NEWYou can now listen to Fox News articles!
Doctors aren’t the only ones wearing white coats.
But one doctor is trying to show that traditional white doctor’s clothing can serve an additional function in the kitchen.
As Americans strive to eat healthierA Stanford University physician, Dr. Michelle Hauser, is inspiring medical students early on to learn how to eat better by teaching them how to cook with a medical school curriculum now featured in more than 100 countries, according to a press release.
WHY SITTING ALL DAY IS BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH, DOCTORS EMPHASIZE
“Nutrition education represents a critical missed opportunity in medical education in the United States and in many countries around the world,” Hauser, who is board certified in internal medicine and lifestyle medicine, told Fox News Digital.
There is a “need to gain knowledge and skills to partner effectively with patients to help them change their dietary habits,” said Dr. Michelle Hauser.
(iStock)
“CM field [culinary medicine] emerged to fill a gap between nutrition as taught (or not taught) in most health professional education programs,” he added.
He said there is a “need to gain knowledge and skills to partner effectively with patients to help change your eating habits to achieve your health goals and improve longevity, wellness and performance.
Hauser, who trained at the famed Chez Panisse restaurant in Berkeley, California, is director of obesity medicine for the Medical Weight Loss Program at the Stanford Center for Weight Management and Lifestyle.
THIS DELICIOUS (AND EASY!) BRUSSELS SPROUTS RECIPE COULD SHOCK YOUR WORLD
The curriculum is “not intended to replace traditional health care, but rather to be one of the tools that health care professionals can turn to,” Hauser noted in a recent news release.
“In the US, the recommendation is that 0.6% of the total average hours of instruction in medical school focus on nutrition-related topics, and most schools still fall short,” he told Fox News Digital.
“I’ve found that as a doctor, simply telling patients to eat healthier as a way to treat or prevent disease is not super effective.”
But only 25% of medical schools have a dedicated nutrition course.
“This is despite diet being the single most important risk factor for morbidity and mortality in the US,” he said. It is “associated with 11 million deaths worldwide annually.”
A variety of fresh and healthy organic fruits and vegetables on the table. “It’s easy to get people to change their eating habits when you talk about how delicious something is,” said Dr. Michelle Hausner.
(iStock)
Hauser also noted that most nutrition lessons out there focus on things that are unlikely to change eating behaviors.
“I’ve found that as a doctor, simply telling patients to eat healthier as a way to treat or prevent disease is not super effective,” Hauser said in a news release.
“But it’s easy to make people change eating habits when you talk about how delicious something is, maybe you’re highlighting a new recipe or restaurant and how good it tastes.”
If the food is “terrible, we’re not going to sign up for another healthy cooking class,” the students told Dr. Hauser.
He has now been teaching the course at Stanford for the last five years after being inspired to start this journey during his college years.
“When I was an undergraduate student going through my pre-med studies, I had already been trained as a chef and needed to work full-time in order to attend school,” she said in a press release.
“I ended up running a cooking school.”
A young woman prepares a healthy meal at home. The students began asking Dr. Hauser how they could eat differently to improve their health.
(iStock)
When people in the class started asking him how they could eat differently to improve their health, like getting their lower cholesterol or help her partner better manage the person’s diabetes: she started “learning more about nutrition and implementing it in my cooking classes.”
So she started a healthy cooking class.
Culinary medicine, he said, “addresses the aspect of nutrition education most relevant to the average person who makes decisions about what to eat on a daily basis,” he told Fox News Digital.
THESE ARE THE 8 BEST FRUITS FOR YOUR HEALTH, ACCORDING TO NUTRITIONISTS
Initially, some people were skeptical.
So he showed his students that he practiced what he taught: eating the recipes he taught at home so that “they knew I wouldn’t eat something if it wasn’t good.”
“If it’s terrible, we’re not going to sign up for another healthy cooking class,” she said her students told her.
The doctor asked the others, “Why don’t we talk to people with heart disease about what they eat?”
