Plenary: Culinary Medicine - Cooking up Health: Anytime, Anyplace | Product

There is growing recognition that solving the obesity epidemic and its downstream health consequences depends on preventative efforts at the individual, community, and public health level. Health professionals are on the frontline of assessing and advising patients on nutrition and weight; however only 27 percent of medical schools teach the recommended 25 hours of nutrition, and fewer than 14 percent of practicing physicians believe they were adequately trained in nutritional counseling. Other integrative disciplines, such as naturopathic medicine and traditional Chinese medicine, have a stronger focus on the healing power of food, but may be limited in patient behavior change when patients lack the confidence, skills, or motivation to change their diet.

The original Cooking Up Health (CUH) curriculum was designed to teach learners in medicine and allied and complementary health sciences through the lens of culinary medicine and community health. Through this course, participants learn basic culinary skills, steps to create nutritious meals, relationships between food, health, and disease, and cultural competencies around nutrition. The participants also practice health coaching and teaching.

For health professionals who ardently believe in the power of nutrition to transform health, culinary medicine provides practical tools to help learners, from patients to students to communities, put recommendations into action. Learn more about CUH and its powerful impact in this presentation.