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Doctors in training learn cooking skills to help patients amid America’s chronic disease crisis
Future doctors at some medical schools are learning more than anatomy, pathology and pharmacology these days. They’re learning to cook healthy foods patients will actually want to eat.
The training is part of a growing field called culinary medicine, which blends cooking skills with nutrition education. It’s gaining momentum at medical schools nationwide, The New York Times recently reported, with schools like Tufts University launching courses in 2025.
In many programs, that means stepping into a kitchen and learning to prepare meals firsthand, not just studying nutrition from a distance.
“It’s combining the culinary arts with evidence-based medicine and educational techniques to teach nutrition in a way that young doctors and other health care professionals can use in counseling and talking to patients,” Dr. Ron Quinton, medical director of Tulane University’s Goldring Center for Culinary Medicine in New Orleans, told Fox News Digital.
Rising rates of diet-related diseases, including diabetes, obesity and heart disease, are fueling demand for more nutrition-focused care, experts say.
“Most people are eating the standard American diet, which is high in saturated fat, high in sugar, high in salt,” Quinton added. “There are at least 13 obesity-related cancers that are directly diet-related,” he noted.
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At Tulane’s School of Medicine, students work through mock patient cases before heading into the Goldring Center’s teaching kitchen — one of the nation’s first, established in 2012 — to prepare healthy, flavorful and affordable meals.
“We don’t want to make bland food,” Quinton said.
They also don’t want patients thinking they must overhaul their diets overnight, he said.
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“Our first goal is to add things to their diet,” he said. “We’re not trying to take things away.”
One of the first cooking lessons Tulane students get, meanwhile, is about a familiar favorite: tacos. Quinton said the program adds more vegetables than traditional versions and uses homemade, low-sodium seasoning.
“A big part of our teaching is substituting things for what we consider bad for you — the sugar, the salt — and putting spices and other things in so the food tastes just as good,” Quinton said.
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Jordan Lo, a fourth-year Tulane medical student planning to pursue neurosurgery, said the teaching kitchen has given him tools he already uses when talking with patients during clinical rotations.
“Patients ask me, ‘How can I eat healthier? Where can I go to get better recipes?'” Lo said.
Understanding nutrition can benefit doctors in any specialty, particularly in preventing conditions such as stroke linked to diet, he said. “Knowing about food and culinary medicine and how it affects your patients just overall makes you a better doctor.”
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He said the hands-on classes show students how to make healthier meals feel doable at home.
Students learn simple tips — like prepping ingredients and using small bowls to stay organized — that they can pass on to patients.
The kitchen lessons also challenge assumptions about what “healthy” food looks like.
Lo said one surprising recipe was a dark chocolate mousse made mostly with avocado. Quinton pointed to black and white bean brownies as desserts that deliver more fiber with less fat than traditional versions, adding that they’re favorites of his grandkids.
More than 60 medical, nursing and residency programs now use versions of Tulane’s curriculum, with newer programs emerging at schools like Tufts University as part of a broader “food is medicine” movement.
Tuft’s launched a course in 2025 that brings together medical, dental and nutrition students to learn in partnership with Community Servings, a nonprofit that provides medically tailored meals to people with serious and chronic illnesses.
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Eliza Leone, a registered dietitian nutritionist and instructor in the program, said the training focuses on turning nutrition advice into practical guidance for patients.
“What’s more meaningful than telling your patient, ‘You should eat more calcium,’ is saying, ‘Here are a few recipes that incorporate calcium,'” she told Fox News Digital.
Research shows doctors are more likely to encourage healthy eating habits when they practice those behaviors themselves, Leone noted.
“You can’t have nutrition without food, so you have to know how to make food that tastes good and also meets your nutritional needs,” she said.
Interest in culinary medicine is growing, Leone said, as more students seek hands-on nutrition training and schools respond by expanding programs.
Quinton agreed the trend is here to stay, as more doctors shift toward preventing disease rather than reacting to it.
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Jimmy Kimmel remains defiant, insists ‘expectant widow’ jab against Trumps was about age difference
ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel remained defiant Monday night, insisting his now-viral “expectant widow” joke about President Donald Trump and First Lady Melania Trump was simply about their age.
