Jovan Duvall: Cultural ambassador, healthy eater, writer, leader, OSU graduate (almost)

OSU dietetics student Jovan Duvall encourages you to cómete la verdura‚ that is, to eat your vegetables. Duvall, an OSU dietetics student, has helped OSU Extension redesign the online Food Hero site to encourage limited-income Spanish- and English-speaking parents how to serve more fruit and vegetables as part of their family meals. 

Duvall helped redesign Food Hero in English and create a Spanish version. She helped student volunteers test hundreds of recipes and started social media sites. 

Last year Duvall followed her passion of healthy eating across the Pacific to an internship in Tokyo. The trip was the capstone of her OSU Japanese minor and the 16 years previous to OSU when she studied Japanese within the Portland Public School Richmond Japanese Magnet Program. 

In Japan, Duvall shadowed the head dietitian at Tokyo Women’s Hospital, taught at a nursery school, wrote an article for the city newsletter and filmed and edited a feature story on Tsunami refugees returning home from Tokyo. She also translated tourist emergency documents and interviewed noted author and dietitian Noriko Miyajima about her school lunch redesign and nutrition education philosophy. 

Back home in Corvallis, Duvall is part of the OSU LitenUp team researching premenopausal women, energy density and its connection to metabolic syndrome. She presented the study at the OSU Celebration of Undergraduate Excellence program. She also helped design and peer lead a two-credit class for first-term freshmen that combined a college success tip, such as time management, with a healthy eating tip on energy drinks.  Duvall also contributes to numerous food and nutrition blogs and had an article featured in the OSU Daily Barometer: "Benefits of fresh, local, organically grown foods." 

Duvall is a member of the American Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Oregon Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, the Student Dietetics Association and the Alpha Lambda Delta Academic Honors Society. She will do a dietetic internship at UC Davis. A Beaver for life (since age five when she decided she wanted to attend OSU), there is no doubt Duvall will continue to be a leader in Oregon nutrition. 

During the first three months of the Food Hero kick-off, web hits totaled more than10,000, and more than 400 social media followers signed on as thousands of media impressions went up on billboards, mass transit and grocery stores throughout Oregon.

Author: Lauren Tobey