Pastry Chef to Nutrition Educator: Whole Foods' Lisa Caldwell Takes the Cake

When she was eight years old, Lisa Caldwell started to cook “out of necessity” for her family. Her mother was seriously ill.

“We all have to eat,” Caldwell said. “I love to cook.”

As a teenager, Caldwell wanted to become a better athlete. A freshman on several high schools varsity teams, she knew, she said, there was a relationship between what she ate and her health. 

She read a book by a doctor who studied nutrition, Robert Haas, who found a relationship between food and athletic performance.  He recommended eating foods ”low in excessive fats, really low refined sugars and lower cholesterol—moderate,” she said, in his approach to food and eating.

Today Caldwell is healthy eating specialist for . She demonstrates different cooking techniques that “don’t break the bank” in cost or time but make meals more healthful and helps customers plan menus and shop for food. She also works with customers on their particular nutrition needs.

Growing up, cooking was done mostly, she said, from scratch. “We didn’t eat out of boxes.”

“The best way to teach health lifestyle,” Caldwell said, “is to teach people to cook.”

As a healthy eating specialist, she has worked with a number of groups in the city: the Health and Wellness program, the and even a group of “meat and potato-eating firemen” from .

The Woburn firefighters agreed to take a 28-day healthful eating challenge in February that Caldwell set up. “They were leery” about the program, she  wrote in her report about the challenge, but “eager to learn” what to look for in what they eat.

“I said, ‘I’m not going to take anything away from you,’” food-wise, Caldwell explained.  Instead, she helped them read product labels to know what they were eating and substitute more healthful alternatives and cooking techniques.

One firefighter lost 12 pounds, she wrote in her report; another had his cholesterol level drop significantly. His cholesterol had been so high “his doctor wanted to put him on medication” before the eating change.

“I'm not doing anything out of the ordinary,” Caldwell said.  For herself for lunch, for example, she might have mixed greens, salmon loaf instead of meatloaf, tomato and quinoa, a high-protein grain. “Your body runs on vitamins and minerals,” she emphasized.

She is not so strict that she never eats chocolate, for example, she pointed out.

Before she came to Whole Foods Market here, for 20 years during and after college, Caldwell worked as a pastry chef.  She started baking when she was a student at the University of Maine at Orono, studying nutrition. An area restaurant had a job opening. She took it and remained on that side of the food counter for two decades.

Caldwell came to Whole Foods here in 2008 as assistant manager in— you guessed it—the bakery. She wanted to learn the business end of pastry-making, she explained.

The store rolled out its Health Starts Here program early last year. About the same time, Caldwell was certified by the Nutritional Education Institute as a nutritional education trainer. A year ago almost to the month, the company created the position of healthy eating specialist—“the perfect job for me.”

The four pillars of healthful eating, according to the program, are foods that are real, fresh, natural, organic, local, seasonal and unprocessed, with an emphasis on fresh vegetables, fruits, legumes, nuts, seeds and whole grains; healthy fats; and meals built around plant-based foods.

At work, Caldwell tries to target families because “I know what it’s like to feed a family." One reason some people, such as some seniors, don’t focus on their own food, she said, is because people find it hard to cook for just one person.

Her solution?  “I say, ‘I know how to cook for many people. I don’t know how to cook for one.” So she recommends that people do what she does:  prepare multiple servings and freeze them.

As for her own health, “My nurse practitioner is proud of me,” Caldwell said. Besides watching how she fuels her body, she works out by rock climbing. In college she played soccer and rugby. Then she ran “for a long time.” 

After a year as the Woburn market's healthy eating specialist, Caldwell is moving this month to a new Whole Foods Store in Wellesley to expand the nutrition program there.

“Stop feeling guilty about eating,” Caldwell urged as she selected a basket of fresh fruit at the Woburn store based on its nutritional value:  cherries, bananas, oranges, a pineapple, even a watermelon. Instead, Caldwell proposed that people “understand how important (food) is to your health.”