Season 1, episode 7: cooking for the health of it

Transcript

Stephanie: (00:02)
Hey listeners, I have a favor to ask of you. I have been thinking about how awesome moms and dads are and the impact they have on us in the kitchen, and I want to hear from you about the influence your mom or dad or both had on you in the kitchen. You can record your story in GarageBand or another audio app or just as a simple voice memo on your phone. Or if you want to write it down, that works too. Email your stories to stephanie@kiddoscook.com and you could be featured in an upcoming podcast episode or another project. Now, on to the show

Conner: (00:43)
Welcome to Kiddos in the Kitchen, a podcast hosted by my mom.

Stephanie: (00:52)
Dr. Rani Polak was in the middle of his medical school training when he decided to take a break to learn a very different skill.

Dr. Rani Polak: (01:00)
I think that during my medical training I was missing creativity. I was mostly learning protocols, which is what physicians need to do, I understand that, but I wasn't sure it was the right field for me. So I took a gap and I went to learn something really creative. I learned to be a chef, but then during my culinary training I understood the stronger relationship between food and health. And then I realized that I can bring all that to medicine. And then I went back to medical school. Actually I was accepted again, and since then I am combining between the field of culinary and medicine. Actually this is the name of the field, culinary medicine.

Stephanie: (01:48)
Dr. Polak has found a way to blend his two very specialized educations into one career. He is the Program Director of the CHEF Coaching program. CHEF stands for Culinary Healthcare Education Fundamentals at The Institute of Lifestyle Medicine at Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital in Boston, and the CHEF program at the Center of Lifestyle Medicine at Sheba Medical Center in Tel Aviv. He is also a part-time assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, and he's on a mission to get people to cook at home more.

Stephanie: (02:23)
Welcome to Kiddos in the Kitchen, a podcast about helping busy adults find the inspiration and information they need to teach the kids in their lives how to cook. I'm your host, Stephanie Conner, and today we're going to talk about the impact of cooking on our health.

Stephanie: (02:46)
The phrase culinary medicine was new to me, but I loved it. It speaks directly to the impact that food has on our health, and that's what I asked Dr. Polak to share more about. What are the health benefits of cooking at home?

Dr. Rani Polak: (03:00)
The impact of food on health is huge. If you look on what physicians and other healthcare professionals think about the impact of food, most of us believe that food is mostly related to prevention. Most of us know that food might prevent disease. Food might prevent our obesity. Healthy nutrition might prevent diabetes, heart disease. But today, in the last decade, we know more that food can also help to maintain disease and also to reverse disease. People who, for example, have diabetes and start to eat healthy, they can reverse their disease.

Stephanie: (03:41)
You've used the word healthy a couple of times, and I feel like I might have an idea of what healthy means, and it might be different than somebody listening to this, what it means to them. And so I want to frame it for the purposes of the rest of our conversation. When you say healthy, what does that mean to you?

Dr. Rani Polak: (04:00)
That's a great question. I would say that because the stock is about culinary medicine and about cooking, we have more and more research that shows that if you cook food at home, it's more healthy than if you eat it outside. I would say that the first level of healthy related to this discussion is anything you cook at home and not buy outside. And if you want to go one level deeper, let's say I would like to cook at home, what should I cook? That's a very important question, and as you probably know, there are tons of discussions about the most healthy diet, whether it's a Mediterranean diet, whether it's a vegan diet. There are many discussions about various diets. What many people miss is that the focus of each of these diets is plant-based food. The focus of vegan diet is, of course, plant-based food. The focus of Mediterranean diet is plant-based food, and if you want to take one message from this discussion, I would say cook more at home, mostly plant.

Stephanie: (05:12)
When we talk about that first level, that research shows that it's healthier to cook at home than getting food outside. Do we attribute that largely to the fact that you're getting fresher foods and less processed things when you cook, or is it the oils that are used in restaurants and sodium in restaurants, or what is it that we think is driving some of that? Because, I mean, I can cook some unhealthy things at home if I want to.

Dr. Rani Polak: (05:34)
The research on home cooking is really in its preliminary stage and we have much more information about the specific component, the specific food items rather than the cooking itself. But we know that people that cook at home usually will consume healthier ingredients. They will usually consume more fruits, more vegetables, and they will usually consume healthier fats, healthier grains than they can have outside. We can also know that people that cook at home consume less sodium and less sugars and trans fats, which we all know are not so healthy.

