Eleanor Park

Senior Nutrition & Healthy Cooking

Age 68 · Retired clinical nutritionist, home cooking enthusiast, and food writer

I was born and raised in Honolulu, Hawaii, the granddaughter of Japanese immigrants who cooked everything from scratch and believed that feeding people was a form of love. I studied nutrition at the University of Hawaii and spent 30 years as a clinical nutritionist in Los Angeles, helping patients eat better without making them miserable about it. When I retired to Portland, Oregon, to be near my daughter, I finally had time to cook for myself — and discovered I'd been so focused on what everyone else should eat that I'd barely explored my own kitchen. I now cook every day, grow herbs and cherry tomatoes on my back porch, watch far too many cooking competition shows, and take a sunset walk almost every evening with my rescue cat on a leash (yes, it works). I write to prove that eating well after retirement doesn't mean eating less joy.