Nutrition Adventures with Med Students and Future Chefs

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This blog post (here) and corresponding audio clip piqued my interest for a few reasons.  Tulane University medical students along with Johnson & Wales culinary students teamed up for a new and unique program (which you can read more about here) through Tulane’s Goldring Center for Culinary Medicine.  This partnership was formed to teach both culinary and medical professionals about nutrition.  The goal of the program is to change doctors’ thinking on food.  The article focuses on that day’s task of creating recovery meals for the Johnson & Wales track team.  One student was also quoted as saying “We need to learn how to be able to make nutritious meals and to discuss diet in an educated manner.”


It is indeed true that MD’s don’t get that much nutrition exposure throughout their education (I went to a GAAND meeting back in Fall 2011 where this was discussed and the main speaker (also a doctor) praised RDs as the Nutrition Experts).  And yes, health care in general should focus more on prevention, instead of “tak[ing] care of patients when things go wrong.” So my point and my main motive for posting is this article is that it angered me in a sense as we, as almost-dietitians, are not anywhere in this discussion of healthy eating and diet when that’s exactly what we are trained to do. Reading some of the blog comments echoed my concern.  I think it is great that future chefs are learning more about healthier cooking, and I think that will help as our society really starts to take charge of their health.  I think that perhaps patients need to be taught how to cook, as I know in my rotations across the board that was a barrier to eating better.  Lastly, I think that it is cool that MD’s are involved in getting their feet wet with nutrition.  But, as they are not the nutrition experts like we as future RDs are, it is not their job to educate on this.  If anything, they need to be sending us a referral, because we use this knowledge and these skills on a daily basis – we don’t just take a class or two and then start teaching others about it.  


Article source:

Gourlay, K. (2013, September 16). Just What the Doctor Ordered: Med Students Team With Chefs [Web Log Post]. Retrieved from http://www.npr.org/blogs/thesalt/2013/09/18/223405641/just-what-the-doctor-ordered-med-students-team-with-chefs

--C. Pfaff


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