But as word of mouth spread, the class soon had a waiting list. He later brought these experiences with him to medical school.
However, while in medical school, he noticed that doctors were not incorporating nutrition into their conversations with patients who could really benefit from learning how healthy eating habits could improve their medical conditions.
HERE ARE THE SECRETS TO GOOD BACK-TO-SCHOOL BREAKFASTS FOR BUSY FAMILIES
“I would ask my assistants [doctors who supervise medical students], ‘Why aren’t we talking to people with heart disease about what they’re eating?’ or ‘Why aren’t we talking to people with diabetes about their dietJust recipes?'” he said in a news release.
He noted that many health professionals don’t have time to have these meaningful conversations about nutritional habits.
Or they’re just resigned to the fact that “no one changes their diet anyway, and it’s better to just focus on medication.”
One doctor noted that many health professionals don’t have time to have meaningful conversations with patients about nutritional habits. Instead, they tend to “just focus” on the drugs.
(iStock, Archive)
“It made me think, ‘Well, maybe we’re just approaching healthy eating with patients in the wrong way,'” Hauser said.
“Most people know that vegetables are good for them,” he told Fox News Digital.
But only one in 10 people eat the recommended number of servings each day, he said.
THESE ARE THE WORST FOODS FOR YOUR HEALTH, EXPERTS SAY
“Common barriers that get in the way are cost, lack of knowledge and skills to select and prepare healthy ingredients, time, and the socialization that food can be healthy or delicious, but not both,” Hauser told FoxNewsDigital.
Culinary medicine is an effective method for combating these key barriers to dietary behavior change by teaching people that healthy food can be tasty, quick and affordable if a person knows how to cook and plan meals, he noted.
“The potential of learning to cook, move, eat and think healthier can and will change behaviors, clinical outcomes and costs of care for everyone,” a doctor told Fox News Digital.
(iStock)
He wanted to change the status quo.
So he worked with a medical school faculty member to start the first culinary medicine continuing education conference, “which continues to this day.”
It’s called Healthy Kitchens, Healthy Lives.
“It’s one thing to be told, ‘You need to change your diet and exercise more,’ a strategy that we now recognize is not very effective,” said Dr. David Miles Eisenberg, director of culinary nutrition and adjunct associate professor. in nutrition at the Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health.
He is also a founding co-director of the Healthy Kitchens, Healthy Lives conference.
The conference is multidisciplinary in nature including two specialties wearing white coats: chefs and health professionals to teach how cooking can improve eating habits.
And next February, the course, which is co-sponsored by Harvard’s TH Chan School and the CIA, as well as the Culinary Institute of America, will be on Napa, Calif..
It’s another thing to “be led into a ‘Teaching Kitchen,’ held by the hand and provided with an education.”
“It’s a whole other thing to be brought into a ‘Teaching Kitchen,’ holding hands and being educated,” he told Fox News Digital.
Those who attend the conference will learn “which foods to eat more, less and why.”
He notes that the conference also teaches “how to cook with readily available whole food ingredients and make healthy yet delicious, affordable, easy-to-prepare (and sustainable) recipes and meals.”
CLICK HERE TO SUBSCRIBE TO OUR LIFESTYLE NEWSLETTER
It also emphasizes the importance of regular exercise but reminds you “how critical it is to eat and live mindfully” and provides helpful advice on how to change habits that are counterproductive.
He told Fox News Digital about another upcoming conference this October. It will show how culinary medicine is becoming integrated today in many places in the US and around the world.
CLICK HERE TO GET THE FOX NEWS APP
It’s called the Teaching Kitchen Research Conference (tkresearchconference.org), and it’s sponsored by Harvard and the Teaching Kitchen Collaborative. It is co-funded by the National Institutes of Health.
“The potential of learning to cook, move, eat and think healthier can and will change behaviors, clinical outcomes and costs of care for everyone,” Eisenberg said.
