Preparing Healthy, Quick, and Cheap Meals: Wood Provides Students with Tips

October 14 likely was the first time an egg scramble with onions, green bell peppers, and Calabrian chiles was cooked in a microwave in the Cushing Whitney Medical Library’s team-based learning room. Instructor of Medicine (General Medicine) and Chef Nate Wood, MD, MHS, demonstrated how to prepare this easy, healthy, inexpensive recipe to a roomful of Yale School of Medicine (YSM) MD and Physician Associate students during a lunchtime workshop—part of a three-session series focused on preparing healthy, simple, inexpensive meals.

Surveys that YSM conducted over the past year reflected that a significant number of YSM students feel they do not have enough time to shop for groceries or prepare food and/or are unfamiliar with ways to prepare low-cost, nutritious meals. In addition to this nutrition insecurity, many students also noted the high cost of food, especially takeout meals, which can significantly strain student budgets.

These survey results led Deputy Dean for Education and Harold W. Jockers Professor of Medical Education Jessica Illuzzi, MD, MS, to suggest that the YSM Office of Student Affairs coordinate with Wood and two YSM student groups— Food is Medicine and the Food Insecurity Student Taskforce (FITF)—to organize workshops intended to educate students on food and nutrition, both for their own health, and the health of their future patients. Director of Student Programs Deanna Calvert, along with Food is Medicine leaders Katrina Dietsche and Ana Greenberg and FITF leaders Bassel Shanab, Cabe Carrillo, Morgan Brinker, and George Sun planned the workshops with Wood, who Shanab appreciatively noted put a “remarkable amount of work” into the sessions. In addition, fourth year medical student Rachel Levinson worked with Wood to develop a research study to evaluate the effectiveness of the series.

The titles of the three workshops, which Wood structured to be practical, accessible, and interactive, were:

Strategies for Cheap, Healthy Grocery Shopping & Meal Planning (September 26)

Strategies for Quick, Healthy Cooking (October 14)

Strategies for Making Delicious, Healthy Eating a Habit (November 18)

Dietsche and Greenberg believe the sessions have been important because “Learning to cook and manage time in the kitchen are not skills everyone has had the opportunity to learn. Especially in a population of students who spend much of their lives tucked away studying, it is easy to disregard healthy habits like a well-cooked meal.” Dietsche continues, “These sessions allow us to take some time, with a community, and learn essential skills to make the kitchen a less overwhelming place. The kitchen skills taught in these classes open all kinds of doors to creating nutrient-dense and (more importantly) enjoyable meals.”

Shanab agrees with these benefits, additionally pointing to food insecurity among YSM students for why these workshops have been so important.

Noting that the lack of nutrition knowledge and culinary skills contribute to students’ often poor eating habits in school, Wood began the series by focusing on Healthy Eating Plate, describing the six components of a well-balanced, health-promoting meal, and also provided a tutorial on reading the nutrition facts and ingredients lists on food labels.

After sharing tips on how to make meals, desserts, and snacks more health-promoting, such as adding plants and replacing refined grains with whole grains among others, he led an interactive exercise in which students recommended modifications to chicken coconut curry and fudgy chocolate-chocolate chip brownies recipes. The students proposed several ideas, including using vegetable oil rather than butter in baking. (Wood shared that if a recipe calls for melted butter, you can often substitute oil, but noted the swap does not work for recipes that call for room-temperature butter.)

Recognizing time and money are limited resources for the students, Wood provided numerous simple tips for shopping, cooking, and cleaning efficiently and inexpensively, including how to save money at the grocery store (e.g., buy the store brand for staples, look at the unit price, buy in season when able, etc.), recommended an efficient kitchen layout—Wood showed a photo of the kitchen in his own apartment, and shared thoughts on essential kitchen equipment, pointing out simultaneously that you do not need many items and that they are investments that will last a long time.

Suggestions for saving time cooking included buying fresh, pre-prepared and frozen, pre-cut ingredients, as well as canned ingredients. Some other simple tips, among the many he shared, were: cook in bulk and freeze leftovers, make sheet pan and one-pot meals, and cook microwave meals, such as the egg scramble he demonstrated. Knowing that some YSM students live in spaces that lack a stove and oven, but all have access to a microwave, Wood wanted especially to emphasize that meals cooked in the microwave can be just as nutritious as meals cooked in a traditional oven or stove. In addition to the egg scramble, he shared a number of other easy microwave meal ideas, including a baked sweet potato with canned vegetarian chili and spaghetti squash with marinara sauce.

Dietsche said that one of her favorite tips was that “frozen fruits and vegetables are just as healthy if not healthier than their fresh counterparts.” She explained she learned that “When produce are frozen they are picked at the peak of ripeness and immediately frozen to maintain their nutrient density. Buying and cooking with frozen produce is one of the easiest ways to save time and money and prevent food waste!”

Illuzzi is thrilled these sessions are happening, noting “Not only is Dr. Wood leading the effort in improving education about nutrition in our curriculum and its impact on human health and physiology, but he is also helping our students develop practical skills in preparing low-cost, nutritious meals, a critical skill for promoting health for our patients, our communities, and ourselves.”

Dietsche echoed this point. Beyond how the workshops help students directly, she shared that she leaves the sessions “with more language for talking about nutritional interventions with patients. For example, learning how to make small changes in a patient’s favorite food, or still having suggestions for nutrient dense meals if a patient only has a limited kitchen, are integral ways to adapt recommendations to the specific patient I’m seeing.” She added that the workshops “remind me how much joy can be found in food! No dietary advice can be sustained if it’s not enjoyable. When I learn new ways to care for myself, I inherently learn better ways to counsel unique needs in each of my patients.”

Wood also previewed a fourth, bonus session, “Food & Nutrition Insecurity and Culinary Medicine,” which he will lead in the Irving and Alice and Brown Teaching Kitchen at Yale New Haven Health in the first quarter of 2025.