PANELIST

Cathy Nonas, MS, CDN

Cathy Nonas is the creator of Meals For Good, Inc, a non-profit that has two arms: giving grants to underfunded food pantries for fresh produce and distributing vouchers for independent supermarkets through local community based organizations in Harlem and the South Bronx. A clinical dietitian by trade, she spent her early years at the federally funded NYC Obesity Research Center where she was Administrator of their outpatient programs. Nonas was also an assistant clinical professor at Mt. Sinai School of Medicine and a member of the National Institutes of Health committee to update both the Obesity and Lifestyle guidelines. Until creating Meals For Good, Inc, Nonas was a senior advisor at the NYC Health Department and the Director of its Nutrition and Physical Activity programs. Nonas has many peer-reviewed publications on obesity, and policy strategies for changing the nutrition and physical activity environments in NYC. Some of her policy work includes updating the Health Code to improve nutrition in early child care centers, developing New York City’s calorieposting regulation, starting the NYC Green Cart initiative which increases the number of mobile food vendors selling fresh produce in low income neighborhoods, and growing the country’s largest municipal farmers market incentive, Health Bucks. Nonas is currently a Fellow at NYU’s McSilver Institute for Poverty, Policy and Research working on poverty thresholds.