How to fuse the recommended nutritional competencies and culinary medicine

Key takeaways:

• Diet is the single most important risk factor for morbidity and mortality.
• There is a lack of nutrition training in medical school.

ORLANDO – One way to expand physicians’ nutrition knowledge base is through culinary medicine, said Michelle Hauser, MD, MS, MPA, FACP, FACLM, DipABLM, at the Lifestyle Medicine Conference.

Hauser said that most physicians would agree that they received little nutrition training in medical school. She said medical students receive on average 19.6 training hours on diet and nutrition, which is less than 1% of their training hours.

Hauser is the president elect of the American College of Lifestyle Medicine (ACLM).

She discussed the “hot off the presses” consensus statement published in JAMA that identified 36 nutritional competencies for medical students and also when in training the teaching should be incorporated. The group who published the statement was led by David M. Eisenberg, MD, the director of culinary nutrition at Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health and the founder of the Teaching Kitchen Collaborative.

Hauser, who was on one of the expert panels, encouraged physicians “to really read through these and think…do I feel totally competent in all of these?”

“We really have our work cut out for us,” she said.

A marriage of nutrition knowledge and culinary medicine brings together in a powerful way multiple tools for physicians that will benefit their patients, Hauser said.

Then a clinician will “have everything at your disposal to do the best thing for your patients,” she said.

Culinary medicine is “an evidence-based field that brings together the knowledge and skills to assist patients in maintaining health…and preventing and treating disease in conjunction with appropriate medical care.”

Hauser, who is a trained chef, created the ACLM’s Culinary Medicine Curriculum. The curriculum is free and includes everything from kitchen basics to shopping guides to recipes that teach individuals to make nutritious and delicious food. An updated version of the curriculum will be available in early 2025 and will include about 100 videos. Clinicians can sign up to be notified when it is available.

She said clinicians who want to get started can do so today even without a teaching kitchen by using the ACLM curriculum “as a jumping off point and make it your own.”

Hauser said she started with doing the classes in a conference room, but others use a mixed-use commercial kitchen during time frames when the kitchen is not being used.

She said classes can be virtual synchronous or asynchronous and even have a no-cooking option.

“The goal is about change,” she said, noting that using shared medical appointments for not just the medical discussion and cooking session but also the social connection has proven to be powerful.