Meet Angela, the Head Dietician at FutureLife

Eastern Cape based Angela Leach is the Head Dietician for FUTURELIFE and heads the team of dietitians across the country. With her wealth of knowledge and experience in the field of nutrition and dietetics, she shares some health eating tips with us.

Can you please share a brief background of yourself?

I completed my BSc Dietetics at the University of the Free State with all the “tools” required to go out into the world as a registered dietitian.

After spending a year working in a clinical setting at Grey Hospital in King Williams Town, I decided it was time to spread my wings and see what else the world of dietetics had to offer. I joined FUTURELIFE® as a dietitian at the beginning of 2013, having found a company where I could grow, learn and add value. FUTURELIFE®’s values align completely with mine, and I love that.

I am a sports nutrition enthusiast and as an avid mid to long distance runner myself, understand the complexities of tweaking the diet to best reach individual requirements for optimal performance outcomes.

How does one go about to become a dietician? 

A dietitian is a qualified allied health professional who becomes registered with the Health Professions Council of South Africa (HPCSA). It involves completing a 4-year Bsc Degree (Dietetics), which is followed by a community service year. If health and nutrition are something you are passionate about, I would recommend chatting to and possibly shadowing a registered dietitian. It is a career with a wide scope of practice including clinical, community, food service and sports nutrition (amongst others).

What are some things you love about being a dietician?

I love the education aspect of our job the most. It makes me so excited that I can share scientific nutrition advice with a wide audience to encourage them to make choices that can positively affect their own health and well-being.

Is there anything like a perfect diet?

To me the perfect diet would be a nutritionally balanced one, that contains all the necessary macronutrients (carbohydrates, proteins and fats), micronutrients (vitamins and minerals), fibre as well as fluid, in the correct amounts specific to a person’s age, gender and any health conditions and food preferences that they may have. It is important to understand that our nutritional requirements vary and therefore the perfect diet for one person may be slightly different to another’s.

Do you have any eating/healthy tips for ladies who are struggling to have the ‘perfect’ body?

Again, my advice would need to be individualized to the person asking. But if you are finding that a lack of “free time” is causing you to make unhealthy food choices on the run, know that FUTURELIFE® has a range of products that are ultra-convenient and fit perfectly into a healthy diet. For example, FUTURELIFE® HIGH PROTEIN Shake offers on-the-go nutrition in a simple, ready to drink shake. By squeezing and popping the internal seal, the powder and water mix to create an instant shake that provides a balanced meal with many nutritional benefits, including 16g of protein and 60% of the NRV for most vitamins and minerals in a serving.