The FMUSP, in partnership with FRUTO – a platform of engagement and mobilization aimed at nutrition and its challenges and solutions – , offers, throughout October, the optative discipline of Culinary Medicine, aimed at Medical undergraduate students. FMUSP teachers, FRUTO professionals and gastronomical chefs have given classes and workshops which approach the impact of nutrition on patients’ health.

“Courses in this format have been being popularizing around the world and we have seen doctors who cook are the best transmitters of healthy habits to their patients. Besides approximating the doctor to the topic, the idea is to inspire them to cook. Chronic diseases are highly prevalent in our country and are related to life habits, including nutrition. On the other hand, the healthy food is seen as a source of disease prevention”, states Prof. Thaís Mauad, of the Pathology Department of FMUSP and one of the responsible for the discipline.

To focus on the relation of men and food, to bring knowledge and cooking techniques, to approach the processing of food commodities through nutrition, to show recipes and nutritional and medicinal qualities of food are some of the goals of the discipline. On the program, topics such as the use of salt, sugar, fat and food intolerances are approached. In each class, the students put their knowledge to practice with a workshop taught by invited experts. By the end, the discussion is aimed at a clinical case.

The discipline counts with the support of the ATÁ Institute, which supports the initiative. The FRUTO, idealized by Alex Atala and Felipe Ribenboim, aims to resignify the food and its utilization, guided by aspects of knowledge of food, ingredients, cultural context and cultural relations which interact with the theme.

Besides the aspect of the importance of healthy nutrition and prevention and combat of diseases, the discipline also seeks to offer the undergraduate students of the Medicine course of FMUSP an approximation with nature and, thus, a better social-environmental conscience.