Meet Sheri Glazier.

Sheri Glazier lives in Loyal, Oklahoma, population 79. In Loyal, farming and ranching, like many small towns in Oklahoma, is a way of life.

Sheri runs a virtual nutrition practice serving rural farming and ranching families across Oklahoma. At the same time, she and her family raise cattle and wheat, sell direct-to-consumer beef, and help their kids raise and market hundreds of chickens each year.

To some people, those two worlds, healthcare and agriculture, don’t quite line up.

“Some people have said it’s very interesting that I’m a dietitian and I love agriculture,” Sheri said. “They feel like it’s an oxymoron. And I’m really here to make that make sense.”

Right now, that connection matters more than ever. Across the country, conversations about food have become louder and more complicated. Labels are debated and fussed about. Farming practices are scrutinized. Regulatory decisions at the state and federal levels shape everything from how animals are cared for to how food is marketed to consumers.

In that environment with the backdrop of our politics being more divided than ever, trust can erode quickly.

Sheri’s work sits right at that intersection, where personal health, food production, and public policy quietly overlap. And she’s passionate about cutting through all the misinformation to help Oklahoma families.

She grew up on a cattle and wheat operation before marrying into another farming family. She earned her degree from Oklahoma State University and spent years working in hospital systems, including rural hospitals, before launching her business, Dirt Road Dietitian, in 2019.

But the connection between farming and nutrition didn’t start there for her. As a student at OSU, she vividly remembers watching the documentary Food, Inc.  and something just didn’t sit right with her about what she saw.

“It’s portrayed to be so accurate,” she said. “And I’m sitting there thinking, that is not how cows are taken care of.”

The experience crystallized for her that the public conversation about food and how it’s produced often lacks context. So she saw an opportunity to enter the conversation about nutrition and farming as a way to fill in the gaps that often lead to mistrust, with the truth.

Today, Sheri works with clients navigating diet culture, social media trends, and politicized food debates, particularly around animal protein and how and who grows our food.

“Food messaging is confusing, and the current landscape continues to raise more questions, not provide more clarity,” she said. “ People just want to feed themselves and their families well, and I want to guide that confidence.” 

And with the sessions she does with families across Oklahoma, the stakes aren’t abstract at all. They’re deeply personal.

“At the end of the day,” she said, “people’s relationships with food are really complicated at a foundational level.”

Her focus is rebuilding that foundation to help people make choices from a place of confidence instead of fear. That includes understanding where food comes from and how it’s regulated, inspected, and produced.

While policy conversations may happen at state capitols and inside regulatory agencies, the effects of those policies are felt at kitchen tables and on working farms. She believes those conversations are healthiest when grounded in reality and forged through relationships.

Sheri’s practice is built around rural farming and ranching families whose schedules follow harvests, calving seasons, and unpredictable weather.

“I have a unique ability to relate to their way of life that a lot of other dietitians don’t have,” she said.

Her work is also preventative. Many insurance plans now cover nutrition counseling, sometimes at 100%, allowing families to seek support before facing chronic disease. In communities where hospital closures and limited healthcare access remain ongoing concerns, preventive care matters.

“You want to talk about changing people’s lives,” Sheri said. “They don’t have to have diabetes or some other diagnosis for me to be able to help them.”

Sheri also understands the natural curiosity from people about how their food is raised, so she’s built into her practice a way to invite people in. Over the past eight years, Sheri has taken more than 500 future dietitians through the beef industry, introducing them to cow-calf operators, veterinarians, and meat scientists.

When people see animal welfare standards, feed protocols, inspection processes, and the complexity of modern farming and ranching firsthand, perspective changes.

“In transparency, it becomes quite humbling,” she said. “You had no idea how much it really takes to get food onto your plate.”

She wants people to understand that behind the rhetoric around food policy, are the families who farm and ranch within regulatory frameworks, respond to market pressures, and adapt to evolving standards while trying to keep their farm afloat. 

“At the root of all of this is family,” Sheri said.

It’s a reminder that farming and ranching and the food that flows from it, isn’t abstract. It’s generational and deeply personal to the families in the middle of it all.

Sheri’s practice at Dirt Road Dietitian is built upon one simple principle: See a need. Fill a need.

Right now, she sees a need for clarity, connection and conversations that don’t start from accusation, but from curiosity.

In a time when food systems and farming and ranching practices are under scrutiny and policy conversations are growing more complex, the path forward doesn’t require louder arguments. It requires people willing to stand in both worlds to help them understand each other.

Sheri Glazier, the Dirt Road Dietitian, is doing exactly that.  

Sheri’s work is a big reason Oklahoma All for Food exists. Our mission is to elevate the stories of the land and the people who grow and raise our food so Oklahomans can make informed decisions rooted in trust. By highlighting farmers, ranchers, and leaders like Sheri, who live at the intersection of farming, health, and responsibility, we hope to bring clarity to complicated conversations and much needed context to the headlines folks see every time they turn on their TVs or open their computers. Like Sheri, we believe when Oklahomans can see the faces behind their food and hear directly from the families doing the work, trust has room to grow.  And that trust is essential to the future of food in Oklahoma.