How Can Health and Wellness Promotion Strategies Which Include Nutrition Education alongside Hands-On Cooking Be Organized, Evaluated, and Optimized for Maximal Impact

Dear Colleagues,

Diet-related diseases account for the majority of deaths in the US and an increasing proportion of morbidity and mortality worldwide. Increasing rates of obesity, diabetes, food and nutrition insecurity pose challenges to health authorities and governments globally. Existing strategies focusing primarily on disease diagnosis and treatment are insufficient.

In May 2022 the US House of Representatives passed the bipartisan Resolution 1118 (https://www.congress.gov/bill/117th-congress/house-resolution/1118/text) calling for medical schools, graduate medical education programs, and other professional training programs to provide meaningful physician and health professional education on nutrition and diet, and demonstrate competencies in advising patients about enhanced food choices, or risk the discontinuation of $10.3 billion in federal funding for the training of future health professionals. In October 2022, the White House National Strategy on Hunger, Nutrition and Health set the bold strategy to end hunger and increase healthy eating and physical activity by 2030, so that fewer Americans experience diet-related diseases such as diabetes, obesity, and hypertension.

In October 2022, the Teaching Kitchen Research Conference (https://tkresearchconference.org) showcased the rapid growth of multidisciplinary programs to respond to these calls. Individuals, families, and communities need to be able to afford, access, and learn to select and prepare delicious and nutritious foods and receive evidence-based, culturally sensitive guidance about diet and lifestyle. Proponents of Teaching Kitchens, Culinary Medicine, Culinary Nutrition, Lifestyle Medicine, Integrative Medicine, Food as Medicine, and Whole Person Health Programs have developed strategies which include nutrition education alongside hands-on cooking instruction, often in association with evidence-based instruction in lifestyle, e.g., movement, exercise, and sleep; mindfulness training; motivational interviewing, health coaching, and additional behaviour change strategies. Teaching kitchens are increasingly being built as educational classrooms and translational research laboratories to deliver this evidence-based instruction across a range of populations and settings worldwide.

For this Special Issue, we invite manuscripts that formally describe, contrast, and evaluate the impact of health and wellness promotion strategies which include nutrition education alongside hands-on cooking on (a) health risk behaviours; (b) clinical outcomes; (c) biomarkers; (d) costs; (e) access to nutritious foods; and (f) the training of future health professionals.

We welcome submissions that (a) provide evidence that these programs show behavioural, clinical and/or educational impact; (b) highlight and recommend strategies to improve programming; (c) suggest or demonstrate the financial impact, return on investment, and financial sustainability of these programs; (d) provide evidence of impact for at-risk populations; (e) summarize relevant data tracking tools to be used across comparable studies; (f) recommend future wellness care team “ensembles” and training programs; (g) describe relevant competencies and credentialing requirements for those providing such programs.

For a list of additional manuscript topics relevant to this Special Series, see LINK BELOW.

https://res.mdpi.com/data/nutrients_special-issue_topics.docx.pdf

Dr. David Miles Eisenberg
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the Special Issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-anonymized peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Nutrients is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2900 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.