Frequently Asked Questions
What is culinary medicine?
Culinary medicine is a term used to describe the type of education provided in cooking classes that are taught by clinicians, like registered dietitians, with the goals of increasing nutrition knowledge and kitchen confidence. These classes are designed to incorporate nutrition science into the recipes, ingredients, and culinary techniques to educate the public on ways to make nutritious food delicious and achievable.
Culinary medicine can be taught to anyone: communities, individuals, students, employees in corporate settings, healthcare providers, and more.
What types of services and engagements have you done?
I currently teach an eight-week culinary medicine course at Harvard Medical School that I co-created. I have also taught culinary medicine to nutrition, medical, and dental students on the Tufts Health Sciences Campus.
I have also developed and taught a successful monthly virtual and in-person workplace-based Teaching Kitchen program at Harvard Medical School, open to students, faculty, staff, post-docs, and affiliates. Additionally, I’ve modified and developed curricula for other contracted teaching kitchen programs.
I’ve provided speaking engagements with and without culinary demonstrations/hands-on classes for conferences—including for a Harvard Medical School Lifestyle Medicine Immersion training program and for the New England Chapter of the American College of Sports Medicine—as well as for several corporate and community groups. Speaking engagements have ranged from engaging in-person work shops with mock grocery shopping and meal planning sessions to virtual cook-along teaching kitchen sessions to in-person and virtual lectures on a variety of nutrition-related topics.
What is a registered dietitian (RD)?
Registered dietitians (RDs), also called Registered Dietitian Nutritionists (RDNs), are the food and nutrition experts. To become an RD, it’s required to complete a minimum of a graduate degree from accredited dietetic programs, an intensive dietetic internship including supervised hours in each of the primary areas of the nutrition field, and to pass a national registration exam, which requires continuing professional education throughout our careers to maintain.
The term ‘nutritionist’ is often used to describe people that claim to be nutrition experts. However, becoming a ‘nutritionist’ has zero standardized requirements and anyone can call themselves a nutritionist. Unless accompanied by the RD or RDN credential, nutritionists are not necessarily trusted nutrition experts. All RDs are nutritionists, but not all nutritionists are RDs.