A pastry chef turned registered dietitian finds balance and healing through food

Danielle Horner’s journey has taken her from making wedding cakes to helping hospital patients heal through healthy eating.

Don’t get the wrong idea. She still adores French macarons. It’s fine if dinner out with her daughters, Brynna and Kaia, starts with a bowl of tortilla chips and the richest queso they can find. In her mind (and stomach), “There are no bad foods.”

So when she reports for duty as a registered dietitian at Novant Health New Hanover Regional Medical Center in Wilmington, North Carolina, she’s not the food police. Rather than take the fun out of food, her job is to manage tube feeds and IV nutrition, make sure patients who are healing from wounds get proper nutrition, and implement interventions for malnourished patients. She and her fellow registered dietitians also help educate patients and answer common nutrition and diet questions. Among the most frequently asked, often after a Google search, are those that focus on the keto diet and other fad weight-loss trends.

Angela Lago, clinical nutrition manager at New Hanover Regional Medical Center and also Horner’s supervisor, said, “We like to be the voice of reason and help people understand what is going to help them in the long term.”

There’s another dimension to Horner’s mission. She helps patients understand that food can be its own kind of medicine. It’s a lesson she learned the hard way.

A life in the kitchen

Horner, 40, learned to cook when she was 8 years old. Both of her parents worked. By the time she was a teenager, she had supper ready when they got home.

Her mother, Deby, taught her time management. Her father, Danny, showed her how to get creative with leftovers. She was no more health- and diet-conscious than anyone else. From an early age, she just appreciated the power that food holds in our lives.

Inspired in part by watching her mom decorate cakes, Horner started baking cakes and other desserts while a student at New Hanover High School. Talk about a senior project sure to tempt the teachers’ palates: She made a five-tier, French vanilla bean wedding cake. After high school she worked two jobs simultaneously: prep cook at a seafood restaurant and line cook at a wings joint. Next came a stint as a grocery store cake decorator.

A life in the kitchen was unfolding. Then illness struck.

Food as medicine

Horner explained: “My doctor found a large, precancerous mass in my neck which had nearly destroyed my thyroid function. They took out the mass and both sides of my thyroid in the fall of 2008. I started pastry school in the fall of 2009 at Sandhills Community College in Pinehurst, North Carolina. In early 2010, I was diagnosed with an autoimmune form of hypothyroidism (Hashimoto’s) in which the body attacks the thyroid and the thyroid hormone as an ‘invader.’ My medication was changed. But my symptoms only marginally improved.”

Around this time, she was working as a pastry chef at The Bakehouse Bakery & Café in Aberdeen, North Carolina, making wedding cakes and European-style pastries. But her symptoms endured despite regular doctor appointments, lab work and adjustments to her medicines. The more frustrated she became, the more she delved into the notion that food can be a healing factor.

Horner began to sense a second calling on her life: “I began doing my own research to see if there was anything I could change in my diet that would help.

“In 2015, at age 32, with two children at home,” she said, “I reenrolled at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro to complete my bachelor’s degree in human nutrition and dietetics and then my master’s in nutrition. I’ve spent the last four years sharing my passion for nutrition as a whole-body approach to medicine.”

She arrived at 800-bed New Hanover Regional Medical Center in December 2023. Her illness, Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, will never go away. Symptoms include chronic fatigue, joint pain, insomnia, depression, heat/cold intolerance, weight gain and GI issues. Avoiding gluten, unfermented soy and a few other foods helps her manage those symptoms. So does having a passion to help others deal with what might be ailing them.

A different story

Lago said Horner fits right in, a soft-spoken, team-oriented colleague willing to share her journey – pastry chef to registered dietitian – if it can inspire a patient to do the right thing foodwise.

Horner also helps shatter the stereotype about dietitians.

“We actually love food,” Lago said. “Having a background of a pastry chef breaks the cultural norm. It’s a different story.”

Not long ago, a baby shower for four expectant registered dietitians at New Hanover Regional Medical Center included a special treat. Horner made a French vanilla European spongecake with vanilla bean custard filling. From fondant (a pasty mix of sugar and water) she crafted the decorations atop this work of art – carrots, cabbages and, since this was a shower celebrating new life, baby bottoms.

The inscription on the cake?

“Our GaRDen is Growing!!”

The RD stood for everyone’s job title – registered dietitian. For the baker of the cake, it stood for the end of a long and winding road that led her to this time and place.