Healthy Kitchens, Healthy Lives: Caring for Our Patients and Ourselves

Abstract

Healthy Kitchens, Healthy Lives (HKHL) is a continuing medical education conference developed through a partnership between Harvard Medical School and The Culinary Institute of America. The annual event brings more than 400 attendees, including physicians from a wide range of specialties, registered dietitians, and other health care professionals, to The Culinary Institute of America campus in Napa Valley, Calif., each spring. Conference faculty include researchers and practitioners from Harvard Medical School, Harvard School of Public Health, and Harvard-affiliated teaching hospitals; guest health care faculty from other leading research and teaching facilities; registered dietitians and chef-instructors from The Culinary Institute of America at Greystone in St. Helena, Calif.; and guest chefs and world cuisine culinary experts from across the United States. HKHL is designed to mimic medical training. In medical school, students “see one, do one, teach one.” Similarly, the 4-day HKHL conference combines lectures, culinary demonstrations, culinary workshops, hands-on kitchen sessions, and meals to create multiple opportunities for participants to “see one, taste one, make one.” This article will discuss the impact health care providers' personal health habits can have on the habits of their patients, describe the culinary nutrition goals taught in HKHL, review the evidence that supports these goals, and provide practical tips for health care professionals and their patients for making changes to their shopping, cooking, and eating habits. Do health care professionals' own eating habits directly or indirectly influence the eating habits of their patients? We know that other patient health habits may be influenced by the behaviors of the health care providers. For example, there is evidence that physicians who do not smoke are more likely than physicians who do smoke to encourage their patients to stop smoking.1 Although a similar study specifically targeting eating habits has not yet been completed, we have heard …