Dr Rupy: We're teaching them about validated screening tool questions so you can screen your patient in front of you for, do they have enough food on the table? That's a very, very important question. To not know or have the confidence to ask, I think that's an opportunity missed for the patient. The clinician doesn't actually feel able to deliver that holistic care. So, Culinary Medicine really does speak to very current issues in nutrition and also has that practical aspect of cooking.
Dr Rupy: Welcome to the Doctor's Kitchen podcast. The show about food, lifestyle, medicine and how to improve your health today. I'm Dr Rupy, your host. I'm a medical doctor, I study nutrition and I'm a firm believer in the power of food and lifestyle as medicine. Join me and my expert guests where we discuss the multiple determinants of what allows you to lead your best life.
Dr Rupy: Today I'm chatting with the directors of the non-profit Culinary Medicine UK who have been with me from the very start when I had the inspiration and aspiration to bring this method of teaching to the UK. If you've never heard of Culinary Medicine before, it's basically a method of teaching health and social care professionals nutrition science with hands-on cooking and culinary skills. The Americans have been doing this for many years. We were really, really behind here in the UK. And when I put out my first social media post about collecting a group of multidisciplinary academics, dietitians, doctors who wanted to share this vision with me back in 2017, I was blown away by the response. And since then, we've whittled it down to really passionate individuals, some of which are on the podcast today. We talk about the origins of Culinary Medicine, how it's changed, the evolution of this programme and how we survived the pandemic, doing a lot of pivots and moving to online. We also talk about where Culinary Medicine is currently taught, as well as the aspirations. I haven't hidden the fact that I really want Culinary Medicine to be taught in all medical schools across the country and Europe, and I also want cooking clubs and community kitchens to be affiliated with all GP surgeries across the country. Essentially, what we do is we deliver evidence-based, practical and appropriate teaching to healthcare professionals on how to adapt nutrition advice for individuals with varying conditions, which is why it's so important to really capitalise on this vision of having it associated with GPs across the country. Not all GPs have the time or the inclination or the capacity to deliver this information, which is why it's so important that we take an MDT approach, a multidisciplinary approach to this, taking into account cultures, skills, resources, personal preferences. These are all things that are very, very hard to do within an eight-minute consultation, yet it is super, super important. If you've heard any podcast on this show, you will understand the value of food as medicine as well. Vince, who you'll hear on the podcast today, is a culinary lecturer at the UK's number one hospitality school, Westminster Kingsway, which is where we have our Culinary Medicine kitchen. He's got 25 years of experience within the industry and is an executive committee member of Master Chefs of Great Britain. Elaine is an experienced nutrition educator and registered dietitian who leads on the development of the Culinary Medicine UK nutrition modules. She is a PhD researcher and writer with an interest in improving access to healthy food for people facing nutrition insecurity and has postgraduate qualifications in multiple things, including clinical education, diabetes, research, critical appraisal. Her CV is massive. And Dr Sumi Bura is currently a GP, a portfolio GP, and holds diplomas in obstetrics and gynaecology, sexual health and postgraduate certificates in primary care education, as well as being a certified health coach. Remember, you can sign up to the nutritional psychiatry workshop event that we talk about with Professor Felice Jacka, who is a friend of the podcast and one of the key researchers in this whole field of nutritional psychiatry, which is super exciting. It's all about how we can use food to prevent and stave off mental health issues, which, as many of you will be aware, is the leading cause of disability across the world. The link for the event, which is going to be on the 7th of July to the 8th of July at the Westminster Kingsway centre, which is in Victoria, London, will be in the podcast show notes as well. So definitely go check that out. And remember, you can watch this podcast on YouTube. We are going to be doing so much more stuff on YouTube, particularly when we move to my new studio with high-quality cameras, amazing guests and a cooking kitchen as well that we're going to be building from scratch. And remember, you can download the Doctor's Kitchen app for free. There are a number of different free recipes that you can try out. Android, we are definitely working on that at the moment. And we have over 500 recipes now, each with step-by-step images that you can peruse through. It makes cooking super easy. You can build collections of recipes, you can share the ingredients, and we have a ton of new features coming later on this year as well. And if you don't have an Apple phone, you can sign up to the eat, listen, read newsletter where we share something to eat, something to listen to, something to read, and something to watch every single week. On to the podcast.
