Jennette Turner - the Face Behind What's For Supper

by Elizabeth Archerd

At age twelve, Jennette Turner fell in love with a baby pig during a farm visit and immediately decided to become vegetarian. During and after college, she experimented with different dietary philosophies and systems, and now considers herself to be an "ethical omnivore." Eventually, Jennette enrolled in an intensive three-year holistic nutrition school in New York City, from which she obtained her certification in Holistic Nutrition. Now, as a Natural Foods Educator, Jennette has been teaching people how to eat well and improve their health for over ten years. Whether she's consulting one-on-one with a client, lecturing at the Wedge or teaching a workplace food education seminar, Jennette offers insight and instruction on how to best use food for optimal health and well-being.

The "holistic" in Holistic Nutrition is what makes Jennette such a fabulous fit with the Wedge. She is concerned with more than calories, vitamins and minerals. Big picture nutrition includes how food is raised and processed, and what happens to the environment at each step. Our ability to eat a good diet depends on the economic viability of sustainable producers, healthy soil, clean water and the distribution system. Case in point: the spinach scare last year. The spinach was contaminated in the field.

For holistic nutrition to have an impact, healthful meals have to be within reach of everyone, so Jennette uses recipes and techniques grounded in time-tested methods. Her clients, like many others, don't have time to make complicated meals at the end of the work day. As a working parent, Jennette can relate to those people who say "I don't have time to cook." Yet Jennette believes they really do, if they know a few basic things that simplify the cooking life.

Jennette's focus on practicality and simplicity made her the perfect candidate to take over recipe creation for What's for Supper five years ago. Jennette develops the recipes, sampled in the store on Fridays, by testing them on family and friends. Jennette calls local growers to ask what they expect to deliver to the Wedge (and when) so her recipes can include fresh local produce.

An outgrowth of all this experience is Jennette's new online meal-plan service called Dinner with Jennette, designed to help people create delicious, naturally healthful meals. For a small annual fee, subscribers can download 12 dinner plans every month, with helpful hints, nutrition tips, recipes and shopping lists. It's like What's for Supper, but instead of one recipe, you get a whole meal along with in-depth material. All meals use whole, natural foods and are gluten-free. A bonus for Wedge shoppers is that since Jennette does most of her shopping at Wedge, all the ingredients are available here. Check it out by visiting www.jennette-turner.com and clicking on the Dinner with Jennette button.

Jennette has shared her expertise with Wedge members by writing articles and teaching in our classroom program for almost a decade. Browse our newsletter archives at www.wedge.coop and search under "Jennette Turner" for a complete list of articles she has written for the Wedge.