Nourish Culinary Medicine Program
A Collaborative Effort in Patient Care
Culinary medicine is a new evidence-based field in medicine that blends the art of food and cooking with the science of medicine. The goal of culinary medicine is to help people make good personal medical decisions by eating high-quality meals that help prevent disease and restore well-being (La Puma, 2016). Culinary medicine can be provided to patients through teaching kitchens, both in-person cooking and virtual demonstrations, as well as billable group visits.
Nutrition education that includes culinary instruction in a kitchen is an emerging modality for health promotion in both adults and children and is one of the platforms of Food Is Medicine, a growing movement across the world. Culinary medicine can help bridge the gap in food literacy in our current health landscape. Providers can learn directly in a kitchen along with their patients, using an interdisciplinary team of dieticians and chef instructors, to deliver innovative care to patients.
Culinary medicine can be a path back to what has been known for centuries. As Hippocrates stated: “Just as food causes chronic disease, it can be the most powerful cure.” Some eating patterns have been found to be as or more effective than prescription medication for some conditions. These include the anti-inflammatory eating pattern for rheumatoid arthritis; a ketogenic diet for epilepsy; and a Mediterranean eating pattern for cardiovascular disease, advanced colon cancer, and type 2 diabetes. Several foods have also been found to be as or more effective as well: legumes for lowering cholesterol, soy nuts for systolic and diastolic hypertension, and honey for acute cough. (La Puma, 2016)