The Dietitian Cafe: Nutrition in the Fire Service with Dr Greg Lessons

In today’s episode, we’re going to talk about the importance of nutrition within the fire service, including discussions around food provision in the fire brigade and the impact of prioritising nutrition for firefighters. This episode will also explore nutrition-related health issues that firefighters may experience and delve deeper into the role of nutritionists and how they can support the health and well-being of firefighters. To discuss this topic, We're delighted to be joined by a Registered Nutritionist and Health Improvement Lead at The Fire Fighters Charity, Dr Greg Lessons. Greg’s unique academic and professional background prepared him perfectly for this role, as his MSc and PhD research resulted in the first UK fire station-based nutrition interventions, the first dietary assessment tool validated for UK firefighters and the first firefighter body composition reference charts.Greg is a Registered Nutritionist and currently has a full-time professional role with The Fire Fighters Charity as Health Improvement Lead. He was awarded his PhD in April 2021 and prior to this, spent three years as the first full-time nutritionist in the UK fire service (London Fire Brigade). Before this, Greg served London as a full-time firefighter for 17 years. He was awarded the student prize for ‘best original communication’ at the Nutrition Society Winter Conference in 2017, where he presented his first abstract. In 2019, Greg was named ‘Nutritionist of the year’ by the Caroline Walker Trust, following which he won the Public Sector Catering ‘Health and Nutrition Award’ for his work in the delivery of a clear health and nutrition strategy in the London Fire Brigade. Since February 2019, Greg has also been a part-time associate lecturer at London Metropolitan University where I have taught various areas of Human Nutrition.Show Notes:The Fire Fighters Charity:Website: https://www.firefighterscharity.org.uk/ Instagram: @thefirefighterscharityTwitter: @firefighters999Greg’s socials: LinkedIn: Greg Lessons PhDTwitter: @Greg_LessonsInstagram: @Greg_LessonsGreg’s research: Full access to Greg’s paper ‘Development of muscle mass and body fat reference curves for white male UK firefighters’ can be found here: https://rdcu.be/cyI9HPublished abstracts:•‘Development and validation of a novel food frequency questionnaire for UK firefighters’ https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/proceedings-of-the-nutrition-society/article/development-and-validation-of-a-novel-food-frequency-questionnaire-for-uk-firefighters/0B238FDBF8CD17C5071C389789183130#•‘BMI demonstrates poor validity against reference measures of proportional and central adiposity for classifying UK firefighter adiposity status’https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/proceedings-of-the-nutrition-society/article/bmi-demonstrates-poor-validity-against-reference-measures-of-proportional-and-central-adiposity-for-classifying-uk-firefighter-adiposity-status/F27EDF107EE76F878E47C5D0E21A82C8•‘A fire station-based dietary and lifestyle, controlled intervention for UK firefighter health’ https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/proceedings-of-the-nutrition-society/article/fire-stationbased-dietary-and-lifestyle-controlled-intervention-for-uk-firefighter-health/84F1A932F6EFCA092BA3655CDA4127F0•‘A kitchen-based cookery workshop intervention to ameliorate the fire station food environment’ https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/proceedings-of-the-nutrition-society/article/kitchenbased-cookery-workshop-intervention-to-ameliorate-the-fire-station-food-environment/24880066C918D16BE6706676836A70D9•‘A dietary and lifestyle worksite intervention to reduce high prevalence of overweight and obesity for London firefighters’ https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/proceedings-of-the-nutrition-society/article/dietary-and-lifestyle-worksite-intervention-to-reduce-high-prevalence-of-overweight-and-obesity-for-london-firefighters/B0C6F644FCAA0793C31A3C2AC6BBB6ED