Culinary Medicine Programs to Enhance Nutrition Knowledge Among Doctors

In an era of unprecedented diet-related health issues, such as obesity and cardiovascular disease, culinary medicine programs are emerging at medical schools. It can help address a critical need to improve nutrition education, according to a review of programs by UT Southwestern researchers published in Academic Medicine, the journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges.

What is Culinary Medicine Program?

The programs use teaching kitchens to give health professionals practical skills to assist patients in making evidence-based dietary changes, according to Jaclyn Albin, MD, the study’s lead author, Culinary Medicine program director at UT Southwestern and Associate Professor of Internal Medicine and Pediatrics.

“This work is the very first scoping review of medical school-based Culinary Medicine programs in the U.S. We anticipate this to be a pivotal resource for the many medical schools seeking to launch programs and needing a collated literature base as well as information about funding, assessment strategies and lessons learned,” said Dr Albin.

In this area, UT Southwestern has made significant strides. Since launching the program in 2015, the UTSW Culinary Medicine team has taught medical students, residents, fellows, other healthcare workers and patients in teaching kitchens all throughout Dallas-Fort Worth. The Culinary Medicine teams have recently introduced a clinical service line that offers virtual consultations with other healthcare professionals. Over the following months, patients and certified dietitians would meet one-on-one and hold group cooking lessons.

Dr Albin works with dietician Milette Siler, M.B.A., RD, LD, to teach classes for medical and graduate students, residents and fellows across the UT Southwestern campus in order to train the future generation of health professionals.

“I have always had a passion for teaching students and patients about nutrition, lifestyle, and other environmental influences on health. This has become increasingly complex as more patients face food allergies and intolerances, special dietary or nutritional needs, diseases like irritable bowel syndrome, and much more,” said Dr Albin.

The researchers discovered 34 culinary medicine courses focusing on medical students, using a range of curriculum and evaluation techniques that lack consistency and competency measurement. Even though the programs improve students' knowledge of nutrition and wellbeing, they struggle to get enough financing and support from the faculty.

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Importance of Culinary Medicine Programs

The timing is right, according to Dr Albin, for more help. The COVID-19 pandemic demonstrated the importance of metabolic health in populations with food insecurity. Suboptimal diets increase morbidity in obesity, cardiovascular disease and Type 2 diabetes.

“Food is the top risk factor for early death in the U.S., and culinary medicine could transform the problem into the solution,” Dr Albin said.

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Source-Medindia