Specialties

 

Workshops & Presentations

Personal Chef Services

Healthy cooking 

Menu Planning

Grocery Store Tour

Community Gardening

My Story

Personal Bio: Andrea Massop Ramos, M.S. Clinical Nutrition-Founder and CEO of Healthy FRIENDZ Nutrition. 

Healthy FRIENDZ provides nutrition education to clients in a fun interactive way via fresh food workshops, presentations, and personal chef services, all based on your current lifestyle. The goal is to “learn how to eat, learn how to live.” Healthy FRIENDZ builds confidence and self esteem by changing the way we think about healthy foods and incorporating them into a diet.

 

Andrea works with what you have, and can create dishes based on the ethnicity and cultural heritage of any client. Healthy eating does not have to be boring salads. For example, have you ever tried black bean brownies? Yes they are real, yes they are healthy, and yes they are delicious! 

 

Where It All Began 

 

After earning her Bachelors of Science in Biology and a minor in Psychology from Syracuse University, Andrea spent 20 years working for airlines. She further went on to work for Metro-North Railroad as an Operations Manager overseeing over 900+ locomotive engineers and conductors.  She was then promoted to  an Investigator for accidents and incidents in the Office of System Safety. While at the Railroad, Andrea earned her Masters Degree in Clinical Nutrition from New York Institute of Technology and with her added qualifications, Andrea founded Healthy4U, a Corporate Health and Wellbeing Group at Metro North Railroad, which continues to exist today.

 

Andrea’s passion for healthy food  grew after having two children of her own. Andrea created her own organic garden with her family to teach her children the value of nutrient rich food. This small garden project turned into years of food education for her family. Her children, Paris and Janae were thrilled to grow their own vegetables as well as collect and add to a growing compost pile, which allowed them to observe the squirmy earthworms that created quality soil for their fruits and veggies to grow in.

Their small garden soon flourished with eggplant, bell peppers, broccoli, cantaloupe, watermelon, zucchini squash, cucumbers, corn, scallion, tomatoes, pumpkin, and more. As the fruits and vegetables grew, the excitement of running outside to see if they were ready to be picked was turned into fun and games. 

 

Her children's curiosity with the food they were growing, allowed Andrea to experiment with her meal creations and turn her picky eaters into food lovers. Andrea’s first “win-win” and AHA moment was grilling a portobello mushroom and serving it as it was a steak, Paris and Janae questioned it, but then ate it with huge grins. From that point on, there was no problem eating new or different foods, she just incorporated anything they made a face at, into a meal they liked, and it was a done deal. No more whining, crying or bargaining to eat unhealthy food! 

 

When friends came over and were interested and curious about Andrea’s garden, she realized her education could go beyond her own home. She began to introduce fresh fruits and vegetables to the neighborhood kids and classmates in fun, creative ways. 

 

Andrea’s passion for teaching healthy lifestyles kept growing, and Healthy FRIENDZ nutrition allows her to continue to provide nutrition education with fun and interactive workshops, food presentations, and personal chef services.