A Randomized Controlled Trial of a Culinary Medicine Intervention in a Virtual Teaching Kitchen for Primary Care Residents.

Abstract

For decades, physicians have received inadequate nutrition education. "Culinary medicine," an emerging pedagogy in medical education, seeks to address this by integrating hands-on cooking to enhance nutrition training. While cohort and cross-sectional studies have demonstrated culinary medicine's efficacy, no randomized controlled trials to date have been conducted among medical trainees. To evaluate the efficacy of a hands-on culinary medicine curriculum compared to didactics-only nutrition education. Two versions of a nutrition education curriculum were developed: a culinary medicine curriculum (intervention) and a didactics-only curriculum (control). The curricula were assessed using a non-inferiority randomized controlled trial design. All active Yale Primary Care residents were randomized to receive either the intervention curriculum or the control curriculum. Residents completed surveys at baseline, immediately post-session, and 8 weeks post-session assessing nutrition knowledge, attitudes regarding providing dietary counseling, and behavior in providing nutrition resources to patients. Nutrition knowledge increased from baseline to immediately post-session in both groups (control (mean percent correct 54% to 94%, P = 0.001), intervention (60% to 92%, P = 0.001)). Compared to the control group, the intervention group gained more confidence in counseling patients on a plant-forward diet (F = 5.44, P = 0.03). Residents in the intervention group reported providing nutrition resources to their patients significantly more frequently at 8 weeks post-session than at baseline (mean frequency per week 0.1 to 0.9, P = 0.002), a change that was not demonstrated among control group participants (0.1 to 0.5, P = 0.35). Both culinary medicine and didactics-only pedagogies can be effective approaches to teaching nutrition. Culinary medicine was found in this trial to be non-inferior to a didactics-only approach and may be superior in improving participants' confidence in providing dietary counseling to patients.