Culinary Medicine: An Emerging Field and Opportunity for Potatoes

This past October, Potatoes USA hosted a culinary medicine immersion for health professionals including physicians, nurse practitioners, and dietitians as well as chefs. The three-hour, invite-only, potato-immersive event, held at the Spud Lab in Denver, explored potato nutrition, scientific research, and culinary medicine applications.

What’s culinary medicine? Culinary medicine is an evidence-based field in medicine that blends the art of food and cooking with the science of medicine. Its objective is to help people reach good personal medical decisions about accessing and eating high-quality meals that help prevent and treat disease and restore well-being. Culinary medicine stands as a cornerstone of the burgeoning “Food as Medicine” movement, which aligns healthcare with food, nutrition, and cooking.

Growing public interest: The White House and other private, public, and nonprofit institutions have committed more than $8 billion in investments to fund initiatives that aim to end hunger and reduce diet-related diseases like diabetes, obesity, and hypertension by 2030. Food as Medicine and culinary medicine are a significant focus of these efforts.

Potatoes USA is using this opportunity to position potatoes as a staple ingredient in a healthy eating pattern that can help achieve the goals of this initiative, making potatoes an early adopter of the culinary medicine movement.

Promoting potatoes: The culinary medicine immersion involved three hours of exploring the science of potato nutrition and how potatoes fit into conversations with patients of diverse backgrounds and various health conditions. Participants also got into the kitchen with Potatoes USA chefs where they shared practical ways to integrate discussions around the power of the potato into their healthcare practices, empowering them to guide their patients toward healthier choices.

Participation: For the 10 attendees, it was a chance for participants to expand their knowledge—and challenge any misconceptions—about potato nutrition. For example, one participant entered with a negative perception of dehydrated potatoes. However, she learned during the immersion that they are similar in nutrition to whole potatoes, and she was excited to suggest them to her patients as a quick, accessible option to add more vegetables to their diet.

Next steps: Potatoes USA is building a website page for culinary medicine that will provide resources for health professionals to provide to their patients. Potatoes USA will also host a second culinary medicine immersion in the spring.