Dr Rupy: Guys, thank you so much for joining on the call today. I wanted to start off this conversation by going to each of you and asking you what Culinary Medicine means to you and perhaps how that's evolved actually since you first got involved. So, Sumi, why don't we start off with you? What did Culinary Medicine mean to you when you first heard about it?
Sumi: Wow, this takes us back to over five years ago now. And for me personally, it came from just a real curiosity to learn more about nutrition. I was a doctor who didn't have very much nutrition training in my own medical education, and I wanted to feel more confident to be able to talk to my patients about nutrition. So when you first started to talk about Culinary Medicine and you put a call out looking for medics who or health professionals who are interested, I thought, that's right up my street. It was a learning need for myself, and given my own passion for prevention and my background in education, I was very excited to get involved with actually helping to deliver the course itself. And just very, very happy and proud of the achievements we've made that now our course is running in UCL, my own medical school, in other medical schools, and we are slowly really helped to change the face of medical education and how nutrition is delivered to help our patients. So that's how it began for us over five years ago, and we've pivoted in different directions, but that's really stayed true to our initial mission.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. Elaine, how about yourself? Because you were really sort of the pivotal piece in everything right at the start of the inception of the organisation.
Elaine: Yeah, I mean, I think that I could really see the gaps in nutrition training from both my NHS role and a role that I have teaching nutrition in medical education. So as a dietitian working in diabetes, I'd frequently see people that hadn't had any nutrition education at all moving on to insulin therapy. And I think that we're a bit better now, but since working in medical education, I still have medical students asking me, do we really still have to talk about nutrition? Because my GP's told me that we only just, we just give people pharmacology treatment now. So there's a lot of work still to be done. And the reason I got involved with Culinary Medicine specifically, so I was teaching nutrition in Brighton and Sussex Medical School, but I really worried that lectures felt a bit detached from the clinical application of nutrition. And we discuss nutrients, but that seemed really detached from what people actually really eat. So by cooking, I think that it helps people to really relate to some of the challenges and opportunities and just have a better understanding of how nutrition can be translated. And it just inspires some deeper thinking on the subject. So to talk about some of the nuances, to talk about some of the difficulties that people have, just to take a wider sort of psychosocial, socioeconomic viewpoint on nutrition and thinking about what our role is a bit more deeply. And also, it's a lot more fun than PowerPoint. And I think the social learning theory, learning through discussing with each other and discussing some of the challenges and the reasons that people may be sceptical about nutrition, I think that's really, really important. And yeah, I've enjoyed just to echo what Sumi said really is over the last five years, we've made great strides in that area, but still lots, lots to be done.
Dr Rupy: Yeah. Chef, what about yourself?
Vinny: Yeah, so when I remember, it was five years ago now, when you came into the college just inquiring about running this at Westminster Kingsway, where I'm based at the time. And at the time, I was trying to get this onto chef's curriculum because chefs don't learn about nutrition either. So when you came in, the timing couldn't have been better because I was like, brilliant, this is fantastic. We'll be able to finally maybe work together and get something that's tangible for chefs as well, which is something that we are working on in the background. But yeah, it was really exciting and just to get that opportunity to, because I bring something different, I suppose, to the team, I guess, in that sense, and just looking at the practical elements of cooking the simple dishes. And like yourself, you make, you've got some fantastic recipes, you're doing great stuff as well, obviously, but and then just taking stuff and making it, trying to stick within the five pillars as what we've developed really is just something very simple, tangible resources that people can use and really talk to their patients about. And it's been a lot of fun and really interesting. It's been really interesting actually because I've learned so much about the medical world as well and meeting all these doctors and dietitians and really opened up a amazing network for myself as well, actually. So it's been great.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah. I remember when I first came across Culinary Medicine myself, and I just thought the collection of having all these different practitioners in a room, all these different disciplines that are all involved in nutrition. And I think a lot of the times we do forget about the culinary element or the practical element. And what they were doing over in the States and some other countries now was just so powerful. And when I went to see it myself, I just thought to myself, we have to try and do this in the UK and put it into medical schools. And meeting all you guys, you know, for over the last five years and working with you to evolve the course, evolve exactly what Culinary Medicine means, I think it's just been like one of the best privileges. When you started with Culinary Medicine, I guess everyone's had the inkling of what it meant to them. How do you think that's evolved since we actually sat around that room? I think it was in Westminster Kingsway, which if the listeners don't know, is one of the finest catering colleges in the UK and globally recognised. Perhaps, Elaine, we'll start off with you. When you first came across it and we all sat around that table, how do you think it's evolved since those early discussions?
