What Medical Students Need to Know About Culinary Arts

Only 27 percent of US medical schools currently offer the recommended number of nutrition-related education courses during the four years of medical school, according to recent research published in Academic Medicine: Journal of the Association of Medical Colleges. The majority of this coursework, meanwhile, is focused on biochemistry as opposed to on “practical, food-related decision making.” This lack of focus may explain why, also according to the article, “Among entering medical students, 71% think nutrition is clinically important. Upon graduation, however, fewer than half believe that nutrition is clinically relevant. Once in practice, fewer than 14% of physicians believe they were adequately trained in nutritional counseling.”

But given the widely agreed upon truth is that food is an invaluable component in healthy living, the takeaway seems clear: nutrition-related coursework can help create better doctors. Here’s a closer look at three reasons all medical students should look to the culinary arts to position themselves to provide the best care.

1. Food can significantly improve people’s health.

The world is in dire straits right now when it comes to health with obesity, Type 2 diabetes, heart disease and numerous other chronic illnesses on the rise -- many of which can be prevented through healthy lifestyle changes. In fact, proper nutrition has been linked with long-term health benefits across everything from diabetes management to heart disease prevention.

The clause, “I will prevent disease whenever I can, for prevention is preferable to cure,” is included in the modern Hippocratic Oath used by many medical schools today. Factoring in what we know about the paramount role diet plays in prevention, it follows that acknowledging and embracing nutrition as part of any doctor’s education and training is imperative to delivering on this vow.

2. People have MANY questions about what they should be eating.

People know they should be eating healthy. But this doesn’t necessarily mean they know what they should be eating. In a New York Times article, Dr. Pauline W. Chen relates the story of how mere days after getting into medical school she was barraged with questions by friends -- even those who “should have known better” -- about what they should be eating across everything from whether or not to take vitamins to whether eating yogurt is good or bad for you.

Chen soon realized that the advice they were seeking had little to do with allopathic medicine and everything to do with food: “With all the newspaper and television reports about newly discovered carcinogens and the latest diets and miracle nutrients, what my friends and acquaintances really wanted to know was just what they should or should not eat.”

This phenomenon continued throughout Chen’s medical school years and afterward into practice. And yet, she writes, “I was still hesitating when answering. I wasn’t sure I knew that much more after medical school than I did before.”

Culinary arts coursework could have helped Chen be better prepared for these questions. As Kelly M. Adams, registered dietician and lead author of a study on the topic of nutrition education in medical schools, tells the New York Times, “Nutrition is really a core component of modern medical practice….Physicians have enough barriers trying to provide their patients with nutritional counseling. Inadequate nutritional education does not need to be one of them.”

3. Understanding the practicalities of cooking yields valuable insights.

We talk extensively about the importance of real-world experience and hands-on learning, and we’ve just established that patients have questions about how to improve their health through food. Merge these two together and an exciting trend is emerging in some medical schools: Not just teaching medical students about nutrition, but actually teaching them how to cook. According to food media world expert Dr. Timothy Harlan, AKA “Dr. Gourmet,” as reported by NPR, “Physicians talk about nutrition and diet all the time, but they don't talk about it in a way that communicates change to their patients.”

By taking cooking classes focused on teaching real cooking skills, medical students learn everything from healthy techniques to how to make the most of inexpensive ingredients. Continued Harlan, “We know from the literature that when people go home and start cooking from real ingredients for themselves that their health improves. We also know that they don't really know how to do that." By acquiring these skills themselves, medical school students position themselves to bridge this gap.

Echoes an AMA Wire article, “That’s where creating courses in medical schools on self-care, nutrition, cooking and life skills can make a difference. If medical schools teach students how to adapt healthy lifestyle and self-care skills in training, the authors argue, they’ll know how to impart this information to their patients.”

Hippocrates once said, “Let food be thy medicine and thy medicine by food.” And while medical knowledge has changed immensely since the Greek physician and founder/father of modern medicine first uttered these words, they very much hold true today. So why is this component absent from the experiences of many medical students -- to the potential detriment of their patients and even to themselves? Ultimately, the solution comes down to answering the question: How can doctors help their patients learn to make better choices if they don’t understand themselves what the better choices are? Culinary arts coursework may be the key.