There’s an old saying: “You are what you eat.” Another one is, “An apple a day keeps the doctor away.” What we eat does affect our health. Research shows proper nutrition can help prevent illness and treat disease. But eating for your health isn’t about adhering to the latest fad diet or simply avoiding certain foods.
That’s where the science of culinary medicine comes into play.
What is culinary medicine?
Culinary medicine combines the art of food and cooking with the medical science of nutrition, psychology and sociology to prevent and manage chronic diseases.
“When someone goes on a diet, they are generally trying to lose weight. Sometimes, these diets aren’t actually all that healthy, and the change in eating habits may only be short-term,” said
Nathan Wood, MD, a primary care physician with Yale New Haven Health and the director of culinary medicine at Yale School of Medicine. With culinary medicine, patients are provided with the knowledge, skills and confidence to cook foods that improve their health in the short term and beyond.
A variety of health benefits
Culinary medicine takes a personalized approach. It focuses on you and your health needs because what works for someone else might not work for you. A prescription for culinary medicine:
- helps you create meals that you will enjoy
- considers the way you shop for food
- provides information on healthy eating patterns for your specific medical condition
“Anyone can benefit from culinary medicine, even if they don’t have any particular health conditions. That’s because implementing a healthy diet can help prevent many diseases from developing in the first place,” Dr. Wood said. “But culinary medicine can also help patients manage and treat a number of diseases.”
Those conditions include high blood pressure, high cholesterol, heart and cardiovascular disease, heart failure, strokes, obesity, diabetes and some types of liver disease. For those with a digestive disease -- such as IBS, IBD, food intolerances and allergies, or gastroesophageal reflux disease (GERD) -- culinary medicine can help patients manage their symptoms.
The key component: A cooking class
Many people want to improve their health but don’t know where to begin. What foods should I eat? How does meal planning work? What ingredients should I shop for? How do I prepare healthy meals? Culinary medicine answers these questions through classes that teach people how to improve their diet and health.
“The key component of culinary medicine is hands-on cooking,” Dr. Wood said. These lessons can either be done virtually or in-person from a teaching kitchen, where patients learn how nutrition, meal-planning and heathy cooking can support their health goals.
“I tell people to think back to high school biology class. You had a biology lecture, and then you had a biology lab where you would put the lessons from class into practice. This is nutrition lab,” said Max Goldstein, RD, chef dietitian at Yale New Haven Health’s Irving and Alice Brown Teaching Kitchen. “Your doctor or dietitian can tell you everything you should know about healthy eating, but you also need to learn the skills to put that education into practice.”
The Teaching Kitchen curriculum covers cooking techniques, focusing on a Mediterranean diet -- which is appropriate for most patients, including those with diabetes, reflux, irritable bowel syndrome, celiac disease, ulcerative colitis, Crohn’s disease, weight management and more. Each class begins with a brief nutrition lesson and a skills demonstration, followed by dedicated time for hands-on cooking. Classes are available in-person and online.
Classes at the Teaching Kitchen are free for patients. Contact your Yale New Haven Health provider to receive a referral for classes at the Teaching Kitchen. If you have questions about patient classes, send an email to [email protected].
Look for upcoming offerings from the Teaching Kitchen on Yale New Haven Health Events.
