Meet Jess

Well hello there. Welcome to my about me page.

My official name is Jessica Jones.  But my friends (and actually most people) call me Jess. I’m a Registered Dietitian and Certified Diabetes Educator (and Zumba Instructor!) with a Master’s of Science in Nutrition. These days, I work at a Primary Care Clinic in Oakland, CA. My job consists of providing nutritional counseling to patients in the Adult Medicine, Pediatrics, Women and Specialty Clinics on pre-diabetes/diabetes, healthy eating during pregnancy, hypertension, high cholesterol, and more. I  teach a couple of classes for both adults and kids too.

If I had to describe my 3 biggest joys in life, I’d say 1. eating fresh fruits and and vegetables, 2. helping people realizing how amazing healthy foods can taste and improve their health and 3. getting 8 hours of sleep every night. I’m also really into making things (I used to sew lot of my own clothes in high school and college). Home decorating, painting, science, budgeting and finance… or “crunching numbers” as I like to call it, traveling (on my 30th birthday I left NYC and took a 9-month tripsy around the world) and fitness are some of my other passions. Spending time with friends and family are up there too.

For most of my life, I have been a vegetarian. This started when I was about 12-years-old. As a girl, I never liked the way meat tasted. I always used to pick it apart until there really wasn’t anything left to eat. It wasn’t until I went to visit my big brother and his girlfriend in their northern CA cabin that I realized, not eating meat was a “thing.” My brother’s girlfriend was a vegetarian, and it was on that trip that I had my very first veggie burger. Love at first bite, as I like to call it. On the ride home, I declared that I was going to be a vegetarian. And just like that, I never ate meat again.

I want to be clear about one thing, though. Just because I stopped eating meat, doesn’t mean I automatically started eating in a balanced way. My favorite go-to foods in High School were a cheeseburger with “no meat” from McDonald’s and a small fries. I would also frequently binge on sugar and sweets. Picture a kid who added two tablespoons of sugar to already sweet cereal, ate a pack of candy a day, and snacked on sugar cubes (meant for tea) at Chinese restaurants.

In my late twenites, I went back to school to become a Registered Dietitian. Throughout the process, Wendy and I created Food Heaven Made Easy, a resource for nutrition education and healthy vegetable-based recipes that taste great but won’t break the bank. Some of my favorite recipes include this vegetarian kale taco salad and these DIY reduced fat blueberry oat bars. If you want to learn more about what I eat in a typical day, check out my Buzzfeed article here.

Food Heaven has been a way to merge both my geeky and creative sides. Thanks so much for your continued support along the way. xo! J

• Favorite thing to do: Go to open houses on the weekends
• Favorite book: Animal, Vegetable, Miracle: A Year in Food Life  by Barbara Kingsolver and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks by Rebecca Skloot  (I know, that’s two.)
• Favorite item of clothing: Anything flowing and free
• Favorite food: Creme Brulee
• Favorite season: Depends on where I’m at but, generally Summer