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

Abstract

Providing a strong foundation in culinary medicine (CM)—including what constitutes a healthy diet and how to find, obtain, and prepare healthy and delicious food—is a cornerstone of educating health professionals to support patients in achieving better health outcomes. The Culinary Medicine Curriculum (CMC), published in collaboration with the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, is the first, comprehensive, open-source guide created to support the implementation of CM at health professional training programs (HPTPs) worldwide. The CMC is modeled after the successful CM elective course for Stanford University School of Medicine students. Key goals of the CMC include presenting healthy food as unapologetically delicious, quick, and inexpensive; translating lessons learned to healthy eating on-the-go; practicing motivational interviewing on healthy dietary behavior changes; and demonstrating how to launch a CM course. The CMC highlights a predominantly whole food, plant-based diet as seen through the lenses of different world flavors and culinary traditions. It was developed, published, and distributed with the aim of expanding CM by reducing barriers to creating CM courses within most types of HPTPs and practice settings. During the first 2 months the CMC was available, it was downloaded 2379 times in 83 countries by a wide variety of health care professionals interested in teaching CM. The global interest in this first, freely available, evidence-based CMC underscores the demand for CM resources. Such resources could prove foundational in expediting development of CM courses and expanding the reach of CM and counseling on dietary behavior changes into patient care.

Exploring culinary medicine as a promising method of nutritional education in medical school: a scoping review

“…Reasons for excluding articles reviewed as full-text included wrong study design ( n = 13) [ 4 , 12 – 23 ], wrong population ( n = 5) [ 24 – 28 ], a failure to report any outcome measures ( n = 3) [ 9 , 29 , 30 ], wrong intervention ( n = 3) [ 26 , 31 , 32 ], and five studies were found to be duplicates of an included paper or had used the same data ( n = 5) [ 33 – 37 ]. Amongst the 24 included studies, there were six qualitative studies [ 38 – 43 ], four cross-sectional studies [ 34 , 44 – 46 ]; seven case studies [ 47 – 53 ], and seven mixed-methods study [ 35 , 54 – 59 ].…”

“…A recent scoping review by Asher et al, 2021 explored literature that provides culinary and nutrition training to and by health, education, and culinary professionals. This study demonstrated that the feasibility and outcomes of culinary medicine programs warrant further investigation as there is still insufficient evidence of the impact these programs on practitioners to promote health behaviour changes in patients [ 4 ] and the viability of culinary medicine [ 9 ]. This scoping review aims to synthesise the existing literature on culinary medicine offered to medical students within their four years of medical school education.…”

Bringing the “Joy of Healthy Eating” to Advanced Medical Students: Utilizing a Remote Learning Platform to Teach Culinary Medicine: Findings from the First Online Course Based on the ACLM’s Whole-Food Plant-Based Culinary Medicine Curriculum

“…Reading, online videos, and lectures enabled students to learn some of the science behind culinary medicine. Students were assigned to read the Introduction to the Culinary Medicine Curriculum, 14 and five chapters from Beth Frates’ “Lifestyle Medicine Handbook” (viz, Understanding Lifestyle Medicine, Empowering People to Change, Collaborating, Motivating, Goal Setting and Tracking, and The Nutrition-Health Connection). 17 Experts from within and outside KSOM presented one-hour lectures with discussions.…”

“…The foundation of the program was the 9 culinary medicine sessions in the CMC 14 (see Table 2). These comprehensive sessions provide detailed information on preparing for and conducting each session.…”

“…The initiative aimed to support CM implementation at academic institutions worldwide. 13 The hunger for such a curriculum was evidenced by the fact that in the first 2 months after it was made available, it was downloaded over 2000 times in 83 countries, with 58% of viewers being physicians. 13 This curriculum was developed by Michelle Hauser, MD and Chef, and colleagues at Stanford University over several years and used in in-person teaching of pre-clinical students.…”