Culinary medicine program improves knowledge of diet-related CVD prevention

Medical trainees who participated in a virtual culinary medicine program were more proficient in lifestyle medicine counseling compared with trainees enrolled in traditional nutritional educational curricula, according to researchers.

Timothy S. Harlan, MD, FACP, CCMS, an associate professor of medicine and executive director of the Culinary Medicine Program at George Washington University, and colleagues wrote in BMJ that when it comes to promoting cardiovascular health, hands-on culinary medicine education “has emerged as a promising tool” for medical trainees.

The researchers conducted a study to determine the efficacy of a virtual culinary medicine program.

Harlan told Healio that the program helps students “translate the information that they learn in their basic science classes such as digestion, metabolism, physiology and biochemistry into the conversation they will have with their patient about food.”

For the study, the researchers also examined adherence to the Mediterranean diet among trainees following the program, as it “translates Mediterranean diet principles for the American kitchen,” Harlan said.

“We know that the Mediterranean diet is the most powerful dietary tool for us to help our patients be healthier, but also meet them where they live with a food plan that is realistic and sustainable,” he said.

There is clear documentation that improving one’s Mediterranean diet score confers benefits for both cardiac morbidity and mortality, he added.

For the study, the researchers included 1,433 medical trainees across 19 sites over a 1-year period. A total of 519 were medical trainees participating in virtual culinary medicine education and 914 were trainees in the standard nutrition curricula. They assessed data from the Cooking for Health Optimisation with Patients-Medical Trainees survey, which includes questions about dietary habits, including Mediterranean diet score, nutritional attitudes and lifestyle medicine counseling competencies.

Harlan and colleagues found that those who participated in virtual culinary medicine education were 37% more likely to adhere to Mediterranean diet guidelines for fruit consumption compared with trainees in the traditional nutrition curricula (OR = 1.37; 95% CI, 1.03-1.83).

Additionally, when compared with historical data from in-person, hands-on culinary medicine courseware, virtual culinary medicine education had a greater association with Mediterranean diet counseling competency (OR = 5.73; 95% CI, 4.26-7.7).

The researchers also wrote that virtual culinary medicine education was linked to higher proficiencies in lifestyle medicine counseling categories, especially when it came to recommendations involving:

• fiber (OR = 4.03; 95% CI, 3.05-5.34);
• omega fatty acids (OR = 5.21; 95% CI, 3.87-7.02); and
• type 2 diabetes prevention (OR = 4.69; 95% CI, 3.51-6.27).

The main implication of their findings, Harlan said, is that the nutrition programming is just as effective when delivered in a virtual or in-person environment.

“This manuscript is important because it reinforces that hands-on cooking classes for health care professional students is superior to the nutrition course where they are currently receiving, but also that delivering it in the virtual environment is equally efficacious,” he said.

A few years ago, most health care professionals were not offered programs that help them “understand the conversation they need to be having with their patients about food,” Harlan said.

“There are, however, now ample opportunities for them to supplement their prior education through the offering of the [Culinary Medicine Specialist Board],” he said.