Jenny and I came together in 2015 through serendipitous circumstances and a shared desire to connect food, food systems, cooking and nutrition with future healthcare professionals.  Jenny’s many years as a professional chef also offering cooking demos and classes in the community revealed that in the food world, there was often a disconnect related to the health impacts of food. Her work in food justice and community food advocacy made it clear that cooking can be a powerful public health-promoting strategy, and she went on to earn a Master’s in Public Health-Nutrition. 

My early years in medical training and practice quickly revealed the near-total lack of attention to food, dietary quality and nutrition in my field. Knowing from my own intuition, personal experience and various influences in my life that food was a key factor in the health-disease continuum, I happened into a conference which opened the door to a sector of healthcare making these connections. Soon thereafter, I met Jenny and we quickly realized that we represented the dichotomous sides of this well-known statement by Wendell Berry:

“People are fed by the food industry, which pays no attention to health, and are treated by the health industry, which pays no attention to food.”

Informed by Jenny’s experience and development of the class she taught for undergraduate students at the University of MN (Cooking on a Student’s Budget), and inspiration from medical student cooking class examples I learned about at the HKHL conference, we created a pilot class called Food Matters for Doctors for U of MN medical students. In contrast to the lack of interest from medical school leadership, there was immense interest from medical students. Over 70 students applied for the 20 spots we had available for this no-credit, 6-week, evening class involving hands-on cooking, practical and clinically-oriented nutrition concepts and exploration of food systems. Findings from this pilot course were published in Minnesota Medicine in 2016.

Thanks to Dr. Mary Jo Kreitzer’s visionary leadership, the pilot course was invited to become an interprofessional class hosted by the Bakken Center for Spirituality and Healing, running 1-2 sessions every semester since Fall 2016. In 2018 we started developing our course materials into a Continuing Education version, and piloted that with Sawtooth Mountain Clinic in Grand Marais, MN and a team from Northpoint Health and Wellness in Minneapolis MN. The CE/CME course is open to any health professional and continues to draw great interest from a range of disciplines in an increasingly complex socio-politically-influenced food and healthcare landscape.

Jenny and I continue to partner, though now living in different states. You can find her offerings at her website: Transforming the Table