Local Business Highlight: Jamie Truppi Integrative Nutrition
It’s time for our next local business highlight! I’ve known Jamie for years and it’s been a gift getting to see her kids grow into such kind, sweet humans and to see her business flourishing! As a busy mom myself, getting healthy meals on the table and getting my kids excited about vegetables is no easy task. Jamie Truppi Integrative Nutrition offers a meal planning membership for moms (with easy, kid-friendly recipes & kitchen tips), plus group programming and individualized consulting with a focus on chronic stress (hello, gut imbalance, anxiety, hormones & insomnia!).
We chatted with Jamie to learn a little more about her, her business, and what she loves about the Valley. Enjoy!
*Links and contact information for Jamie are at the bottom*
Tell us a little bit about yourself & your business - How did you start Jamie Truppi Integrative Nutrition? Why did you choose the Wood River Valley as your home base? What are some ways you enjoy spending your time outside of work?
Most of my life I’ve known, deep down that food is the essence of life, and a way to honor the earth, our bodies, and our families. In my own life, food was at the core of my cultural interest, studies and travel, a means of being present in the moment, a way to connect with others, and also offered a reset whenever hedonism or ill-being overtook me. It took me years to realize that nutrition was my “grown up” calling and, due to my fear of needles, pharmaceuticals and hospitals coupled with my love of seasonal food and small farms, I knew that I’d be working in the integrative field and, most likely not for a large company. That gave me some flexibility to choose my own path, which has turned out to be more difficult than I ever imagined. Due to my experience of watching my sister battle a rare and aggressive ovarian cancer, my intention was to work with cancer survivors, guiding depleted individuals between conventional treatment and natural healing modalities. When I started grad school online, we had just moved back to the WRV with our 1-year old to raise him in this small town mountain life, and my home state. The experience of online work opened my eyes to career flexibility, which is key for me so that I can enjoy time with my kids as well as work within our local food community. Even with a Master’s Degree and a postgraduate board-certification, Idaho state laws prevent me from being a licensed nutritionist, which further limits my ability to work for institutions. I believe that’s just another opportunity to tackle entrepreneurship, and so I started my own business, working both locally and virtually, as an independent functional nutritionist, contractor, edible educator, and food writer.
My work is absolutely an extension of me, so most of my time outside of work is still focused on food, whether it be volunteering with Blaine County Food Council, Local Food Alliance and The Hunger Coalition, frequenting the farmer’s market (my happy place!), experimenting with recipes, or preparing a menu for a 3-day camping trip. Also, I endeavor to just BE with my two spritely kids, from reading, playing their silly games and crafting, raising backyard chickens, adventuring outside as much as possible and volunteering for their schools, especially Syringa Mountain School, which is my other “home”. Though my kids don’t love “hiking”, I spend time in the woods as often as possible. As an individual, I’m always working on growing into myself, focusing as of late on the internal adventure to understand and trust the spiritual, universal energies of the world while being more appreciative of my role in it, so that I can show up for everyone more fully.
What do you love the most about your job? What lights you up about nutrition, food, and helping families?
I absolutely love listening to people’s food stories. That could be childhood or adult stories that began their long path to challenging health; blissful experiences with food in an unusual setting; emotional turmoil caused by food; how raising animals reconnects people to “the good life”; history of food. I also love guiding people to find “aha” moments, such as when “everything changed” or to realize an underlying cause of their feeling unwell. My work is especially fulfilling in moments when I can see a shift and when a mom discovers a new, more enjoyable relationship with food (or with her kids over food) after a long struggle. The real draw is the connection between food and people. Food is one of the few things that connects all people on earth, all the time, since forever and henceforth. Without food, we would literally and physically not be here. This connection can exist one day between just a client and me about the role of food in gut pain, insomnia, fatigue, the effects of chronic stress immunity, etc. Another day, this connection may be between a food community (such as our complicated, local food system) or between food and the environment (such as how every food choice affects, and is affected by, the way food is grown or what on earth is safe to eat in the woods). On an almost daily basis, I seek connections in research and science by diving into a topic to learn more and, often, writing or sharing what I’ve learned. Food and nutrition is just one giant scientific puzzle, and I suppose I’m like a food detective. Sometimes there are obvious clues and other times we have to get really deep and detailed to investigate. In any case, every day is different and every connection is deeply fulfilling. And, food is also really simple. I tend to overcomplicate and dote on details, but good food and deep connections can be truly simple.
Can you tell me about your experience as a business in the Wood River Valley? What do you love about this community that you want to share? Do you have a particular moment that stands out to you?
