One of the easiest and best ways to improve your health and avoid disease is to eat real food; cooking your meals from scratch using whole ingredients, ideally organic, to avoid chemical additives and contaminants like pesticides.

Sadly, doctors have been notoriously clueless about nutrition as a way to improve health. On average, medical students in the U.S. receive less than 24 hours of nutrition instruction.¹ But that may be slowly changing.

I would also add that doctors who grow their own food and understand regenerative agriculture and the similarities between human health also have a distinct advantage.

Medical School Teaches Doctors How to Cook

Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans has implemented a radically different curriculum, teaching their medical students not only about nutrition in general, but also the practical aspects of cooking with real ingredients.

As noted by Dr. Timothy Harlan, executive director at the Goldring Center for Culinary Medicine at Tulane:²

“We know from the literature that when people go home and start cooking from real ingredients for themselves that their health improves. We also know that they don’t really know how to do that.”

The goal is for Tulane-educated doctors to have the necessary skills to actually teach their patients what to cook, how to cook it, and why. Other medical schools are also following suit.

The curriculum, which was developed with the College of Culinary Arts at Johnson & Wales University, has also been bought by 16 other medical schools across the country.