Equipping Private Practitioners to Implement Culinary Medicine

Inspiring and training groups of providers and other stakeholders to integrate culinary medicine (CM) into their practice is necessary to raise awareness about and overcome barriers to implementation on a broad scale. But we also believe that partnering with individual practitioners or private practices to provide tailored support can help to better meet specific needs and equip them to incorporate sustainable programs and practice changes involving CM.

As we’ve written before, obesity medicine is a ripe area for emphasizing nutrition and lifestyle medicine interventions. The CDC just reported that the prevalence of severe obesity in the US increased from roughly 8% to 10% over the past decade. Amid the rising use of new interventions, such as GLP-1 agonists and other anti-obesity medications, more solutions are clearly needed to bring about lasting behavior change and sustainable weight loss and health improvements.

In a recent partnership with Revolution Medicine, an obesity medicine practice in the DC metro area, the Rewire team developed and implemented a pilot culinary medicine class at a local YMCA teaching kitchen. We designed a program based on the practice’s needs and goals, available resources in this facility, and our understanding of the target patient population.  

In our pre-class survey, we learned that more than 50% of registrants lacked confidence in their ability to cook a nutritious, medically appropriate, and satisfying meal for themselves, and 86% cooked only 1–5 meals for themselves at home. By participating, they aimed to “to get inspired to cook nutritious meals again" and “change [their] perspective on cooking and learn a thing or two in the process!"

In recognition of Better Breakfast Month, we focused on creating nutrient-dense, delicious, and versatile breakfast dishes that can be cooked in batches and eaten at home or on the go throughout the week. After a brief presentation about building balanced breakfasts and packing in nutrition in the morning, we taught and then cooked together two recipes from the Rewire recipe repository. The participants must have been humble about their skills in the kitchen in their survey responses and ended up finishing much faster than expected. As we sat to enjoy the fruits of our labor together, we engaged in discussion with attendees to answer their many questions about potential modifications to these recipes, healthier cooking oils, spice combinations, and other topics. And we loved to hear the great tips that they offered to one another about being prepared for healthy eating away from home, recipe modifications, and other topics.

The class flew by, but we trust that participants learned a lot and took away a lot of knowledge and new tools to help them prepare more simple, nourishing, and delicious meals at home—and to inspire friends and family to do the same. Thank you again to Revolution Medicine and the YMCA for your partnership in empowering the DC community to improve their health through delicious food!

Are you seeking support to integrate culinary medicine into your small or private practice? Here are some suggested next steps:

• Read this brief blog to understand six simple steps to follow
• Sign up to hear about the release of our forthcoming culinary instruction guide so you can be prepared to teach your own patients. One version will include content for a general patient population and one will be specific for adults with obesity
• Attend one of our upcoming in-person workshops, such as one of our pre-conference workshops on 10/27 at Lifestyle Medicine 2024 or at Obesity Medicine 2025 next April (with details coming soon)—or let us know if you’ll attend either conference and want to meet in person
• Contact us if you’re interested in building a program like this, and/or with specific questions and to discuss any other opportunities for us to collaborate

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