JUANA SUMMERS, HOST:
Congress wants to cut health care costs, and it is said one way to do that is for future doctors to get more nutrition training to better fight diseases like diabetes. How that's taught is up to each medical school. Cori Yonge with Alabama Public Radio sat in on one class in a kitchen.
(SOUNDBITE OF KITCHEN UTENSILS CLINKING)
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: More olives for you?
CORI YONGE, BYLINE: Olives, zucchini, mushrooms and whole wheat dough sit on the island of the Teaching Kitchen at the University of South Alabama. A group of medical students wearing crisp, white aprons crowd around the ingredients. They're here to learn how to cook food as medicine. Connor Martin plans to be an internist, but says he was in the dark when talking with patients about diet.
CONNOR MARTIN: I would give them, like, pamphlets and stuff, but I would not really be able to, like, go in-depth and explain it. And so that's why this course has been really helpful and exciting.
(CROSSTALK)
YONGE: Today's lesson is carbohydrates. One of the teachers is physiology professor David Weber. He throws out some staggering numbers.
DAVID WEBER: The average person in the U.S. eats a hundred pounds of sugar per year.
YONGE: A hundred pounds - the students are shocked. That's the reaction Weber hopes to get from his students. The idea is if doctors realize what their patients eat, they can ask better questions and give advice. As they work on their pizzas, Rachael Motamed tells her classmates about the last homework assignment, which was to cook something healthy.
RACHAEL MOTAMED: I actually, for one of my recipes, I made a kale salad.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #2: Oh, no way.
YONGE: Motamed wants to go into psychiatry. She's been in this class for a month and says she gets it.
MOTAMED: I want to emphasize, like, nutrition and wellness as a means of medicine, not just, like, a supplement to a medication.
YONGE: That's the message Dr. David Eisenberg hopes all doctors understand. Eisenberg is director of culinary nutrition at Harvard. He was part of a group of medical professionals who published more than 30 nutrition competencies they want medical students to be tested on.
DAVID EISENBERG: These are no longer competencies that are nice to have. They are competencies that one must have.
YONGE: They include things like how to talk about food with sensitivity, understand the difference between minimally processed and ultra-processed foods or explain food labels to patients. But they're far from becoming a requirement.
BOB ISRAEL: So, yeah, we really eat the entire plant.
YONGE: Back in the kitchen, the pizzas are in the oven, and it's time to make the salad. Dr. Bob Israel is showing students how to slice a fennel bulb to mix with oranges.
ISRAEL: It's not a vegetable you want to get a big old chunk of.
(CROSSTALK)
YONGE: He's the director of this kitchen and says teaching med students to cook is a lot like surgery. It's hard to tell someone how to cut a tomato or an onion, but...
ISRAEL: If they see it done and then do it themselves, it's a lot easier for them to envision themselves doing it.
YONGE: The pizza is done.
ISRAEL: Looks good.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Ooh, that's pretty.
ISRAEL: True.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #3: Wow.
YONGE: For Connor Martin, the class was enlightening, and a lot surprised him.
MARTIN: Honestly, a lot of the things that are in our foods that I wish I did not know, but I know now.
YONGE: And now he may tell his future patients what's in their food.
For NPR News, I'm Cori Yonge in Mobile, Alabama.
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