Program teaches ‘Food As Medicine’ to medical students

MIAMI – South Florida has been chosen as a test site for an innovative program for medical students.

An organization called ‘Common Threads’ is teaching pediatric and family health medical students about the importance of culinary medicine through its ‘Cooking Up Health’ program.

“So they’ll learn about the connection between nutrition and chronic disease but also cook hands-on recipes so they have the experience so they can say ‘yes, you should eat like this, and here are some of my favorite recipes and here are a couple of tips and tricks to make it go a little faster for you’,” said Stephanie Folkens with Common Threads.

Data has shown that only 29 percent of medical schools in the U.S. offer the recommended 25 hours of nutrition education, however, just 14 percent of practicing physicians feel adequately trained in nutrition counseling.

And if you’re trying to meet your health and fitness goals, drinking coffee just might help!

That’s according to a recent study published in the New England Journal of Medicine which examined the health effects of coffee consumption.

The study found that coffee has a striking impact on physical activity levels, causing people to move more and, as a result, take, on average, 1,000 extra steps a day.

On the downside, people lost about 36 minutes of sleep on days when they drank coffee, and the more coffee they drank, the less they slept.

Along with disrupting sleep coffee may cause some heart palpitations.