Email a Friend
Print Article
Culinary Medicine: Can Certain Foods Make You Healthier?
Imagine preventing breast cancer by eating broccoli and kalamata olive pizza, avoiding Alzheimer's by skipping the turnip greens, and holding off heart disease with an ounce of dark chocolate and a handful of almonds every day.
Sounds yummy, yes?
Eating your way to better health is a belief that echoes through the centuries, from the green tea of China to Hippocrates' advice to "let food be your medicine, and medicine be your food." Its most recent form comes in best-sellers like ChefMD's Big Book of Culinary Medicine by John La Puma, MD.
Like La Puma's other books -- he co-wrote Cooking the RealAge Way and The RealAge Diet -- culinary medicine promises that eating healthy foods can slow the effects of aging, prevent disease, and boost overall health.
Along with the usual super foods -- almonds, blueberries, salmon, and the like -- La Puma includes such gourmet fare as Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese, red wine, and the occasional indulgence of grass-fed beef.
Will preparing healthy recipes such as a Warm Beef Tenderloin Salad With Mango and Avocado keep the doctor away?
Maybe, nutritionists say. But they caution against focusing on any single ingredient.
"I think of food as nourishing and pleasurable, and I like to leave medicine to the pharmaceutical industry," says Marion Nestle, PhD, MPH, a professor of nutrition and food studies at New York University and the author of What to Eat. "But eating a reasonable diet is one of the best things people can do for their health."
Culinary Medicine: Healthy Foods = Healthy You?
La Puma was an internist and medical ethicist before he enrolled in culinary school to learn to prepare healthy foods in an appealing way. He worked for a time in the kitchens of Chicago chef Rick Bayless, known for his embrace of "sustainably" grown food and authentic Mexican food.
Now La Puma is medical director of the Santa Barbara Institute for Medical Nutrition and Healthy Weight. He promotes culinary medicine through appearances on Lifetime Television's Health Corner and on his web sites, chefmd.com and drjohnlapuma.com.
"You have restaurant-quality food that helps to prevent disease," La Puma says. "This is a fresh approach because of the soundness of the science and the flavorfulness of the food."
By offering healthy food that's also tasty, in recipes that come together in 30 minutes or less with no more than 10 ingredients, La Puma hopes to encourage cooking at home. That will cut down on consumption of highly processed foods and increase the intake of whole foods higher in nutrients.
The healthy recipes are also low in calories, to help keep weight in line and reduce the risk of cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and stroke. That advice follows mainstream medical thinking, as public health workers have increasingly focused on reducing obesity rates to help prevent chronic disease.
So far, so good, nutritionists say. But where's the exercise, equally key to good health and maintaining optimal weight?
Culinary medicine focuses on food, not fitness. But it does include an eight-week plan for optimal health that counsels being active at least six days a week, for 30 minutes.
"I don't know anyone who would separate those two," La Puma says. "If exercise as a regime had a pharmaceutical name, it would be penicillin."
del.icio.us
Functional Foods: Types and Benefits
Functional foods contain additives that go above and beyond meeting your basic nutritional needs.
