Recipes for Success: Continuing to Celebrate Culinary Medicine’s Growth in Obesity Medicine 

For the third year in a row, we had the joy of planning and implementing a comprehensive, 1.5-day pre-conference workshop at the Obesity Medicine Association (OMA) conference in National Harbor, MD. In a large, hotel conference room with a pop-up teaching kitchen, our interdisciplinary team introduced attendees to the components of teaching kitchens and the field of culinary medicine—including the various types of models and settings, populations served, and interprofessional team members involved. Importantly, we talked about why culinary medicine is so critical—yet still underpracticed—in obesity medicine and how providers in the audience are urged to help build the growing evidence base and share best practices to increase integration across the world. We led attendees through three hands-on cooking demonstrations and cooking activities, including:  

• Practicing knife skills to make salsa, tzatziki, and bean salad 

• Expanding skills to include sautéing aromatics, blooming spices, massaging kale, emulsifying dressings, etc., to make shakshuka, curried chickpeas, kale salad, slaw, and oat bites 

• Enhancing flavors with minimal added sugar through an old fashioned mocktail  

On the second day, a breakout activity included a patient case study for each group with an assignment to create a patient-centered lesson plan to meet the medical and social needs and other preferences of that person. Participants drew from all of the content and skills they learned over the previous 24 hours to collaborate and create these plans. Groups then presented to the audience and voted on the best lesson. As in past workshops, we were so impressed by the groups’ thoughtfulness and teamwork during this activity. And we were thrilled to share spice samples, donated by Penzeys Spices, to the winning team. 

This year, we have increased our evaluation tactics (thanks to help from Columbia student Kyle Schoenborn) by creating a pre- and post-workshop survey, including demographic information as well as self-reported skills, satisfaction, and knowledge questions. We look forward to analyzing these data in the coming weeks and submitting our findings to Obesity Pillars later this year. And we were thankful to the North American Olive Oil Association for providing olive oil bottles we could offer as prizes to randomly selected attendees who completed the pre- and post-workshop surveys.

Nearly one-third of workshop attendees came to OMA’s conference for the first time this year, but we also had several repeat participants in our workshop. They loved and learned so much from our previous workshops and many had already started to take steps to implement in their practice, but they were eager for more training to be ready to expand and try new approaches.

We were also thrilled to release our new culinary medicine cookbook at this year’s conference. The book almost sold out and people lined up for an autograph. We really hope its repository of recipe frameworks, ingredient swap tables, and other resources will help providers across practice setting and clinical expertise to implement patient-centered, practical culinary medicine programs into their practice.  

As always, we offer a huge thank you to the OMA team for your support in planning and implementation, to the fantastic AV team at the Gaylord National Harbor, and to our three motivated interns and volunteers who helped to make this workshop a success. 

We hope to return to OMA’s conference in 2026, continuing to build on this momentum and meet the ever-growing demand for culinary medicine education and resources for clinical integration. In the meantime, contact us if you're interested in learning more about culinary medicine and our support for using it to enhance your practice. 

Workshop leaders with OMA president, Dr. Lydia Alexander