Balanced & Bountiful: The New Canyon Ranch Food Philosophy
Sep 28 2022 ・ 4 min read
Pete Ghione, Director of Culinary Innovation and Training, and Stephanie Miezin, Director of Nutrition, discuss our new, nourishing-mindset menus.
Our menus have changed! We're excited to share our new philosophy for healthful eating. To help encourage a nourishing—instead of a restrictive—mindset for a positive relationship with what you eat, we've updated our menus to be free of nutritional analysis numbers.
To learn more about this new approach and why we hope it will positively impact your wellness journey, we sat down with Pete Ghione, Director of Culinary Innovation and Training, and Stephanie Miezin, Director of Nutrition. Below, they share how the culinary and nutrition teams at Canyon Ranch resorts collaborated to deliver menu options that are delicious, inviting, and filled with the balanced nutrition you need.
Q: Can you tell us why our menus changed?
Pete Ghione: Traditionally at Canyon Ranch, we've featured the nutritional numbers directly on our menus. That, unfortunately gets people thinking about how many calories they're consuming.
Stephanie Miezin: And we realized counting calories fosters a more restrictive mentality because when you look at the menu, you're focusing on those numbers. You're wondering if that is too many calories for you.
Q: Is that a bad thing?
Stephanie: Yes, if it cultivates a restrictive mindset around the meals you eat. A restrictive mindset puts the value on what is outside of you. It is associated with things like always counting calories, yo-yo dieting, following dieting trends, and not having a healthy relationship with the food you consume. At Canyon Ranch, we want to encourage and foster a nourishing mentality. A nourishing mindset puts value on what’s happening inside you, so your food choices are based on truly valuing yourself. Every meal and snack time we provide at Canyon Ranch is an opportunity to leverage the amazing nutrition found in the foods our chefs create. So when you sit down and have our menu in front of you, you’re focused on our delicious, flavorful, and nutritionally balanced dishes—not the numbers next to them. That's why, starting with our Fall menus, we have removed the nutritional numbers from our main menus.
Q: What if I want to see the nutritional information?
Pete: We want each guest to feel comfortable during their culinary experience at Canyon Ranch. You can find our nutritional information on a menu PDF and on our blog, where at-home recipes are located. You can also request a printed version of a nutritional menu from your server.
Our chefs continually work with our nutritionists to ensure every meal is delicious and nutritionally balanced. We assure you that we are—now more than ever—fully integrated with our nutrition team and are committed to creating innovative and amazing meals that are backed by the science of nutrition and the role eating with a nourishing mindset can have on living a well way of life.
