Appetites: Learning to cook better, at the clinic

It's no secret that food and health are linked. Diseases as varied as obesity, heart disease and cancer are all linked to the food we eat. And increasingly, medical professionals are integrating food and nutrition information into their patients' wellness plans.

Dara Moskowitz Grumdahl visited the Mayo Clinic Healthy Living Program for her latest article in "Mpls.St.Paul Magazine." Patients who'll go there could be recovering from an illness or a surgery, for example, and will learn how to cook food to help them recover and live a healthier life.

Those who enter the program will be able to work with both chefs and doctors from Mayo, Grumdahl said, to learn about what foods are better and how they'll work for each patient.

But that type of care goes past just what's happening at Mayo. Grumdahl said many other health care systems are starting to invest in teaching patients because they're realizing they don't exactly know how to cook well.

"You're not going to have a healthy population that's just running through the drive-thru," Grumdahl said. "You have to get into cooking, and if medicine wants to move some of those basic diseases that are afflicting this country, people are going to have to learn to cook."

Listen to the full conversation with Grumdahl by using the audio player above.

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