Fellowship essay:
When
explaining my love of cooking to others, my mother always said it was because
foodies make the best chefs. I would simply laugh in agreement. From a young
age, I was no stranger to the kitchen; in a household that among other things
emphasized home cooking and healthy eating, the kitchen was a hub of activity
before meals. At the time, I was always lifting the lids off the bubbling pots
to peer inside and sneak a whiff. As I grew older, I graduated from being the
occasional test-taster to a dishwasher and helper, and finally a full-fledged
cook. I learned to balance flavors, colors, and textures to create meals that
looked and tasted good. Most of all, I made sure that the meals were good in
terms of nutrition. When it came to cooking, my personal mantra was ‘delicious
and nutritious.’ Through cooking, I discovered a world of possibility.
As
my culinary ability grew, so did my passion for medicine, inspired by my visits
to my pediatrician as a child. Despite the painful vaccines and my subsequent
bouts of crying, I remembered the sympathy and kindness of my physician as she
directed my attention to the shiny new Looney Tunes Band-Aids covering my
‘boo-boos.’ I knew then that I wanted to one
day care for and comfort others as my pediatrician had for me. Though
naïve, this aspiration remained even as the frequency of visits to my
pediatrician waned, matured by my shadowing experience. While I witnessed the
easy rapport the pediatric cardiologist established with his patients and their
parents, I also became acquainted with the complexities he faced, such as
balancing quality of care with affordable costs for an uninsured patient. These
challenges did not daunt me, but rather have heightened my passion for
medicine.
This
summer while in China volunteering with a NGO as a Loewenstern Fellow, I
developed a morning routine of reading news from my NPR app while riding the
subway to work. One morning, my entire outlook was transformed by a single
headline: ‘A Dose Of Culinary Medicine Sends Med Students To The Kitchen.’
Perhaps just an interesting news flash to some, this was earth-shattering to
me, as it was my first time learning of a direct junction between my two
greatest passions, medicine and cooking. Up until then, I had never seriously
considered the integration of cooking and medicine, only joking with friends
and family that I would open a bakery if medical school did not work out. Now,
my two worlds were colliding, but in the best way possible.
According
to the Goldring Center for Culinary Medicine, culinary medicine ‘is the
utilization of a unique combination of nutrition and culinary knowledge to
assist patients in achieving and maintaining optimal health.’ Looking back, I
had already unknowingly touched on various aspects of culinary medicine. My
sophomore year, I became the food representative of my residential college
Jones, responsible for serving as a liaison between the servery and the
students. However, conversations with my fellow Jonesians soon revealed a lack
of cooking experience, a major hindrance for those soon to be moving off
campus, and off the meal plan. Seeing a chance to improve the situation through
my position, I hosted a salad-making and tasting study break. Selecting an
array of easily-prepared vegetarian- and omnivore-friendly salads, I hoped the
event would help dispel the notion that cooking was hard. With a number of
helping hands making the salads, and many more helping mouths eating them, the
event was a success.
Not
one to be complacent, I sought ways to broaden the scope of my efforts to all
of Rice campus and perhaps even beyond. After being introduced to public health
through my Global Health Technologies minor, I was eager to see how it fit in
the context of medicine. This is what motivated me to co-lead a new Alternative
Spring Break (ASB) trip to an urban farm in Fifth Ward, a prominent food desert
in Houston with only one full-service grocery store in the entire five square
mile area. Upon becoming aware of the jarring disparity between Rice, the
fourth healthiest college, and the city to which it belonged, Houston--once
dubbed “America’s Fattest City”--I was determined to explore the issue of food
sustainability and food accessibility with fellow Rice students while also
giving back to the Houston community through service. For me, the trip
highlighted the complexities of addressing an individual’s, and by extension a
community’s, lifestyle choices. When we offered to pick a salad mix for a lady
who came by looking for something to eat, she merely said dismissively ‘I don’t
eat salad.’ However, the produce became much more readily accepted by the
community members when the leafy greens became the toppings for pizzas made
fresh on the farm. These moments made me realize that availability does not
equal accessibility. In my mind, this is where culinary medicine fits in. While dietary habits are only one component
of the many health determinants of wellbeing, it is still an important one.
Rather than simply telling a patient to eat more fruits and vegetables, a
physician should be able to personalize this advice to help the patient achieve
it.
After
reading and re-reading the NPR article, I eagerly researched available
opportunities to study culinary medicine alongside the standard medical curriculum.
Unfortunately, such training is sparse; as mentioned in the article, only about
a fourth of US medical schools offer the 25 hours of nutrition training
recommended by the National Academy of Science, much less a culinary medicine
program. Although initially disappointing, the situation was ultimately an
opportunity. Over a spicy dinner of hotpot with a staff member of the Rice
Center for Civic Leadership and my Loewenstern peers, the conversation turned
to the Watson Fellowship as she told us about it. Immediately interested, I began
pondering what I would spend a year doing. Now, everything fell into place. As
a Watson Fellow, I could not only learn culinary medicine, but also compare and
contrast practices among different communities and countries. I also look
forward to being able to share this with my fellow medical students, just as I
already share my culinary skills with others. Through the Watson, I can finally
integrate my two passions in order to better serve others. My mother says
foodies make the best chefs, but perhaps they make the best physicians as well.
Project
proposal:
I
have the Loewenstern Fellowship to thank for even envisioning this as an
extension of my abroad experience. During my time in China, conversations would
regularly touch upon the various dishes on the table and their respective
ingredients—how they were well-suited for the time of year, or for a specific
condition. These snippets of wisdom were not new to me, as I had heard them
growing up. While I did not always believe everything I was told, there were
some I deemed to have merit. Nevertheless, I have yet to probe the scientific
basis of these claims. While in Anlong village, I was fascinated by the large,
full-color posters in almost every household designating beneficial and
detrimental food pairings, each with a brief justification. I would like to
learn about this in a more structured setting by taking a 3 month course at the
Chengdu University of Traditional Chinese Medicine. I would then take a step
back out of the medicinal focus of food and go to France for 3 months to
understand the cuisine there. I think there is much to be learned from a
culture that maintains its traditional roots and fresh ingredients, a contrast
from the American cuisine—which has no one ‘staple diet’ but is quite literally
a global melting pot. More than just learning skills in the kitchen, I hope to
also better understand the sociocultural structures that are inherent to
France’s cuisine. For example, while in France with my family on vacation, I
remember being especially impressed by the availability of fresh produce, which
were extensions to ordinary corner stores. I hope to be able to identify
concepts that can be applied to the States as well. I would then spend the next
3 months in India to continue the journey of culinary medicine. I would then
study at the Kerala Ayurveda Academy to learn Ayurvedic cooking and understand
the concept of food as medicine through this field. For my last 3 months, I would
like to round out the experience with nutrition courses at the University of
Surrey under the Department of Nutritional Sciences.
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