Dr. Rani Polak: (06:20)
We also know that people that cook at home has better eating behaviors such as they are more likely to have family meals. They are more likely to cook with their kids or with the other members of the family. We know that people that cook at home usually use less ultra-processed food, use less food additives and less preservatives and all these... I don't know if to call them food items because they're not really food, but all the stuff that we eat sometimes.

Stephanie: (06:53)
When you're working with patients, how do you integrate cooking at home into a prescription or into a plan for a patient? What does that look like?

Dr. Rani Polak: (07:04)
It really depends on the time that someone have. For example, if you look at myself, it really depend on the setting. I'm working part of my time as a primary physician and I have between five to 10 minutes with the patient. And in other setting, I am working with patient for hours to improve their home cooking. So it really depend on the setting. I think that the most important message that I usually deliver to patients is the important of home cooking. The importance of healthy nutrition is starting to be a common practice. Many people and many healthcare professionals know that it's healthy to eat vegetables. It's better to eat whole grains rather than refined grains and so on, but not many knows that just to cook at home is important.

Dr. Rani Polak: (07:59)
Back to the previous question that you asked me about, what are the benefits of home cooking? We also know that people that cook at home usually consume less calories, and this is a very important message that I deliver to patients even when I have 10 seconds or 20 seconds. There is a really interesting study published a few years ago, an analysis of the Enhance. Enhance is a national survey. They look at the association between home cooking and calories, and they found that as people cook at home, they consume less calories. They looked at one subgroup that respond in other question that they don't care about healthy nutrition, they cook whatever they want. This group, they show that they cook more, but they consume less calories. So even if you don't care about your nutrition and you cook as you truly said, many unhealthy stuff—

Stephanie: (08:57)
I mean, you can. I'm not saying I do. I'm saying I can.

Dr. Rani Polak: (09:03)
Okay, so even this subgroup, people consumed less calories when they cooked more at home.

Stephanie: (09:11)
Yeah, that's interesting. I'm sure part of that is just at restaurants we get such big portions that we feel like we have to eat it all.

Dr. Rani Polak: (09:17)
Correct. Yeah, correct. It's really difficult to maintain portion control when you see everything and everything is available and you can have as much as you want. Sometimes it's really, really difficult, and we know that people that eat at home usually consume smaller portions.

Stephanie: (09:34)
I think that's all compelling evidence for why we should be cooking at home. And I want to take this another level deeper, because I'm really concerned about how do we get our kids into the kitchen and start that at a young age. I was curious your thoughts on that. I mean, I obviously have my own, but they're not really backed by science, I don't think. But I'm curious what you think of the impact of bringing our kids into the kitchen when we're preparing meals.

Dr. Rani Polak: (10:03)
We can talk about few aspects of that, but hearing you're asking about science, a very interesting study that was published I think two years ago, looked at how much kids cook at home and try to find association with their nutritional intake 10 years later. They found that kids that cooked more have better nutritional intake. So it's really, really important and evidence-based. The fact that kids’ ability and kids' confidence to cook impact their nutrition later in life when they are adults. I know that many parents are struggling with introducing healthy food items to their kids, struggling with introducing vegetables, with introducing healthy grains, and we know that when kids are involved in the cooking process, they are much more likely to try the food.

Stephanie: (11:02)
We've talked about this with other guests on the podcast. Sometimes kids still won't try the food even if they help prepare it. And Dr. Polak agreed, there's no guarantee they will try it, but it's still worth a shot. Then we moved on to every parent's big food question: How can I get my kid to eat more vegetables? Is my child a lost cause? How can you identify a promising veggie recipe?

Dr. Rani Polak: (11:30)
First, there are vegetables with more, I would call it simple flavor. I don't know if simple flavor is good evidence-based term, but tomato and cucumber and carrots or pepper, those are recipes that I like to introduce to kids. It's really depends on the kids, but I like to combine healthy ingredients and food items that I would like to introduce to kids with other food that I know that they like. For example, I know that many kids like meatballs. So first of all, if you prepare the meatball yourself, that's the first very important step. And then you can incorporate tons of vegetables into the meatballs and the meatballs remain the same color and almost the same flavor, and it goes just nicely together. You can create zucchini, you can roast an eggplant and take the eggplant filet and combine it with ground meat, and just combine the food that you would like to introduce with the food that the kids are all ready familiar with and like to eat.

Dr. Rani Polak: (12:44)
Another thought that I usually have is kids like food that is wrapped in stuff. If you do something around tortilla or if you do something around some kind of a healthy pastry, that also usually a food that I would try to introduce to kids.

