~Basil

By Dr. Mercola

One of the easiest and best ways to improve your health and avoid disease is to eat real food; cooking your meals from scratch using whole ingredients, ideally organic, to avoid chemical additives and contaminants like pesticides.

Sadly, doctors have been notoriously clueless about nutrition as a way to improve health. On average, medical students in the U.S. receive less than 24 hours of nutrition instruction.1 But that may be slowly changing.

I would also add that doctors who grow their own food and understand regenerative agriculture and the similarities between human health also have a distinct advantage.

Medical School Teaches Doctors How to Cook

Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans has implemented a radically different curriculum, teaching their medical students not only about nutrition in general, but also the practical aspects of cooking with real ingredients.

As noted by Dr. Timothy Harlan, executive director at the Goldring Center for Culinary Medicine at Tulane:2

“We know from the literature that when people go home and start cooking from real ingredients for themselves that their health improves. We also know that they don’t really know how to do that.”

The goal is for Tulane-educated doctors to have the necessary skills to actually teach their patients what to cook, how to cook it, and why. Other medical schools are also following suit.

The curriculum, which was developed with the College of Culinary Arts at Johnson & Wales University, has also been bought by 16 other medical schools across the country.

Learning How to Cook from Scratch Is a Basic Survival Skill

As noted by Dr. Michael Greger, founder of NutritionFacts.org,3 over the past few decades Americans have been eating increasingly fewer meals at home, favoring fast food restaurants when on the go.

The advent of processed food also dramatically altered how people cook at home, and today, many lack the basic know-how of how to cook withunprocessed ingredients.

Dr. Greger cites a study4 showing that 25 percent of men had no cooking skills whatsoever, beyond heating something up in a microwave. It’s no wonder then that so many people struggle with weight and health issues, as your diet can easily make or break your health. It’s absolutely foundational.

“Researchers in Taiwan recently found that in a group of elderly Taiwanese people, those who cooked their own food were not only healthier, but also lived longer,”5 Dr. Greger writes.

“In a 10 year study, highlighted in my video, ‘Cooking to Live Longer,’ those who cooked most frequently had only 59 percent of the mortality risk.

This took into account the exercise people got grocery shopping, physical function, and chewing ability. So why did they live longer? Those that cooked typically ate a more nutritious diet with a higher consumption of vegetables …”

As a general rule, home-cooked meals are healthier, provided you cook with real foods and don’t just heat up processed fare.

Knowing how to cook from scratch is so important, the author of the book “Something from the Oven” refers to it as a modern day survival skill. You simply cannot rely on food manufacturers to provide you with a healthy diet.

People Enjoy Healthier Foods When They Grow and/or Cook It Themselves

Indeed, a processed food diet is a surefire way to increase your chances of unwanted weight gain and chronic diseases associated with insulin and leptin resistance, courtesy of the excess fructose and lack of healthy fats and fiber in processed foods.

Not to mention the potential 10,000 food additives, most of which have never been properly tested for long-term safety. Interestingly, research6 reveals that people also tend to enjoy healthier foods when they make it themselves, compared to when it’s prepared by others.

The authors suggest these findings could be used to create more effective health campaigns, such as programs promoting “home food preparation by, for example, providing families with simple but healthy recipes …”
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