Elaine: I think that we started off just by thinking about medical students, and actually it was doctors was the first group that we worked with. And it's just become apparent that really it doesn't belong to any one profession. So I think there was some interesting discussions at the beginning of shouldn't a dietitian be doing this or shouldn't a nutrition professional be doing this and why a doctor? And I think that the conversation has really moved on from that. And I think actually people do accept that we all have a role. But also we would like to involve more nurses, pharmacists, we have involved more pharmacists, psychology professionals. So finding a common ground baseline for everybody can input because it's the magnitude of nutritional problems within healthcare is so great that it really needs to be a thread that's consistent amongst all clinical practice. So I think that's something that's changed. I didn't realise the role that chefs had. You know, the huge potential that chefs have. And I feel really ignorant now, but I think that that really in terms of how food changes and evolves and the culture around food, I think that chefs have such a massive role to play. And it's kind of cool to work with health professionals and culinary professionals and work with industry and just to widen the picture of what's possible. So I think that we started off just thinking about doctors, but that's widened to lots of different groups, lots of different professionals. Even we've had patients come and be involved with our project. So, yeah, the sky's the limit.
Sumi: Yeah, absolutely. And just to add on to what Elaine was saying, we have, especially myself, working in general practice, the way things are at the moment, we don't want to overburden health practitioners. We don't want to add another thing to their list. I know GPs, they'll have QOF, they'll have medication reviews, they'll have a patient coming in with three things. And that was something that I was really keen to avoid with our course making it complicated. We actually want to demystify the various, you know, the sea of misinformation out there. So to that end, the Culinary Medicine course and the course writers are experts. They've done the hard work. They've presented the presentations and lessons in a easy to understand format. And the value add, particularly with the online course, is that the resources have been vetted. We've looked at the best resources that you can then share with your patient so that it doesn't have to be a difficulty. It's something that you're like, right, I know, I know what to help my patient with. I know where to signpost them. The very fact that clinicians are now actually bringing food or just even trying to help somebody who's facing food insecurity, as far as we're concerned, that's a massive gain and we're doing the right thing. Even if say another 100 practitioners are speaking about food insecurity with their patients who need it, that's helping a whole community. So I think making it easy for practitioners to access that information and have those resources has been really key. And an area that we're keen to keep developing our bank of resources so to make it easy for practitioners to do that.
Dr Rupy: And just playing devil's advocate here, Sumi, you know, for the number of medics who are interested in the subject, there's going to be the majority, I would say, who are perhaps less interested in it today, just as a product of not being taught about the importance of it at medical school. And then that leads to a lot of dissatisfaction amongst a lot of patient groups, right? So you've got some patients who are like, well, my doctor doesn't tell me anything about this. No nurse, no doctor, no one has talked to me about diet and they've just trying to push pills on me. And the reverse probably as well of a patient who wants a pharmaceutical or a sort of, quote unquote, harder intervention than the softer lifestyle stuff that they're being promoted by that practitioner. How do you reconcile with those seemingly opposite camps? I'm sure you've probably come across this in your own practice as a partner.