The WRV is practically synonymous with health - a healthy lifestyle, clean air, active people. Even the wellness festival is indicative of the health vibe we’d like to emanate. And yet, we have so much room to grow - creating our own, local food identity, prioritizing sustainable, nutrient-dense food in our active resort economy, and being healthy on the inside, as well as outside. Also, we are home to a huge number of health practitioners - from the entire staff at St. Luke’s to the healing arts network that spans from energy healing and massage to acupuncture and, well, functional nutrition. Nonetheless, working in the WRV as an entrepreneur without a fixed location has its inherent challenges and great benefits. I’m so grateful to be friends with and collaborate with people in all modalities of wellness. Though we lack an established wellness center with a group of collaborative practitioners and there is an underlying attitude of competition, it often feels like “every woman for herself”. Still this is a wonderful valley for referrals and networking - with so many of us working full-time, on our own in the healing arts, the intention to collaborate becomes challenging and, after a full week of working, meeting, recommending, marketing, recording, billing, we just want to go for a hike! In short, there is an effort for many of us individual practitioners to rely on and support each other more. However, we’re so busy and we wear so many hats, that progress is slow.
Additionally, being a nutritionist is equally as difficult here as being as an entrepreneur. Nutrition is a gray area - we have health coaches, chefs with training in food and lifestyle, naturopathic practitioners, chiropractors, herbalists (and more!) who know a lot about food and the body. With so many of us believing in food as one key area toward healing and wellbeing, establishing oneself here as an expert in this field takes real skill (which I have yet to master!), including differentiating oneself from others, finding a niche that speaks to local clientele, and really killing it at marketing (where I spend way too much time).
Do you have a favorite project you’ve worked on recently that you’d like to share?
Before COVID, I was blissfully working on a series of networking events with Blaine County Food Council in collaboration with so many wonderful people in our food system. Last fall we hosted an event to share successful food stories from different, pivotal food businesses in the valley. This winter, we hosted our first “farmer-buyer meet-and-greet”. Unfortunately, we had to cancel our April event on composting, but we’ll pick back up as soon as we feel comfortable addressing food events.
This July I am grateful to begin working again with The Hunger Coalition in our third year of the Veggie Rx program, a collaboration with St. Luke’s. It’s a 12-week veggie program and I love being a whole foods mentor to individuals with goals of improving their health (namely diabetes) through whole foods eating. We give away vegetables every week, and help them find recipes they - and their families - will eat, encourage these folks to try new veggies, and lend an ear to some real, practical challenges of regularly accessing fresh food due to their many life circumstances.
GROUP STRESS DETOX PROGRAM starting August 10th: From Burn-Out to Chill-Out: a 6-week food, mood and life reset for mom-preneurs struggling with the effects of depletion and burn out, so they can CHILL OUT, reclaim their sanity, renew energetic freedom and rediscover ease & flow. Basically, this program helps moms realize the effects of chronic stress on their physical, emotional and mental health, and helps clarify a path toward reducing the widespread symptoms of burnout through practical, useful steps ranging from replacing harmful foods and beverages with nourishing ones; eliminating environmental toxins; reframing habits in a sustainable way; transforming mindset; realigning with the innate healing power of the body. The meal plans will please even picky families and the tools will be personalized to each participants’ specific needs and goals. So awesome, right?
Anything you’d like to add? Or would like people to know about your business?
Sure! I’d love to share about my area of focus in my nutrition work. I think it might be clear by now that I believe in whole, healing foods from the earth. In my clinical work as a functional nutritionist, I focus on stress and family nutrition. You might respond with, “What? Having a family isn’t stressful?” Most of us moms are the most susceptible to developing health conditions down the road - we are so overwhelmed, overworked, worried, anxious about “all the things” and those sneaky pains in the (fill in the blank) suddenly become a full-blown health condition or diagnosis, often autoimmune. Therefore, primarily I work with moms to help them alleviate the stress of food in their families, first by reducing the pressure of meal planning (by way of a monthly membership) and then by helping them to address the suffering and symptoms exacerbated by chronic stress. Often, stress presents as gut imbalances, abdominal pain, bowel issues, increased food sensitivities, allergies and/or illnesses, food cravings, weight gain, insomnia, mood imbalances, irritability, anxiety, depression, fatigue, lack of motivation, inability to make decisions, depletion, loneliness and a creeping curiosity to figure out what the heck is wrong (when all the lab tests look “normal”).
Therefore, I offer four main ways to work together to help us women shift from burnout & depletion and take the steps to learn to chill out, regain their energy and sense of self so that they can show up for their lives and families again. 1.) a monthly meal planning membership for moms ($20/month); 2.) group programs (next one launches August 3rd!); 3.) personalized 1:1 nutrition consultations; 4.) endocannabinoid support (connecting emotions with the physical body and balancing “fight or flight” through whole hemp supplementation).
Interested in learning more about Jamie Truppi Integrative Nutrition? Check out the links below!
Facebook (business): https://www.facebook.com/integrativenut
Facebook (community): https://www.facebook.com/groups/consciousfamilyfoodcommunity
Linked In: https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamie-truppi/