Stephanie: (13:03)
This made me think of how I dealt with veggies as a kid. Melted Velveeta was definitely involved, which sounds kind of gross to me today, but is there a way to make vegetables more palatable without trying to totally mask their flavor? Dr. Polak said there are sauces that are delicious and healthy. That's one option, but there's another.

Dr. Rani Polak: (13:25)
Another option, which is related to many of your previous question as well. We shouldn't be too nervous about it. I remember myself, I have many memories from myself as a kid. My father, for example, really liked to eat vegetable salads, and I can't remember him trying to push me to eat vegetable salads myself, but it was always on the table and he always took it and filled his plate before he took any other food items from the table. And a few years ago I was looking at myself,and say, hey, I'm doing the same. What I'm trying to say is that kids absorb the behavior of their family even if you don't see it right away. All the healthy behavior are implemented in the kids and hopefully they will show up sometime in the future.

Stephanie: (14:21)
Well, I don't know about you, but that gives me hope. Still, I'm going to continue to try to get more veggies into my kiddo when I can. Up next, Dr. Polak has a recipe to share. Vegetable spring rolls with a vinaigrette sauce. This is a recipe that's a highlight from his days of doing cooking workshops with kids.

Dr. Rani Polak: (14:48)
The basic and most important ingredient is rice paper wrappers. Those are very, very thin. It's like leaves from rice and you can buy them in Chinese markets or in healthy markets. They are so thin that you can soak them for 20 seconds in warm water and they become soft like cooked noodle. The temperature of the water should be warm but not more warm than water that you will put your hand in. So it's really not dangerous for kids and kids can play with that, and that's really a good recipe for kids. You need to make vegetable sticks or a bowl of vegetable leaves or whatever you want to put in the rice paper, and then you just take one rice paper from the bag, soak it in warm water till it's soft. It takes around 20 seconds, and then you put it on your cutting board. You put on the wrap, whatever veggie you would like to put. I like the combinations of carrot and avocado and cucumbers. If you would like to introduce your kids to cheese, you can put sticks of feta cheese as well, and then you just roll the wrapper into a very, very nice roll. And then you can either serve it like this or you're going to cut it into two-inch pieces and that's it.

Stephanie: (16:26)
Now it's time for Kitchen Questions where I ask my guests a few questions to understand his kitchen a little better.

Child: (16:33)
It's time for Kitchen Questions. I have a question. What would happen if you put a little bit of the wrong ingredient inside a cookie? Why are cupcakes squishy? How often do you burn things on accident? Do you like cake? What is the difference between baking and roasting? What is your favorite recipe?

Stephanie: (17:00)
What ingredient do you always have on hand in your kitchen?

Dr. Rani Polak: (17:03)
Wow. What I have on hand. I have tons of vegetables. Lately I'm using a more greens than I used before, but have a relationship with a farm, and once a week I receive a box with seasonal vegetables. You don't need to do that in order to eat healthy, but this is what I do. I like to support local farms around me. If you open my freezer, you can always find there a fish that I can defrost and make with the vegetables. You can always find in my kitchen, legumes, and I have, of course, dry legumes. And usually when I make legumes, I do batch cooking. When I think about batch cooking, I mean let's say, I want to make a legume salad and I need one or two cups of legumes, usually cook the whole bag. And then I use one or two cups for my salad and I freeze the leftover for future use. So if you ask me what you can find in my kitchen, I think those are my three staples: vegetables, fish and legumes.

Stephanie: (18:13)
What is your favorite meal to prepare for guests?

Dr. Rani Polak: (18:16)
I cook mostly Mediterranean. If after this discussion someone will call me and say, "Hey Rani, I'm coming for dinner," I will probably defrost a fish and will either pan fry them or roast them with some kind of vegetable, mostly tomatoes. That would be the first dish. I really like to make tabboule salad with tons of parsley and cilantro and mint and I really love it. I will roast an eggplant and a roasted eggplant will join the party. I will most probably make some kind of an antipasto from few of the vegetables that I have in my fridge.

Dr. Rani Polak: (19:05)
My go-to recipe is the roast. I really like to cut vegetables into one or half-inch cubes, combine them with salt, pepper, olive oil and just throws them in the oven. And then I have antipasto for the dinner and for the rest of the week. That's my go-to dinner for ... actually, not only for guests, also for myself. If you ask for example, on today's dinner, it's mostly the same but less choices. We received the boxes from the farms today, so yesterday I made sure to finish all the veggie that I had and I had tons of greens. I had Swiss chards and I had kale and I had parsley that I haven't finished during the week.