“This was Thursday, and there was no big reaction to it until this morning, when I greeted the day facing yet another Twitter vomit storm,” Kimmel said during his monologue. “I said, our First Lady, Melania, is here. Look at her. So beautiful. This is from the glow. Like an expected widow, which obviously was a joke about their age difference and the look of joy we see on her face every time they were together.”
“It was a very light roast joke about the fact that he’s almost 80, and she’s younger than I am. It was not, by any stretch of the definition, a call to assassination — and they know that,” he continued. “I’ve been very vocal for many years speaking out against gun violence in particular, but I understand that the First Lady had a stressful experience over the weekend, and probably every weekend is pretty stressful in that house.”
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This is a developing story.
Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-CT) erupted in hostility toward Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) Administrator Lee Zeldin on Monday over climate change.
The post Watch – Dem Rep. Rosa DeLauro Blows Up at EPA Chief Lee Zeldin: ‘You Are Climate Deniers’ appeared first on Breitbart.
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Kentucky man credits Younghoe Koo’s embarrassing botched field goal attempt with saving his life
One of the worst moments in Younghoe Koo’s NFL career last season may have saved a man’s life.
At least that’s how it seems if you hear Mark Toothaker describe what happened to him when he was home with his wife last December watching Monday Night Football as the New York Giants played the New England Patriots.
In the second quarter of the game, Koo, kicking for the Giants, suffered a terrible, funny, awful, embarrassing moment when he abruptly decided not to follow through on a field goal attempt and the play turned into a Keystone Cops moment on national television.
Perhaps like many fans who witnessed the play, Toothaker began laughing at Koo’s expense. But suddenly, unexpectedly, the laughter turned into a crisis when it brought on a violent seizure.
And that led to things, which led to things, which Toothaker believes saved his life.
“(The) kicker saved my life because it could’ve happened any other time,” Toothaker told The Associated Press. “I wholeheartedly believe I was in the right spot at the right time, and he was the trigger for that happening. It was a miracle.”
Toothaker sees a miracle in Koo’s aborted kick and his medical emergency , which he likens to getting “electrocuted” because his wife immediately called 911. When paramedics arrived, they whisked him to the hospital.
A CT scan revealed a tennis-ball-sized tumor on the left side of Toothaker’s brain. So, yes, serious stuff manifesting after laughter
“When you hear the news, ‘You’ve got a brain tumor,’ that’s what nobody wants to hear,” said Malory Toothaker, who happens to be a nurse who works with brain-injury patients.
Toothaker was transferred to the University of Kentucky’s hospital, where the tumor was surgically removed. It turned out to be benign, according to The Associated Press.
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Toothaker was home by the end of the week with no lasting damage and and he continues working at Spendthrift Farm whose thoroughbred Further Ado will race in Saturday’s Kentucky Derby.
Toothaker, 59, said he had no symptoms and no idea the tumor had pushed his brain six millimeters to the right as it grew. All Toothaker knows for sure is that his job as stallion season manager requires he drive and fly all around the country.
And if that seizure had hit when he was in the air or behind the wheel, a cool story might have a different ending.
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“I could have had it on a plane, anywhere,” Toothaker said. “I didn’t kill anybody. I didn’t run over a family in my Expedition running up and down the road. I guess that would’ve been the hardest thing for me to live with if somebody would’ve got hurt out of this.
“Believe me, as tough as that thing was, as violent as that seizure was, I have no memory of it and I would find it hard to believe that I wouldn’t have hurt somebody or hurt myself if I would’ve been behind a wheel.”
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Toothaker’s good fortune was part of Koo’s undoing.
He was released by the Giants after a Week 15 loss to the Washington Commanders when he missed two field goals. The memory of the botched attempt against the Patriots definitely didn’t help his cause, either, as the team decided his fate.
Fox News attempted to contact Koo for this story but he did not return a message.
“I know it wasn’t his best moment, but it was beyond crazy,” Toothaker said. “For [Malory] and I to be belly-laughing at his expense, which I feel terrible about now, but it all worked out in the end, that for me it couldn’t have been at a better moment.”
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