Sumi: Yeah, so I think it's about raising awareness. So, you know, I'm a very traditional medic in the way that I've been trained. I've done, you know, my diplomas in all the very traditional topics. Nutrition came out of a genuine curiosity and interest. I've always been passionate about prevention. A lot of the work we do in NHS, it's a lot of firefighting simply because we are time strapped. Having said that, as Elaine said, we are having medical students on our course who didn't sign up for Culinary Medicine. They are, it's a compulsory part of their training. And even then, the feedback still supports that it's positive for them. They're learning, they're coming across things that they hadn't even thought about. So I believe it is about raising awareness. And in terms of really facing the sceptics, you can't, again, force feed this to people. But I think having the events that we're doing, lots of different people come who are not that interested, but oh, okay, I'm interested. I'll just see what's what it's about, even if I'm sceptical. And then actually, when they actually speak to us or they see from other people who have done it and what it's about, even they are interested. I was having a conversation at the London-wide medical committee, which is an annual conference of general practitioners, and I met quite a few other GPs who have a portfolio career, working as a frontline GP, but also interested in different areas. And they were quite interested in what we're doing, but they hadn't, they hadn't heard about Culinary Medicine. So it was quite interesting to hear their feedback. It's like, oh, actually, I would, I would have been quite interested. And again, it's a, it's a time factor. So I strongly feel that if the sea of change is towards prevention, training health professionals will be at the should be at the heart of that and making this compulsory instead of, you know, forward-thinking medical schools incorporating it is something that, you know, the higher, you know, health education England, NHS England will advocate for this to be more widely available and perhaps part permanent part of the medical curriculum, which is what we had been aiming for from the start. So it's taken a, it's taking time to get there, but there is that shift. And I think more and more practitioners are interested, seeing how it can affect their their patients, their population. It's really, really key that we address these factors.
Elaine: We do, we do have some evidence that things are changing. So we always ask medical students if they've witnessed any discussions on nutrition from the doctors that they spend time with or health professionals they spend time with. And when we started this, it was a definite no, no, no, never, never heard anybody talk about food or nutrition, never, ever. And that has really changed. It's really noticeable that they could give a lot more examples of where they're seeing this being applied in practice. And also, we've had reports from doctors that are working in clinical practice that have had medical students attend our training and then go back out and speak to the doctors that they're working with. Oh, hey, like, you know, I was just on this course, it was really interesting. Do you include nutrition in your consultations? And I've got this tool that I use, which is a five-minute conversation on nutrition. So slowly, slowly, the word is getting out. And it's not unique in this. This is, this is just following a well-established evidence base of the role of nutrition in chronic disease management and prevention.
Dr Rupy: One of the things that I think we mentioned earlier is this focus on food insecurity. It's great to know that the that particular course is so well received. And I think part of the issue is, yeah, there is the inability of accessing certain foods, but I think it's also that culinary confidence piece. And this is where I think Chef Vinny and your colleagues are so pivotal because it's around finding the use cases for the perhaps cheaper, more accessible food and actually still creating something that's delicious and good for you as well. I wonder if you could give us some of your thoughts on how, you know, you've created those budget meals as well as being sensitive to the cultural variation in the patients that we have across urban environments, but also across the country.
Vinny: Yeah, so, I mean, first thing is we look at accessible ingredients. So, you know, we start talking about tinned, talk a lot about tinned and frozen product and that, and we have a lot of discussions on that. And we kind of show the medical students, you know, how cheap you could actually can make a meal and how you could use up different parts of everything as well and just trying to give them a, because what you want to do is give people the confidence to be able to go to their fridge, look at what's there and produce a meal for their family perhaps out of that. And there are tips and tricks to try and make that happen. So whether that's just, I don't know, say you have some sweet potato mash left over from something or potato mash in general as well that you could use that up in, make little potato cakes and stuff, make that part of the next day's meal, or you could use up a puree, make a puree of some leftover vegetables there and then just put that into a simple white sauce and just make your pasta bake that way. And so you're just adding in as much vegetable and fibre and everything that you're making. And then the whole brown pasta and brown rice, but now culturally, that can be, try to make that cultural switch for people to brown rice from white rice can be quite a, it's quite a job actually. But when you do it and show them how it tastes, we are, we are, you know, we are trying to make little, make little interventions all the time. My day job as a, I work with a lot of different communities, a lot of different cultures, and I often have little discussions with them about that sort of thing and how open would you be to putting more vegetables into them rice dishes and things like that, you know? So, yeah, and it's so we've had a lot of discussions with different cultural, kind of me and Elaine were talking about this not so long ago actually, cultural connections through food. And just seeing what we could do there because we've had a few discussions with different food banks and things about how we could actually make better recipes and easier recipes around different cultures made not by me, but alongside some people from them backgrounds to be able to, I'm learning a lot doing that. So we're looking at for that.