Dr. Rani Polak: (19:53)
I took the wide, big pan and first I gave it a little bit of flavor. I diced some onion and garlic and saute the onion and the garlic. And then I add all the greens and I saute a few minutes, the greens. And then I add water and I just cook the greens and then I use immersion blender and I just make a sauce of it. So I had a green in amazing sauce. I shared that I mostly cook Mediterranean, but I really like to cook Indian food. I spiced it up with some curry and masala and some cilantro seeds and I had a really, really nice Indian flavor green sauce. And then I put the fish in the sauce and cooked the fish and I made some quinoa and that will be my dinner today as well. I have it for two days and I also freeze two container.

Dr. Rani Polak: (20:53)
I usually take food with me to work. So usually when I make food, I make food for the same day and for the next day. And then I freeze one or two container for the coming weeks. So I have two container with fish, with green curry sauce waiting for me sometime in the future.

Stephanie: (21:12)
Delicious. I know you'd like all the vegetables, but what is your favorite vegetable?

Dr. Rani Polak: (21:17)
Wow. Favorite vegetables? That's a tricky question. I really wasn't prepared to that. I mostly eat tomatoes and cucumbers. I'm sorry. This is not so unique, but this is what I usually eat. Oh, I really, really like cauliflowers. My go-to recipe is to cut the cauliflowers into flowers and combine them with a salt, pepper and olive oil and just to roast them in the oven. And then when it's done and still warm, I'm taking it out from the oven and I combine two tablespoon of tahini paste. The tahini paste melt with all the juice of the cauliflower and then I let it cool down.

Stephanie: (22:04)
Last question, Mr. healthy doctor, what is your favorite dessert? And it's okay if it's a healthy option.

Dr. Rani Polak: (22:12)
I really like ice cream. Is it okay to say? I'm human. I really like ice cream. I would add fruits to the ice cream if that make more sense for this discussion, but I think that like vanilla ice cream and fruits, it's a great combination.

Stephanie: (22:30)
Thank you to Dr. Rani Polak for joining me today. You can learn more about him and his programs at www.instituteoflifestylemedicine.org. On Facebook, follow CHEF Coaching, and on Twitter, he's Rani Polak MD. That's R-A-N-I P-O-L-A-K M-D. I'll link to Dr. Polak's various sites on kiddosinthekitchen.com as well.

Stephanie: (23:04)
I first learned about the Institute of Lifestyle Medicine a number of years ago when I was doing research for a project. I had an opportunity to speak with one of Dr. Polak's colleagues, and he shared with me then that the medical community was recognizing that a lot of the health problems we face are the result of lifestyle choices. At the time, the group was focused on the notion that exercise is medicine, that doctors should actually be prescribing physical activity to patients in addition to, or even instead of, pills. I keep this idea with me all the time and I think of it often with food. If we make mostly good choices and eat a variety of healthy foods, our bodies get what they need. Our immune systems are strong. We maintain a healthy weight, we are vibrant, and we feel great.

Stephanie: (23:52)
Listening to Dr. Polak talk about culinary medicine is a reminder that food, real food, nourishes. And the healthiest, most nourishing food is the food you cook yourself.

Stephanie: (24:04)
As Dr. Polak points out, we should feel good about anything we make ourselves at home. Even the unhealthy meals you make are going to be better for you than something you get outside of your home. Dining out is fun and getting takeout is sometimes necessary for modern families. I get this, but I also believe that we should regularly remind ourselves of the benefits of home cooking. Restaurant portion sizes are notoriously large, and sodium levels in restaurant dishes are known to be sky-high. Restaurants also often use low-quality oils.

Stephanie: (24:38)
Bringing our kiddos into the kitchen with us gives us the opportunity to empower them for the future. Let them explore and learn and experiment. Let them discover how great they feel when they are eating healthier foods. Let them learn that home-cooked meals taste great and that while takeout is a convenience we all love, we choose to cook at home as often as we can because it's best for our health. I hope you'll join me this month in thinking about the power of our food choices. Here's to a healthy spring.

Stephanie: (25:15)
Thanks for joining me for Kiddos in the Kitchen. I'm your host, Stephanie Connor, with a reminder from my son.

Conner: (25:22)
If you like my mom's podcast as much as I do, you can subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Stitcher, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts.

Stephanie: (25:42)
That's right, Conner. You can also view the show notes, subscribe to our newsletter and check out all of our other content at kiddosinthekitchen.com, where kiddos cook on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter. I'll be back next month with another fresh episode. Until then, I encourage you to get your kiddos in the kitchen.