The dietitian who starts with the table you already have.
Samar Chahayed is a registered dietitian nutritionist in Metro Detroit. She teaches nutrition in the language of the kitchen — English or Arabic — without asking anyone to become a different person at dinner.
A Damascene table, a Michigan clinic.
Samar carries two kitchens at once.
One is Damascene. Olive oil is a given, not a splurge. Rice sits at the centre of the plate. Yogurt and herbs go on anything that will hold them. Fruit comes after dinner, and coffee is allowed to take an hour.
The other is Michigan clinical training: assessment, evidence, laboratory values, and the discipline of not promising what food cannot do.
She holds a Master of Science in Human Nutrition from Eastern Michigan University and a bachelor’s degree in Nutrition, Dietetics and Food Science, and she completed her dietetic internship at the Detroit Medical Center.
Metro Detroit is home to one of the largest Arab communities in the United States. Very little of the nutrition guidance that reaches it was written with that table in mind. Advice arrives translated but not adapted — the same grilled chicken, the same warnings about bread, the same silence about how a family actually eats on a Friday.
Samar’s practice sits in that gap. Bilingual counseling, ordinary science, and the food already in the house.
Trained clinically. Practising bilingually.
RD / RDN
Registered Dietitian Nutritionist.
DTR
Dietetic Technician, Registered.
M.S. Human Nutrition
Eastern Michigan University.
B.S. Nutrition, Dietetics & Food Science
Undergraduate training in food science and clinical dietetics.
Dietetic internship
Detroit Medical Center.
Languages
English and Arabic — counseling, teaching and writing in both.
What she will not do.
A short list, kept in public on purpose.
- Sell cleanses, shakes, supplements or personality.
- Treat olive oil, bread, rice or fruit as moral failures.
- Speak over a client in a language they did not choose.
- Present a short-term diet as a lifestyle.
- Promise what food cannot do, or work outside her scope of practice.
If that sounds like the conversation you have been missing —
Write in English or Arabic. Tell her what you cook and what you were told to change.