The Pulteney St. Survey

Scale

Stepping on the Scale

by Avery Share ’15

For Niki Klem ’05, “a scale is only a tool.” The truest information, she says, “comes from leaving the scale behind and focusing on measuring up against yourself and your own goals.”

Klem’s goals don’t just include her own health, but also improving the health of others and educating them on how to keep their own health scales in balance. As a registered dietician nutritionist, Klem is the program director of the Nutrition and Dietetics Program at Trocaire College in Buffalo, N.Y.

“My favorite part of being an RDN and an educator is the chance to be an ambassador for healthy food that tastes good,” she says. “Eating is a balance between good health, nutritious foods and the joy, excitement and comfort of favorites.”

Having fostered a passion for healthy eating and cooking from a young age, Klem wanted to pursue a career that combined both healthcare and nutrition. After earning her master’s degree in nutrition and dietetics from D’Youville College, she joined the faculty at Trocaire in 2010. Recently, she was appointed program director and says she is looking forward to developing “creative initiatives and encouraging innovation” as she works to shape the program with a continued focus on food system sustainability, economical food sourcing, menu development and clinical nutrition care.

From helping her students master healthy recipes like her award-winning “Sweet and Smokey Tex-Mex Chili” to teaching patients how to bring equilibrium back to their life when their “scales” are off-balance, Klem takes an allencompassing approach to helping others live a healthful lifestyle based on her own ideals of “real food and healthy movement.”

“It’s not about any diet or any specific food, it’s about the entire approach to health and food sourcing,” she says. “HWS gave me a desire to learn more about people and – in the luckiest cases of students and clients – help them transform their lives.”