Elaine: It's not just the food and the nutrition, it's about human connection and it's very difficult to be getting your food from a food bank, but so we've been considering how we can work with community kitchens and getting people just into a social space where cooking is a central point for discussion. There's been some research into this looking at people with long-term health conditions that are accessing food banks for support. And this research, it's a Professor Flora Douglas. And they asked these patients, what is the most important thing that your health professional can do for you at the moment in your current situation where you're struggling to afford food? And the most important thing that they mentioned was that they listen. And you know, that kind of blew me away actually, is actually what they wanted is for health professionals to know what they're facing, to not feel judged and not to have to hide the situation that they're in. And also, because they weren't able to eat, they were missing medication. So we prescribe medication and say, have this with food. And so many people just weren't able to take the tablets or didn't know how to do this because they couldn't access the food that they normally ate. So, yeah, so there was a, you know, so health professionals can fear mentioning poverty and think that you have nothing to offer, but even just that kind ear, just just being better informed, being able to signpost to practical support was what what people really wanted.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, it's it's really interesting that I think as I've developed clinical maturity, and I've got a long way to go, I think over the next couple of decades of of practice, but I've become a little bit more confident in just the simple act of listening as a therapeutic tool. And you know, I mean, it's a silly example, even at home, sometimes when I offload to my partner, I don't want a solution. I just want her to listen. I don't need any answers. I don't need any sort of like, you know, five-point plans. I just need to be listened to. And it's a very similar scenario, not all the time with every single patient. Sometimes, you know, we definitely need to find a solution, but in a lot of cases, it can be that, actually, just a simple act of listening, it's so, so important, particularly when it comes to people who are really motivated and have really tried to do a lot of things, they need to be heard, they need to be seen that they've they've put all those different things in practice. Sorry, Vinny, you were saying something.
Vinny: A lot of pressure on medical professionals to listen to people as well, though, I will say. And they do need to listen to each other too a little bit, I think, that needs to be said too. And I do notice when we, when we're doing the cooking in the sessions, all the medical students are together, and it's very therapeutic, I suppose, making cooking food, making salads, doing stuff like that, and just working with your hands. And they do chill out and they do relax and they do actually network quite well and talk to each other and listen to each other as well, you know. So there's so much, there's so much that can be learned through food in that way, you know. And and if you talk about examples, I mean, I know we're talking about cultures and trying to get them to change. Kids, I've got three kids, and like when you're preparing food for them and trying to get them to eat brown rice and brown pasta, I mean, it's great at the beginning because you can, you know, you start off when they're young and you give them all the brown rice, brown pasta, and they go to a friend's house and they come home and they're like, oh, daddy, that's wonderful. What is this white rice? Perfectly fine.
Elaine: It's group consultations as well. I think that's why group consultations work so well is because people can speak openly, be heard and hear other people's experiences. There's a whole body of work looking at this social learning theory, which you don't get as an individual one person in a lecture.
Sumi: And I think really what what we really speak about again, just emphasising about multi-professional learning and again, we the NHS is under a lot of pressure, consultations are complicated. I guess really it's just making sure that food is not forgotten as part of that. And if you don't have time, knowing where to refer your patient so they can get more support while they're still seeing you about maybe particular other issues. It may not seem directly related, but it's going to really support their health. And I know in general practice having social prescribers linked to practices has been quite a game changer for us and being able to say, right, I'm going to direct you to so and so, they'll talk to you more. And then again, educating the social prescribers about what's happening in the community. I know by working in Greenwich, there's GDC, they run fantastic cookery clubs for for patients. So people can get together and learn the skill and our social prescribers can then follow on, see how the patient's getting on. So there's a lot of scope for more joined up care and working together. And then as Elaine says, with group consultations or virtual group consultations, just opening up that conversation and allowing patients to see, you know, common ground and how they can help each other with that as well. So really,
Vinny: And there's so, yeah, because there's so many great things going on out there. There really is, and since we've seen a lot more come together and some have really sustained themselves and they're still running some really interesting projects around and that's kind of blown me away through my again, back to my day job of what I'm doing and when I'm doing all my outreach things to the community and stuff that's going on, it's really fantastic to see and I'm sure it's just no one ever knows it's happening, isn't it? That community kind of communication.
Sumi: I think that's it. And I think it's really about raising awareness of what is happening. And there's there is actually a lot happening. It's just getting that information out there. We've taken a small step, as I said, with our course to put resources, but they're national. And we've got a discussion board and it's been really brilliant seeing the comments from users of our course saying, oh, in my area, we have this. They're like, oh, that sounds really good. And it just peaks people's interest and I think it holds people to say, actually, what's happening in my area? I think in an ideal world, we'd have regional organisations, we'd know about them, we'd be able to pull them into some sort of a directory. And I think over time we will build our resources and organisation bank. But it is really inspiring to learn what is happening in the community. And personally as a practitioner, Culinary Medicine has opened up a whole new new world for me in that in that sense as a add-on to help with my patients.
