About Me
Welcome to Vitamin See!
May name is Tori Davila, and I’m a Dietetic Technician, Registered (DTR). Am I a dietitian? Not yet! I have a master’s degree and an internship to go before I’m there, but I’m the next best thing!
I’m going to be honest with ya’ll: if you’re looking for a food/health/wellness blog by a Perfect Person with a Perfect Life and a Perfect Body, you may wish to look elsewhere! I’m as normal and imperfect as any of you. But, I have over a decade of cooking and several years of nutrition education under my belt, and I’m here for you.
And who am I? We’ve already established that I’m Not Perfect. If you’re a millennial, I’m like about every person that you know who’s our age. It took me two goes at college to figure out what I really wanted to do, and after a history degree and a few years working in a law firm, I bit the bullet and went back to school with the goal of becoming a registered dietitian (RD) and eventually a certified diabetes educator. I’d wanted to do that for years, but oh boy was I scared of the science. Organic chemistry, biochemistry? Nope nope nope.
But working with lawyers for a few years teaches you a lot about overcoming fear. As a liberal arts major I was afraid of the hard sciences that I knew I would have to pass in any nutrition program. More importantly, I was afraid of failure. I wasted a lot of time being afraid, and letting go and going for it is the best decision I’ve ever made.
Guys. I love nutrition. It has everything: chemistry, sociology, biology, philosophy. For someone who loves to cook and didn’t want to admit for years that I’m a science nerd, it’s the perfect blend of food and science. And to think that I let a career in nutrition pass me by for years because I was too afraid of a few chemical equations to try.
Lots of people are flat scared of food. I used to be one of those people. Before I ever dreamed of getting into the nutrition field, my sister was diagnosed with diabetes. I remember staring at a pan full of cut zucchini and thinking, I am literally too scared to salt this, because if I do we’re all going to get hypertension. After cooking for years, suddenly I was afraid to even season vegetables.
Eventually I learned that it’s not that simple. But as I worked to educate myself about nutrition and about how to craft healthy, good meals for a diabetic, I realized that thousands of people are as scared of food as I was. They’re scared of gaining weight, or not losing weight, or damaging their bodies with this chemical or that. It’s the underpinning beneath so many articles about food and health and weight loss that you see: tell me what to do, oh food gurus, because I’m terrified of messing up.
This is what confusion and mixed signals and a general lack of understanding about even the basics of nutrition does to us. I’ve gone into the nutrition field because I want to teach people to approach cooking and eating from a place of joy and exhilaration, free from fear of making a wrong turn. Whether you’re a veteran cook with years of experience or someone whose new to the cutting board, I want to help you. My recipes are simple and flexible, and whatever nutrition info I provide is evidenced-based and 100% scientific.
Are you going to find immaculate, nutritionally perfect recipes here? Mmm, maybe sometimes, but not always. I’m not perfect, you’re not perfect, and striving for a perfect diet or a perfect body is a one-way trip to misery, and we’re not doing that here! What you’ll find here is nutrition discourse from someone who should know, and recipes from someone who was cooking a long time before I knew what a macronutrient was. It’s a journey that I’m figuring out myself. Come with me!