MOVERS AND SHAKERS
Katherine Pett, MS, RDN-New Arrival on the Nutrition Today Editorial Board!
We are delighted to announce another new arrival on our Editorial Board this month! We needed to get more representation on our Board with individuals who are competent in using the new forms of mass media like blogs and webpages Nutrition Today welcomes Katherine Pett, MS, RDN, to help us on this score. In addition to being a registered dietitian, Katherine Pett is an experienced educator, writer, and community advocate dedicated to helping everyone eat better. As a member of the Nutrition Team at Conagra Brands, she translates and communicates emerging nutrition science to positively impact attributes of prepared and packaged foods. She is also known to many for her fine contributions under the logo of http://NutritionWonk.com, which took nutrition science into the weeds of many popular diets and explained them in a wonderfully entertaining and objective manner. She has also contributed some excellent pieces to SELF magazine. Katherine completed an MS in Biochemical and Molecular Nutrition at Tufts University's Friedman School of Nutrition Science and Policy. We are excited that she is joining the Editorial Board of Nutrition Today and look forward to her insights!
In Memoriam: Deaths Mourned of 3 Outstanding Nutrition Policy Experts
Nutrition Today mourns the loss of 3 exceptional women who spent much of their careers in or around the halls of Congress or elsewhere in Washington working to improve the food and nutrition of our country. Congress and the country would be well served if more staffers in Congress had the deep knowledge of our field that Drs Ostenso and Moragne and Lupton had.
Grace L. Ostenso, PhD
With sadness, we report the death of Grace L. Ostenso in April 2020 of a COVID-19-related illness in her 87th year in Washington, DC. Grace was a graduate of the University of Wisconsin-Stout and a registered dietitian after interning at the Peter Bent Brigham Hospital in Boston. She later received the MS and PhD in Nutrition and Food Administration from the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She was among the first in the field to bring engineering concepts into the management of large-scale food and nutrition programs. Grace first worked at the US Department of Agriculture, where she oversaw all school lunch programs and helped develop the Women Infants and Children's supplemental food program (now WIC) as well as developing the food stamp program there. She joined the staff of the Committee on Science, Space and Technology, US House of Representatives, where she worked tirelessly to improve nutrition and other science program funding. Her work was largely behind the spotlight, but anyone who worked on Capitol Hill knew where to go to get things done in Congress. Although the subcommittee was led for many years by Hon George Brown, who was a Democrat, and it was likely that Grace was as well; she was nonpartisan in her approaches to problems and drafting possible legislation. Her first concern was to get the science right and to get the funding to do it correctly. Thanks to her leadership and expertise, national nutrition monitoring and many other programs came into being. These included the National Science Foundation's Supercomputer program and many others. She was always available to consult with members of the nutrition community and offered them sage advice on both their programs and funding of nutrition science. She retired after nearly 2 decades on Capitol Hill as subcommittee staff director of the Subcommittee on Science. Her husband, Ned Ostenso, PhD, predeceased her.
Lenora Moragne, PhD
Lenora Moragne, PhD, died in Washington, DC, at age 88 years in April. She will be sorely missed by all who enjoyed her wry sense of humor and congenial manner. Lenora held a BS in nutrition from Iowa State University. Following a dietetic internship with the Veterans Administration, she worked as chief dietitian of the community hospital in Evanston, Illinois. After earning MS and PhD degrees from Cornell University, Dr Moragne taught graduate and undergraduate courses in foods, nutrition, and food service management at New York City's Hunter College and Columbia University. Before joining Senator Robert Dole's staff, Dr Moragne served for 4 years as head of Nutrition Education and Training for the US Department of Agriculture's Food and Nutrition Service. Prior to working for the US Department of Agriculture, she also worked as a nutrition publicist for General Foods Corporation.
