Culinary medicine specialist Nate Wood, MD, RES '22, FEL '24, MHS ’24, says, “Ditch the guilt; all foods fit.” That is, as long as the scales tip toward healthy food choices. Great news!
Wood loves food—really loves food. Having grown up in a family that prioritized healthy eating—with meals incorporating homegrown vegetables, whole foods, and homemade baked goods—it is not surprising that he took time off to attend culinary school as a medical student and has chosen a career path that blends cooking, nutrition, and health.
Wood completed his primary care residency and medical education fellowship at Yale School of Medicine (YSM), along with an MHS, and has stayed on, establishing himself in the field of culinary medicine. At Yale, Wood is an assistant professor of medicine, a primary care physician, founding director of culinary medicine and the Irving and Alice Brown Teaching Kitchen, and co-director of the internal medicine residency programs’ Weight Management Clinic. In addition, he was recently appointed leader of a new nutrition thread at YSM.
Fondest memory at YSM
Wood’s fondest memory of his time as a YSM trainee was an experience at the start of his fellowship, when he had an opportunity to develop a curriculum on the connection between diet and cardiovascular disease. He says, “After my first time teaching it, I remember thinking, ‘This is what I was born to do … to invest time, energy, and passion in teaching people about the connection between what they eat and their health.’ That was super cool.”
Today Wood enjoys all opportunities to lecture, whether before medical students or residents or at conferences or company retreats. He strives to make lectures fun and interactive and delights in seeing “aha-moment” expressions on learners’ faces.
His audiences learn that smart eating should include a preponderance of vegetables and fruits, whole grains, nuts and seeds, and some lean meat, eggs, beans, or other protein. Occasional treats are fine. “I’m very pro ‘get rid of the guilt.’ There is no food that’s off limits. It’s all about the overall quality of the diet.”
Surprising observations
During his culinary medicine journey, Wood has come across a couple of surprising things. He says with amusement, “Doctors are not good cooks.” But he notes that surgical residents have very good knife skills.
Additionally, he has found it interesting that medical students, residents, and patients all ask the same questions; residents do not necessarily have greater nutrition knowledge. He says, “Everyone asks, ‘What’s the deal with alternative milks, plant-based meats, sugar substitutes? Are they OK? Is organic worth it? How much protein do we really need?’”
Building on momentum at Yale
Interest in culinary medicine at Yale and in the field overall has grown significantly over the past two and a half years. The Teaching Kitchen, which launched in June 2023 at a clinic on Yale New Haven Health System’s North Haven campus, now holds six classes per week for patients, with two chef-dietitian instructors.
“The classes are packed,” says Wood. “We have a four-month waitlist and are looking to expand our team and reach further.” Last year alone, the kitchen taught 2,200 patients in more than 200 classes.
Wood has also expanded the number and reach of his culinary medicine training classes. He initially taught only PA students but now also teaches primary care, pediatrics, surgery, urology, and internal medicine residents, as well as medical students.
Furthering the momentum will be a new nutrition thread, led by Wood, that YSM will be launching in July. He says, “We’re going to be teaching medical students longitudinally, throughout their four years, about the impact of diet and lifestyle on disease.”
In his spare time, Wood is writing a book, Food, Figured Out, due out in 2027. He says, “I am writing the book because I feel like there’s not enough time for me to explain all that I would like to during my visits with patients as a primary care doctor. It will serve as a resource on how to grocery shop, where to find healthy recipes, how to store food, and how to quickly cook healthy things, and will cover nutrition science and understanding food as more than medicine.”
National interest in culinary medicine
Wood believes that several forces have been boosting the field of culinary medicine, an integral part of lifestyle medicine, over the past decade. These include lifestyle medicine’s astronomical growth, the current administration’s interest in disease prevention and investing in health-promoting initiatives, such as those focused on improving nutrition, and the growing field of longevity medicine.
Wood notes, “New teaching kitchens are popping up, and many people who have teaching kitchens are reaching out to us for advice. It really is catching on quickly.”
Moreover, research that Wood and his collaborators are doing—focused on patient outcomes and curriculum development and testing—is moving the field forward. He is eager to expand research efforts. A current project involves analyzing national datasets to determine whether there is a connection between home cooking and cardiometabolic outcomes. Wood is also part of a national consortium that is establishing culinary medicine competencies. In an upcoming study, he and his colleagues plan to track the outcomes over time of patients who visit the Teaching Kitchen and enroll in the study.
Challenges and opportunities
One of the biggest challenges in the culinary medicine field in the U.S., according to Wood, is funding. But he notes, “We’re very lucky at Yale to have support from philanthropy and Yale New Haven Health. The administration has been really receptive to what we are doing.”
As for opportunities, he says, “A lot of the teaching kitchens nationally are in community centers or schools. A big opportunity is to have more teaching kitchens in hospitals, in clinics. Then you can get health care professionals teaching the classes and people can easily be referred; they can go to a teaching kitchen as a medical appointment.”
Tonight’s dinner menu
What should you prepare for dinner tonight? Wood suggests, “Maybe southern succotash with corn and beans and veggies and … olive oil and some spices. And maybe a nice piece of salmon on top. A little bit of mixed fruit on the side, perhaps with a dollop of yogurt or a sprig of mint.”
Quality and sustainability reign. Says Wood, “The ethos of my career is to help people enjoy food in a healthy way.”