Elaine: Yeah, there's a really simple model that we use in our training is ask, advise, assist. So ask, ask somebody a little bit about how's nutrition, how's nutrition changed, how's your food intake changed since you've had a diagnosis of diabetes or whatever that is? How might you use food at home to manage your condition? So you get a little bit of a feel of what people are doing at the moment. The advice part might be, you know, a discussion about what you might do, but the assist part is really crucial. And that's where you signpost people to what's available already in the local area. So it's not just our role, what we can achieve in education within a small consultation, it's about how we connect the dots to wider support that's available. And I think that's really, really crucial.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, that that's one of the things I think along my own journey since we started Culinary Medicine is actually finding out about other organisations that are working either at a national level or a local level in the food space. And it's almost like, it's a silly parallel within technology right now. You can build a product, let's say it's five years old, and it's grown to such a size that there's all these little bits that are sort of like, okay, but they could be optimised, but no one's really focusing on those little things because there's loads of more important things outside of that sort of core product. And you need almost someone to go in and be the chief automator to look at all those little things that could be done better and automate them away. And it's sort of like that's the role of a social prescriber in the context of a general practice setting. Someone to go in and be like, you know what, there is a local cookery school here, here, here, they're accepting people. This would be a great sort of initiative, or there are food banks here, or there's this initiative here, that the government has just started. And as a single practitioner, whether you're, you know, the nurse in that or the administrator or the the medical practitioner, you're not going to be have to, you're not going to have the time to know about all these amazing initiatives because you're, you know, doing your QOF points or you're finding out about the latest therapy for toe and nail fungal infections, you know, it's just all these different things that people don't really appreciate. And I think having someone whose sole role is to look at what existing solutions there are and join the dots, I think is really important. And so to just to echo on your point, Elaine, I think that's a that's a really important feature of what we do at Culinary Med. It's not to educate everyone from zero to 100, it's actually to get them to a point and actually point to where they should be, you know, sending their patients or or other organisations that are doing great stuff.
Elaine: Social prescribers have such a huge role. It's a really skilled job, but there's not currently any structure for formal education or formal promotion or so I think that we all talk about how much we love social prescribers because they do such a fantastic job. But I think we really need to honour that and help them to progress their career in a way that would be similar to other NHS staff.
Dr Rupy: Yeah, yeah, absolutely. When you think about Culinary Medicine, Sumi, you were talking about the journey that we've been on thus far, you know, it started off in, I can't remember where it was, like a little coffee store, and then like I used to invite people around to my house and basically bribe you with food and cook for you because we didn't have any funding, we didn't have anything. Yeah, it was just like loads of everyone just working out of hours, which, it's been a while. Well, you've got Chef Vinny now, so he's taken over that role. But, you know, and it's still like a ragtail sort of rickety organisation that we've just kind of cobbled together and keep going because, you know, everyone's got this shared vision and passion. But like, what are the key milestones, Sumi, that you could sort of summarise for the listener who's not come across Culinary Med before, what we've done in the UK at least? And maybe we can go on to like, you know, what we're doing imminently and then perhaps what the future of CM looks like.
Sumi: Yeah, so, so our very first in-person Culinary Medicine training was in February 2018. We'd got together a few months before this, this small team of passionate individuals from different areas, from dietetics, medicine, psychology, research, who were really on board with this concept of Culinary Medicine. Somehow, you know, we got this amazing college involved, Westminster Kingsway, you know, UK's number one hospitality school. So I think that was a real, really, really lucky piece of this puzzle. And I think if we didn't have an institution like Westminster Kingsway, I'm not, I just don't think we would, we could have carried on as we did. So we're very fortunate to have those contacts and supporters behind us here. And that pilot went incredibly well. And from there on, we've been able to develop the curriculum, embedded within medical schools. As Elaine says, we've got Bristol and UCL who are still running to this day. And then in between, let's not forget for two to three years, we've been in a global health pandemic. And it's credit to the team that that didn't, that didn't stop us actually, which I find remarkable. And we're very fortunate that we got, you know, support and grants to create this online course as well. So it's over 21 hours of CPD learning, again, to fill that gap in training for qualified health professionals. And at this stage, we were really championing multi-professional learning, inclusive learning. So ideally suited to, you know, busy clinician, a GP, also suited to other health practitioners and social prescribers may wish to read about it and learn on our course. And being able to create Culinary Medicine in an online format was quite crucial, I think, to stay relevant because it wasn't possible to run courses in the kitchen.
