Obesity Medicine Is Breaking New Ground!

Obesity medicine is breaking new ground! The Obesity Medicine Association (OMA) is the leading organization of healthcare providers dedicated to improving the lives of patients with obesity. OMA members are clinical experts who employ a personalized, evidence-based approach to effectively address obesity and support patients in reaching their health and weight objectives.

This year, at its annual conference, OMA partnered with a team of experts to plan and facilitate a culinary medicine pre-conference workshop. They created a pop-up kitchen in a large conference room with support from the hotel’s staff. Culinary medicine is an interdisciplinary field that transforms dietary guidelines into tangible, everyday skills, empowering individuals to improve and sustain lasting changes to their cooking and eating patterns. With the rising popularity of GLP-1 agonists and other weight loss medications, there's a growing necessity for complementary lifestyle interventions that support long-term success, maximize effectiveness, and sustain progress after stopping (or reducing) medications. This hands-on workshop provided a diverse group of healthcare providers with not just information and skill-building, but also a toolkit for incorporating culinary medicine into their practices to promote holistic and durable behavior change for their patients. 

The workshop was hosted by an interprofessional team of culinary medicine experts. The team was joined by OMA’s president-elect, Dr. Lydia Alexander, who contributed her expertise and experience around both obesity and culinary medicine and the importance of integrating the fields.The first day of the workshop included an introduction to culinary medicine, methods for clinical integration, and hands-on cooking practice to demonstrate the feasibility of culinary medicine despite access to kitchen space. 

The second day of the workshop included discussions around barriers to dietary changes including various social risk factors and the need for cultural humility in nutrition education and counseling. The speakers also provided strategies for initiating culinary medicine programs and communicating its value to key stakeholders. Then, participants engaged  in a heated competition in which groups were assigned to prepare a dish based on a provided patient case study and set of available ingredients. 

Factors considered for judging each team’s dishes included appropriateness based on the assigned cases and other individual factors, inclusion of a variety of colors, and taste. Team 6 was victorious and brought home the “golden spatula” award based on its delicious and patient-centered meal including a chickpea stew, slaw with berries and scratch-made pickled red onions, and rice pilaf.

We are so thankful for this opportunity to inspire and empower these health professionals  to incorporate a new set of strategies into their practice to help address the growing burden of obesity across the country. After the workshop, one participant said that “I plan to identify local resources already available in my community and determine how I can utilize those resources or how they can assist me in bringing culinary medicine into my community.” We are pleased to announce that this expert team will partner with OMA again to serve a new, even larger audience for its April 2024 conference! We hope to meet you there.

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