’ve gotten to be that way especially with nonfiction books. And that is, yeah, here’s something that I’m interested in learning about but if I get partway into it and it is a chore to read it, odds are I’m not going to read it unless it’s for a class I’m taking or something.

Kevin Patton (33:40):
And even then, I might try to find the CliffNotes version or something. And I’ll just get through or something. But this is not that kind of writing. This is the kind of writing that once you start, you realize and I’ve done that already a couple of times with both of these books, I’m like, “Oh, I’ll just read a few pages here.” And then, I look at where my bookmark was and where it needs to go now like, “Holy smoke, I’ve covered a lot in a short time. And I don’t necessarily want to stop right now, I just have to.”

Kevin Patton (34:12):
I just want to mention that I’ve had that experience. I think any of our listeners who pick it up as a reader will have that same experience. And I think our students are going to have that experience as well because it’s not … I mean, there are some big words in there but they are explained, they are fully explained so you were very careful about that. So, I think that any reasonably competent reader, you don’t have to be an expert at all to read these books and really end up learning a lot.

Judi Nath (34:38):
Well, I call those multisyllabic words, the million-dollar words to impress your friends and family. We say them out loud in class, adrenocorticotropic hormone. Say that three times fast.

Kevin Patton (34:53):
Yeah, there we go. Carbaminohemoglobin. That’s my favorite. That’s my go-to.

Judi Nath (34:54):
Yeah, carbaminohemoglobin. That one’s harder to say. It doesn’t roll off the tongue …

Kevin Patton (34:58):
Well, see, I practice it every day. It’s part of my meditation practice.

Judi Nath (35:01):
I understand that. Of course, you do, part of OCD.

Kevin Patton (35:05):
Yeah, that’s right, my carbaminohemoglobin practice. But anyway, we could talk all day about both of these books and including this one Digesting Foods and Fads by Judi Nath. And I appreciate you coming back for this episode and talking about this book which is the second one we talked about but the first one you flushed out and wrote. And I’m looking for more books. Let me finish these two first.

Judi Nath (35:36):
Great.

Kevin Patton (35:36):
But as you mentioned, it takes a long, long time to write a book. So, I’m giving you a head start.

Judi Nath (35:41):
Great. Thanks, Kevin.

Kevin Patton (35:43):
You’re welcome. And if you want to take a look at this book, I’m going to have all kinds of links in the show notes at the episode page. I have links to Judi’s website where you can connect to the book from there. And you can also contact Judi from the website if you have any questions or comments or anything like that.

Judi Nath (36:05):
Or if you want to share macaroni and cheese recipes.

Kevin Patton (36:08):
Oh, there you go.

Judi Nath (36:09):
I’m just saying.

Kevin Patton (36:11):
No, wait a minute there. I remember on Twitter or somewhere not long ago, there was some … What is it, Doritos, that you eat with macaroni and cheese?

Judi Nath (36:19):
Just with cheese. Yeah, Doritos with cheese, that’s a delicacy.

Kevin Patton (36:25):
Well, maybe your next book should be a recipe, Mac and Cheese Recipe book. There you go.

Judi Nath (36:31):
If you saw my diet, you would say, “She wrote a book in nutrition?” I’m living proof. You can live no Doritos and cheese.

Kevin Patton (36:42):
Well, those are natural foods from … I went to a Dorito orchard one time and visited. And we ate fresh Doritos there.

Judi Nath (36:52):
Right off the processing plant?

Kevin Patton (36:54):
No. Oh my god, you’d never get me out of there if I’m going to go there. But anyway, we went down another rabbit hole here, didn’t we?

Judi Nath (37:01):
We did.

Kevin Patton (37:03):
So, this book, you need to check it out. And one last thing I want to mention is that besides checking out these links and possibly contacting Judi, possibly checking on the book and maybe even purchasing it and reading it, some other things that you can do that I think would be helpful in teaching the world about these topics is to ask your local library if they have it. And when they get questions like that, they’d look into buying it for the library and making it available to the community. And so there’s that.

Kevin Patton (37:35):
And another thing that really helps people find the book that weren’t necessarily looking for it is to go to bookseller websites and find the book there. And then rate it, I mean, once you’ve read it. Don’t rate it before you read it.

Judi Nath (37:50):
Unless it’s a really good rating then rate it.

Kevin Patton (37:53):
Five stars okay. But anything less than that, please read it first and then reevaluate what you want to do. But seriously, those kinds of things do help books become more visible to the public. By getting them in libraries and getting them rated on bookseller websites, that can make them more visible and getting into more hands. And I think the more people have this information, the world will be a better place.

Kevin Patton (38:25):
And if nothing else, if we reach just a handful of people and help them become healthier people …

Judi Nath (38:32):
That’d be great.

Kevin Patton (38:33):
… that’s well worth it. So, okay, you’re on the hook for coming back another time and …

Judi Nath (38:42):
Great, I would love to.

Kevin Patton (38:42):
… and chat about things in general. And we won’t we won’t wait the year or so it will take for your next book. I’m sure we’ll find something else to talk about between now and then. And thanks again for being here to share your insights and share your stories about Digesting Foods and Fads and in the previous episode, Since Against Science.

Judi Nath (39:06):
Thank you very much for having me, Kevin. This has been fun. Thank you.

Staying Connected

Kevin Patton (39:13):
If you know someone who might want to listen to this episode featuring Judi Nath, there’s an easy way to share. Simply go to theAPprofessor.org/refer to get a personalized share link that will get your friend all set up to listen. And you know me, I always give you links.

Kevin Patton (39:35):
For this episode, I have links to Judi’s website, to her publisher, McFarland Books, and some links that go directly to each of her recent books. But wait, there’s more, including a link to Kevin’s Stress Reduction Diet for anatomy and physiology students that you can share with your own students. And if you don’t see any of these links in your podcast player, no worries, just go to the show notes at the episode page at theAPprofessor.org/111. Again, that’s 111.

Kevin Patton (40:14):
And while you’re there, you can claim your digital credential for listening to this episode, and claim another digital credential for reading the book, and claim another digital credential for reading the other book that we talked about in the previous episode. That is Episode 110. And you can claim yet another digital credential if you listen to Episode 110.

Kevin Patton (40:38):
Now, you want to say something about Judi’s books or our chats in this episode and the last one or anything else related to teaching A&P, well, just call in with your questions, your comments and your ideas at the podcast hotline. That’s 1833 lion den or 1-833-546-6336 or send a recording or written message to podcast@theAPprofessor.org. I’ll see you down the road.

Aileen (41:16):
The A&P Professor is hosted by Dr. Kevin Patton, an award winning professor and textbook author in Human Anatomy and Physiology.

Kevin Patton (41:28):
Please be aware that the content of this episode may have come into contact with nuts and/or may have been prepared in a facility containing nuts.

Kevin Patton (41:46):
We’re living in strange times, aren’t we? There’s a lot of health misinformation and disinformation coming at us from all directions. As science faculty, we have an obligation to promote only evidence-based information and critical analysis. Let’s all help each other keep everyone safe and healthy.

Kevin Patton (42:13):
Digesting Foods and Fads by Judi Nath is published by McFarland books. Learn more about writing opportunities with McFarland at mcfarlandbooks.com.