Vinny: Yeah, we had to, I mean, I didn't have a chance to go out and get any fancy cameras or anything either. So it was all sorts of balancing going on my iPad and we're trying to just do and cook along from the kitchen and stuff. And then we had, luckily had made started making some videos as well. So we're able to share some of the videos and then just discuss, you know, any barriers you may come across with the patients and things like that from a practical food point of view. That was kind of the best that we could do. But what did happen was a lot of people actually would, we would then send them the recipes and they were making the stuff at home and they were taking pictures and putting it up on social media and tagging us and stuff. So that was quite cool.
Elaine: It's so funny. The last, the last social event I went to before lockdown was the opening of our community, our kitchen, our teaching kitchen, which is at Westminster Kingsway. So it's like, yeah, we're open. No, we're closed. And then the next, me and Vinny were teaching the next week online, and he sent me a picture of his setup with his camera, which was his iPad just sellotaped to the side of a crate. It was really high tech. You know, like learning, learning on our feet. But we did it. And we have the feedback, don't we? From even from our online sessions, I think everybody in their own home really appreciated the conversations that we were having. And we had a bit of fun online as well.
Sumi: Yeah. And then from there on, as I said, I can't, I think I've lost count of how many meetings we all had over Zoom to get this course together. We had countless, I've lost count. We had countless meetings on Zoom, project managing, you know, communicating with our amazing team of authors. We've got the leading experts who've been so, you know, passionate and helpful to us about their different areas, working with tech companies. I mean, that's a new thing for us working with tech companies to produce an online course that's, you know, user-friendly. We're still developing that. And it was, there were some slight delays to launching naturally because we were all working in, you know, frontline jobs and really busy with that. So, we did eventually launch our online course in September of 2022. Yeah, so that was at BSLM. So that was a really proud moment for us. We were sponsoring the British Society of Lifestyle Medicine annual conference and we were so delighted with the positive reception received and so many practitioners, you know, came to speak to us to say that, you know, they really loved what we were doing and were so excited to engage with the course. So that was a, you know, major, major, major milestone for us to actually finally launch that course and keep the medical student training going and growing our team. So, you know, we've, Elaine's been a powerhouse, we've got other dietitians who are now running the teaching programmes in the country, other chefs who are now involved with delivering the teaching and we're just having a meeting the other week about what's going to happen in the in the next academic year. It's nice for me, I'm going to be able to teach my old alma mater at UCL, so I'm excited about that. And we've got, you know, more exciting events and CPD opportunities as well. So, we can talk, there's, there's lots, there's lots going on. It's very exciting. So we're still here and we're growing.
Dr Rupy: Elaine, why don't you give us some insight into what people could find on the online course? Because you were obviously involved in reviewing and actually gathering together this group of experts. And you know, there's too many online modules to go through every single one, but maybe some of the key ones that anyone listening to this who is a medical practitioner or perhaps even a nurse would want to engage with.
Elaine: Yeah, sure. So it's specific to different medical conditions, type two diabetes, weight and health, pediatric module. We do one module on health professionals' own personal nutrition. But we also focus on food sustainability, thinking about the environmental impact of food, as well as we have a module on food and nutrition insecurity. One on motivational interviewing. So we have a whole module dedicated to how to have a conversation around food. And we have a whole module dedicated on how to discuss culinary skills within a healthcare setting. And lots of videos. So Vinny's put together some videos, recipe videos. So they are simple things like how to cook vegetables or use up leftover vegetables, knife skills, things that are very, very practical that can help people with confidence in the kitchen at the same time as learning some of the technical nutritional science.
Sumi: And the other thing that was an added add is that we do also offer hybrid learning. So to, if there are online subscribers who wish to come and cook with Chef, we do offer that as well. So Vinny's been running these cook and learn sessions as well at Westminster Kingsway for our online subscribers.
