A Novel Culinary Medicine Course for Undergraduate Medical Education

Abstract

Traditional nutrition education in medical school has been inadequate to prepare future physicians to counsel patients on practical dietary changes that can prevent and treat food-related disease. Culinary medicine is being used to address this in a variety of settings, including medical education. The Teaching Kitchen Elective for Medical Students at Stanford University School of Medicine spans 1 academic quarter and combines hands-on cooking of food that is delicious and healthy, correlations with multiple clinical specialties, and role-playing real-life examples of brief dietary counseling with patients to make nutrition education practical and approachable. The course has been run as a quasi-randomized controlled study comparing 3 cohorts of students versus wait-listed controls via precourse and postcourse surveys. Preliminary analysis of the first cohort of students shows significant improvements in attitudes, knowledge, and behaviors around healthy cooking and meal planning for the students compared with controls. Despite these promising preliminary results, more resources are needed to be able to hold the course frequently enough to meet student demand.

Medical Education Transformation: Lifestyle Medicine in Undergraduate and Graduate Medical Education, Fellowship, and Continuing Medical Education

“…52 Implementation of a culinary medicine elective course, using the ACLM Culinary Medicine Curriculum (CMC), further engages students and faculty in LM and provides a strong foundation of knowledge regarding what constitutes a healthy dietary pattern and how to find, obtain, and prepare healthy, inexpensive, and delicious food. 53 Widespread formal integration of comprehensive LM curricula into UME is an imperative next step.…”

Medical students’ perceptions of nutrition in medical education and future practice

“…This research adds to the growing body of evidence supporting improved nutrition in medical education (10,11,29). A number of American medical schools have implemented culinary medicine electives, in which students receive cooking instruction and review principles of dietary counselling (30,31). The University of Toronto recently began teaching undergraduate medical students how to prepare affordable, healthy food, and ways to help support patients to do the same (32).…”

The First, Comprehensive, Open-Source Culinary Medicine Curriculum for Health Professional Training Programs: A Global Reach

“…Culinary medicine (CM) is an emerging, evidence-based field that integrates nutrition education with culinary knowledge and skills to assist patients in maintaining health and preventing and treating food-related diseases by choosing high-quality, healthy food in conjunction with appropriate medical care. 1,2 Diet has been identified as the most important risk factor for morbidity and mortality in the United States 3 and is associated with 11 million deaths across the globe annually, 4 yet most health care providers fail to meet the recommended number of hours studying nutrition during their training. 5,6 The majority of nutrition education offered is didactic and focused on the biochemistry of nutrients and health consequences of deficiency states—content that is of limited use in clinical settings where the risk of overnutrition looms far greater due to high intake of ultra-processed, calorie-dense foods.…”

“…However, the lack of an easily accessible, evidence-based guide to implementing CM has constituted a major barrier at most institutions. The Culinary Medicine Curriculum (CMC), 7 published in collaboration with the American College of Lifestyle Medicine in December 2019, is the first, comprehensive, open-source guide created to support the implementation of CM at academic institutions worldwide.…”

“…The CMC is modeled after the successful CM elective course for medical and physician assistant students at Stanford University School of Medicine. 2 Both the Stanford CM course and the CMC were developed by a group of experts whose training includes internal medicine, family medicine, pediatrics, obesity medicine, lipidology, integrative medicine, lifestyle medicine, nutrition science, epidemiology, public policy, medical school curriculum design, and culinary arts. The success of the course and many requests for dissemination of the curriculum, prompted author, physician-chef Michelle Hauser, to partner with the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM) to expand the reach of this curriculum beyond Stanford’s campus.…”