Marissa Burgermaster, Ph.D. — The Texas Scientist

Assistant Professor in the Department of Nutritional Sciences and in Population Health. Interviewed by Esther Robards-Forbes.

Before nutritional science, you started down some alternative paths. Did those influence your work?
I was a music composition and vocal performance major in undergrad – and I was a professional musical theater actress for exactly one day before I realized that was not the life for me. I became an elementary and middle school teacher with the aim of making the world a better place (as cheesy as that sounds)! Through that work I started thinking about the intersection of nutrition and academic performance, and I decided to pursue a Ph.D. in behavioral nutrition. I did my postdoctoral work in biomedical informatics, which synthesizes elements of computer science, ranging from human-computer interaction to data science in service of transforming medical data into knowledge. It’s been a winding path, but it’s prepared me to do the type of interdisciplinary research that’s required to move the needle on health outcomes. Music teaches practicing through repetition. Teaching requires listening, responding, understanding human behavior... When you bring different attributes of these big fields together, it makes the science richer.

“Eating decisions cannot be ascribed totally to the individual”

What is behavioral nutrition, and what drew you to study that?
Behavioral nutrition is the study of why people eat what they eat. It’s all of the many layers of influences, including the biological, psychological and environmental. It’s not just about individuals, but also about social groups and communities, as well as broader food systems, marketing and the information environment. I study the way that all of those different factors interact to affect eating behavior. The specific area that I’m interested in is: How do we use that information about why people eat what they eat to help us create interventions to change people’s dietary behavior? And how do we personalize nutrition interventions to fit better for individual people?

Why is advanced technology important for what you do?
Information alone does not change behavior. Factors such as education, literacy level, tech savviness, age, the amount of misinformation you’re exposed to, as well as food access, economic resources and food insecurity, have a far bigger impact. It’s an incredibly complex system. Eating decisions cannot be ascribed totally to the individual. When we think about changing behavior to improve health outcomes, we have to consider these systems together to understand what works. Technology and machine learning have been valuable at spotting patterns and can aid in designing better interventions.

What is one piece of nutrition information that you wish everyone knew?
Shame is not an effective way to change behavior, and it’s actually counterproductive. Billions of dollars are spent on marketing food products every year – and most of it’s not for fruits and vegetables! An individual can’t always resist huge systems and policies that are working against them. That’s why it’s up to us to examine these things and consider what has to change in order for people to more easily make nutrition decisions that benefit their health.