Vinny: And it's not just me as well. So we have a dietitian then comes in for the last 30 minutes via teams, but the way the kitchen's set up and all now, we've got a really cool centre for culinary medicine now here at the college. And you get to use the all the kitchen and great equipment there. We do a bit of cooking, we talk a little bit about a few sustainability issues. And then we get the dietitian to come on, just talk about, you know, the course and any questions you might have about the course and stuff like that, which is quite good. So, yeah, it's, it's, there's a lot of added value for subscribers, you know.
Dr Rupy: I think one of the things with nutrition is that when you dive into this world, you have a lot of quite ingrained beliefs, even amongst the community of medics who, you know, on a self-assessment feel very rational and, you know, analytical, but actually when it comes to it, you know, they are quite, they've put their stake in the ground with a particular dogma within nutrition. And you know, specifically, we can talk about low carbers or paleo first versus plant-based or vegan. And you know, there's a whole myriad of reasons as to why people find those camps. How, and this is a difficult topic because we're trying to like, you know, see both sides and this is what I try and do on this podcast as well. But I imagine this has been a challenge, particularly when it comes to, you know, presenting the evidence base and actually creating an online course that caters for both sides and, you know, takes a balanced view. What's your experience of that been, Elaine, in this particular world?
Elaine: Yeah, that's really, yeah, it's something that comes up time and time again. So there's evidence in both camps. You know, like we are as humans a very adaptable species. So we've survived and thrived on many different diets all over the world. If you look at the blue zones, the Okinawan diet is very different to a diet in Costa Rica, for example. So I think that that we've tried to cut through the noise by presenting in, you know, short bullet points, some of the main points from each dietary intervention, but actually looking at the common ground in the middle. And there's so much common ground. So if you're looking at plant-based vegan diets compared to low-carb diets, the common ground there is is that they're still both very rich in vegetables. They're still, the ones that are beneficial anyway. You know, a real focus on less processed foods and so we can, and I think it's important, and I would love to have a culinary medicine session, low carb and vegan, and just get everybody together and knock their heads together and just go, right, okay, well, you know, let's have a discussion about this because there's no, it's so nuanced. There's no right or wrong. And we have to respect that our opinion on nutrition may be completely different to the patients in front of us. So we're the least important person here really. It depends on what people choose to do with their own diets. And then we can support people through their own choices rather than trying to impose our choices, which either you're going to love as a patient, and that's fine, you might join that way of thinking, or you're going to be completely put off nutrition and never want to engage in that discussion again if we go too militant on this. So we do need to discuss this. I don't think that discussions are as bad as they seem on social media. So social media algorithms really polarise the argument, but this isn't how things are getting played out in real life. You know, real, the real world is different from Twitter, thankfully, I hope.
Sumi: And Elaine, I couldn't agree more. And I think that's what sets Culinary Medicine apart from perhaps other education providers because I mean, I was at, I remember at BSLM, they asked, oh, is this a course for vegans? And I was like, no, absolutely not. So our course is very much about really looking at the evidence and focusing on actually how would you deliver this to a patient? I always say the example is if I'm seeing my my patient who's working nights and days, he's a firm meat eater and he barely has half an hour in the day to prepare food. He's not going, he may not, he unlikely to be changing his entire diet to become a vegan, for example. So I think it's really about looking at the individual in front of you, respecting their choices, their lifestyles, their time, their budget, their culture. There are so many factors. So I'll always say, no, Culinary Medicine is about really looking at your individual patient and their factors and seeing what's right for them. And we're helping the practitioner to actually look at what evidence is there. In fact, we'll have slides saying, this is what we do know, this is what we don't know, and these are the studies. And it really spells out. And that has been super helpful to me because some things I wasn't entirely sure about. At least by doing the course, it's really helping to demystify areas. And again, it's taken away that polarity and sort of forcing your own individual beliefs. And in fact, that's the ethos of healthcare. It's really about where's, where's the evidence? What can we say with confidence? What, what, what does my patient need? I think that's really at the heart of it. So I'm very much keen for that, that ethos to be very clear for Culinary Medicine that we aren't ascribing to a particular diet. We're just looking at what's the right diet and nutrition advice for your patient, who's in front of you. I think that's really key.
