Background Although a poor diet is the number one risk factor for early death in the United States and globally, physicians receive little to no training in dietary interventions and lack confidence counseling patients about lifestyle modifications. Innovative, interprofessional strategies to address these gaps include the emergence of culinary medicine, a hands-on approach to teaching the role of food in health outcomes. We sought to assess the impact of a culinary medicine elective on counseling confidence, awareness of an evidence-based approach to nutrition, and understanding of the role of interprofessional teamwork in dietary lifestyle change among medical students at one undergraduate medical school. Methods We administered pre- and post-course surveys to two cohorts of medical students (n = 64 at pre-test and n = 60 at post-test) participating in a culinary medicine enrichment elective. Chi-square analysis was used to assess the relationship between participation in the course and a positive response to each survey item. Results Compared with the baseline, students participating in culinary medicine were more likely to feel confident discussing nutrition with patients (29% vs 92%; p < 0.001), to feel familiar with the Mediterranean diet (54% vs. 97%; p < 0.001), and to understand the role of dietitians in patient care (37% vs. 93%; p < 0.001). Conclusions Culinary medicine shows promise as an impactful educational strategy among first-year medical students for increasing counseling confidence, promoting familiarity with evidence-based nutrition interventions, and augmenting understanding of the role of interprofessional engagement to address lifestyle-related disease.

Since the middle of the 20th century, the American food environment has become increasingly ultra-processed. As a result, the prevalence of chronic, diet-related disease in the United States has skyrocketed. Meanwhile, physicians are still poorly trained in nutrition. A recent innovation that aims to address this is "culinary medicine" programming taught by teams of physicians, chefs, and registered dietitian nutritionists. Culinary medicine is an evidence-based, interprofessional field of medicine that combines culinary arts, nutrition science, and medical education to prevent and treat diet-related disease. It employs hands-on learning through healthy cooking and is typically taught in a teaching kitchen, either in-person or virtually. It can be dosed either as a patient care intervention or as experiential nutrition education for students, medical trainees, and healthcare professionals. Culinary medicine programs are effective, financially feasible, and well-received. As a result, healthcare systems and medical education programs are increasingly incorporating culinary medicine, teaching kitchens, and interprofessional nutrition education into their patient care and training models.

The global impact of diet-sensitive disease demands innovative nutrition education for health professionals and widespread, reimbursable clinical models to apply nutrition to practice. Interprofessional collaboration across disciplines and the optimization of emerging telemedicine consultation strategies, including electronic consultation (eConsult), merge to deliver vital innovation in the delivery of nutrition-based clinical care. Aligning with an existing eConsult infrastructure in the institutional electronic medical record (EMR), a physician–dietitian team developed a novel Culinary Medicine eConsult. During a pilot phase, the service was introduced to primary care clinicians, and a response algorithm for eConsults was created. During the 12-month pilot phase, the Culinary Medicine team completed 25 eConsults from 11 unique primary care clinicians with a 76% (19/25) insurance reimbursement rate. Topics varied from dietary strategies for preventing and managing common metabolic diseases to specific dietary influences on microbiome health and disease flares. Requesting clinicians reported time saved in their clinic encounters and high patient satisfaction with expert nutrition guidance. EConsults in Culinary Medicine promote the integration of interprofessional nutrition care into existing clinical structures and empower enhanced access to the vital domain of dietary health. EConsults deliver timely answers to clinical questions and create opportunities for further innovation in care delivery as communities, health systems, and payors seek solutions to the growing burden of diet-sensitive diseases.