Lenora was best known for the time from 1977 to 1979 when she served as professional staff member for the US Senate Committee on Agriculture Nutrition and Forestry, chaired by Senator Robert Dole. She served as the emissary of Senator Dole to the nutrition community and always had helpful suggestions and a smile to go with it. At the time, she became the senator's first woman staffer of any race or ethnic group and the first black woman to serve on the agriculture committee's professional staff. As a loyal Republican, Lenora had a photograph of President Reagan in her living room, and another of Rev Jesse Jackson, a close personal friend of hers and her brother, who, as an obstetrician, delivered the Jackson family's babies. Lenora's later work at the Food and Nutrition Board, National Academy of Sciences, in Washington also put her in the mid of most policy issues in the 1980s that had to do with food and nutrition. Later in her career, she worked at the US Environmental Protection Agency as a senior environmental enrollee for over 2 decades. Dr Moragne served in many volunteer leadership roles throughout her career. She served the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (then the American Dietetic Association) on the Academy Board of Directors from 1981 to 1984. She also served as president of the Society for Nutrition Education and chairperson of the Food and Nutrition Section of the American Public Health Association. She was an elected member of the Cornell University Council, the President's Council of Cornell Women, and the recipient of the Distinguished Alumnae Citation at Iowa State University in Ames. Lenora endowed the Lenora Moragne Memorial Award of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Foundation with a $100 000 gift to encourage and support the development of legislative and executive advancement in public policy and nutrition among Academy membership. This honors her career's long work and passion for all things dietetic and nutrition related.
Joanne Lupton, PhD
Joanne R. Lupton, PhD, died on June 17, 2020, at her home in Texas after a short illness. She was 75 years old.
Joanne Lupton was born on September 29, 1944. Her father was a highly decorated fighter pilot in World War II, and her mother's ancestors came to America on the Mayflower. She grew up in Connecticut and Long Island and graduated from Mt Holyoke College with a degree in philosophy and music. After 10 years, she left her position as vice president of a Manhattan Public Relations firm and moved to Hollywood. Her interest in the science of gourmet cooking led her to a master's degree in nutrition from California State University and then to the University of California at Davis for her PhD. Her teaching career began in the Animal Science Department at Texas A&M in 1982 with one other woman teaching nutrition. She served as professor of nutrition for more than 30 years and was the major force in the growth and development of nutrition at Texas A&M into what is now one of the premier academic departments in the America.
Dr Lupton was a distinguished professor, Regents professor, university faculty fellow, and holder of the William W. Allen Endowed Chair in Nutrition at Texas A&M University. Dr Lupton gained worldwide recognition for her research and expertise on the effect of diet on colon physiology and colon cancer and her expertise on national and international food policy. She translated basic research on diet and colon physiology to science-based public policy.
Dr Lupton was past president and fellow of the ASN. She was a lifetime associate of the National Academy of Sciences. She spent a year late in her career at the Food and Drug Administration as visiting scholar to establish an evidence system for nutritional health claims in the United States. For this work, she received the Commissioner's Special Citation for Better Nutrition. She chaired the National Academy of Sciences Macronutrients Panel that determined the dietary intake values for the United States and Canada, and she also chaired the National Academy Panel and World Health Organization Panel to establish the definition of dietary fiber.
Dr Lupton was also member of the 2005 US Dietary Guidelines Committee. She served on the Food and Nutrition Board of the Institute of Medicine and on the Nutrition Council for the American Heart Association. She was a board member of the International Life Sciences Institute Global.
Among her honors was the Dannon/ASN Mentoring award in 2004, recognizing her success in having mentored more than 100 students. In 2007, she received the Texas A&M University Former Students Association distinguished achievement award for research. In 2010, she received the American Society of Nutrition/General Mills Bell Institute innovation award in nutrition. Dr Lupton was an alumna of Mt Holyoke College and a recipient of an honorary Doctor of Science, honoris causa degree. She also received the Vahouny Medal for research on dietary fiber.
She is survived by her husband, Dr Donald Clark. Both were retired professors at Texas A&M University. Other immediate family includes a daughter, Leslie, and husband, Joseph Provazek, and her brother, Robert Lupton. Our sympathy to her family.