If a doctor has ever told you to change your diet, chances are they handed you a piece of paper with a list of foods. And most likely none of it looked appealing. But doctors in coastal Alabama are on the forefront of a delicious health trend hoping to change that. They’re inviting patients, community members, and medical students into their teaching kitchens. Places where you can learn to chop, sauté, and blend your way to a healthier life.
The sounds from blenders, clinking spoons, and happy voices fills this Mobile teaching kitchen. It’s one of two on the Gulf Coast run by the University of South Alabama Integrative Health and Wellness Program. Students from Mobile’s LeFlore High School are here learning to cook healthy snacks. But first, a quick lesson.
“What we try to avoid is highly processed,” said Bob Israel. He’s a primary care doctor and director of the program. Several times a week, he trades his long, white lab coat and exam room for an apron and a state of the art kitchen. Today he holds up a bag of flaming hot Doritos.
“If you look at the ingredients, most of them are chemicals that I don’t even know what they are,” he told his group.
Israel and USA Health are members of the Teaching Kitchen Collaborative. That’s a non-profit founded to teach people how to eat, cook, move, and even think healthy. It started as a joint venture between doctors at Harvard and chefs at the Culinary Institute of America. Members include hospitals, YMCAs, libraries, and even Google. Israel says he became interested in food as medicine when he realized prescribing medication wasn’t enough for his patients.
“Even though there were lots and lots and lots of good new drugs, it didn't seem to be making any impact on the development of diabetes and hypertension and heart disease. And it became pretty clear it was related to Lifestyle,” Israel observed.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says almost half of adults in Alabama have high blood pressure. The state ranks fifth in the nation for obesity. It’s in teaching kitchens like this one that patients learn hands on how to change the lifestyle leading to those diseases.
Snacks make up more than a quarter of the diet of an average teenager. Store-bought chips and cookies all rank high on the list. So these teens whip up better options with inexpensive and easy to find ingredients.
“My personal pizza had parmesan, mozzarella uh, what is it I put on it mushrooms and spinach,” said Icilyn Montgomery. She and Taihana Chukwemeka giggle over their pizzas on whole wheat pita bread.
“My personal pizza had everything she had except mushrooms I don’t like mushrooms,” state Taihana.
A much talked about study published in the Journal of Nutrition late last year found Americans get more than half their daily calories from ultra-processed foods.
Teaching kitchens focus on a plant forward diet – creating foods with the flavors and textures patients love but without the added sugars, fats, salt, and chemicals hidden in many convenience foods.
“When you take that first bite of that potato chip that sound that crunch it makes, that’s not by accident. I mean it’s oooh,” said Ben Schrubbe, is a family practice doctor in Fairhope who runs USA Health’s Baldwin County teaching kitchen. Schrubbe doesn’t blame patients for their diets but rather the large corporations spending millions to make ultra-processed foods taste good.
“It’s you and me against these huge food companies and it’s not a fair fight,” stated Schrubbe.
One of the ways the teaching kitchen collaborative is fighting back is by bringing in medical students. Surprisingly, most doctors today receive little to no nutrition training.
"You can't make health America Healthy Again without an improved food system, educational system and discussions between patients and their health professionals about food and cooking and shopping,” said David Eisenberg, a Harvard physician and the founder of the Teaching Kitchen Collaborative. He’s out to change the way doctors talk with patients about food.
“It matters so much because probably more than half of the deaths in the United States every year are either accelerated or in some way impacted by people's diet and lifestyle. How do we change that for the better?” Eisenberg asked.
One way is with a mandate from Congress. Medicare costs for diet related diseases are soaring. Medicare is also the largest direct source of federal dollars funding medical training. Three years ago the U.S. House passed a bi-partisan resolution pointing out that connection. The measure calls on medical schools to train all doctors in nutrition.
"These are no longer competencies that are nice to have, they are competencies that one must have,” said Eisenberg.
Medical student Rachael Motamed has spent a month studying nutrition at USA Health. On her last day of class she says she’ll use what she’s learned.
“I want to emphasize like nutrition and wellness as a means of medicine, not just like a supplement to a medication,” she said.
And her classmate Connor Martin cringes when revealing what he’s learned.
“Honestly, a lot of the things that are in our foods that I wish I didn’t know but I know now,” he admits.
Teaching Kitchens hope to spread those messages far and wide. Back with the Leflore students, Israel is wrapping things up.
“They have their whole life ahead of them. And if they start now, They can avoid illness 20 years from now.,” he said.
For teaching kitchens that would be a sweet success.
