12. Culinary Medicine: The future of healthcare | Jaclyn Albin, MD

Dr. Jaclyn Albin, Director of Culinary Medicine, UT-Southwestern (Dallas, TX) a pioneer in culinary medicine, is here to change the way we think about food. Imagine blending health, flavor, and culture into every meal—whether it’s sneaking mushrooms into tacos or transforming family favorites into nutritional powerhouses. Her approach makes eating well not just easy but enjoyable, showing us that small tweaks can have a big impact on both our health and our communities.

TOPICS
00:00 Introduction to Culinary Medicine and Nutrition Education
03:10 Personal Journey into Culinary Medicine
05:55 Building Culinary Medicine Programs
09:06 Culinary Medicine in Patient Care
11:48 Group Classes and Community Engagement
15:09 Behavior Change and Patient Support
17:51 The Role of Community in Health
21:01 Cooking Classes and Practical Skills
23:46 Holistic Approach to Health
27:03 Dietary Strategies and Food Quality
31:40 The Importance of Nutrition and Eating the Rainbow
34:51 Accessible Nutrition: Legumes and Whole Grains
38:56 Culinary Resources for Healthy Eating
39:54 Cultural Sensitivity in Dietary Changes
42:41 Cooking Together: Building Family Bonds
45:59 Easy and Fun Plant-Forward Meals
49:24 Meal Prep: A Time-Saving Strategy
52:15 Gamifying Cooking: Making It Fun
55:59 The Growth of Culinary Medicine Programs
01:00:58 Community Engagement in Culinary Medicine
01:01:52 Final Thoughts: Small Wins in Nutrition

LinkedIn: Jaclyn Albin, MD, CCMS, DipABLM
Instagram: jlalbinmd

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Transcript

Jollie (00:00)

We've got a great guest with us today, Dr. Jaclyn Albin. She is Director of Culinary Medicine at UT Southwestern in Dallas. Dr. Albin.

Thanks a lot for joining us today.

Jaclyn Albin (00:09)

Absolutely, thanks for having me.

Jollie (00:12)

Why don't you tell us about yourself, what's brought you to culinary medicine.

Jaclyn Albin (00:17)

It's kind of a funny story actually, so I'm gonna back it up. I am the granddaughter of farmers. So I grew up with lots of fun pictures in the tractors on my grandparents' property. And I think I didn't appreciate at that time how understanding the beauty of growing food, the hardness of it, and then also having a connection to knowing where what you eat for dinner that night came from is something so many Americans don't have. So I'm gonna come back to that.

So fast forward to Jaclyn, the farmer's granddaughter, who decides she's gonna go to medical school. We don't have any medical people in my family, so I didn't really know what I was getting into. And as is true for anything like that, you don't really know what to expect. So I go through medical school and had a great experience, but didn't realize how nutrition and food were not really part of my training until I'm in my residency. So I actually had taken medical school on the East Coast and moved back

to Texas in the Houston area for my residency. And I actually got married during medical school to a non -medical person. And he was going through a lot of health problems around the time of my first year of residency. And then ultimately gets a diagnosis of celiac disease where you cannot have gluten in your diet. Same month, my mom gets diagnosed with breast cancer. So there was this big personal moment for me as an intern in pediatrics and internal medicine.

where I'm thinking, I don't have any idea how to help my own loved ones who are having a health crisis. What happened? Why am I the person who everyone's turning to and I'm not prepared? So that really was the onset of my curiosity about, okay, I have this great conventional training about how to think about health, but we're missing some of the foundational elements, including food and the role of food in health. And so luckily,

That journey has been really fun and my husband's health is excellent today. We've learned all about being gluten free in a way that puts plant foods at the front. And then my mom's been in remission for breast cancer for over 10 years now. But the food journey for me was a personal one. And you will hear that from most doctors who get into nutrition that, something happened and I realized I needed this.

So fast forward to my being on faculty as a very junior member at UT Southwestern 10 years ago is when I joined and I came to help build an educational program for our residents who are training to be pediatricians and internal medicine doctors. It's a combined program called MedPeds. So I'm doing that. I'm in this big faculty meeting and we're talking about the medical school curriculum and they are designing kind of a wellness focus. Let's start teaching the medical students about stress management.

about movement, about nutrition and the role that that plays in not only their patient's health, but their own wellness. And they look at me and they say, hey, Jaclyn, do you think you could do the nutrition segment? And I'm like, why? And they're like, well, you bring your lunch and it looks pretty healthy. And then none of the rest of us really know what to eat. And so it's hilarious, but also a tragic statement on...

Jollie (03:24)

you

That's awesome.

Jaclyn Albin (03:33)

the ill -preparedness that many physicians, especially of my generation, have. We're doing better now, so that's the good news. So that's my backstory.

Jollie (03:39)

That's what I could do. I'm just picturing it like everybody sitting around the lunchroom like, hey, let's let's let her do this. She's got the healthiest lunch.

Jaclyn Albin (03:47)

Everyone tells me eating the pizza that was free at the meeting. I've got, I think it was a vegetable curry. I this gorgeous like turmeric cauliflower curry I love to make. So I think that's what it was.

Jollie (03:56)

So when was this?

Jaclyn Albin (03:58)

This was about nine years ago. And I dove into it as, hey, I want to meet the desire of this generation, which at the time were really only about 10 years younger than me. They want hands -on experiences. They want to know how this has real -world application in a new way. That was when education was really shifting from the traditional, sit in a lecture hall for eight hours and we give you information.

Jollie (04:00)

Okay.

Jaclyn Albin (04:26)

And so I started looking into the research to see, anyone done this in a unique way that uses cooking? And cooking had been what healed my family. And so I wanted to think about how it could apply to education as a strategy. Luckily, there are two people that really are leaders in the history of this. One is Dr. Tim Harlan, who's a chef and a physician, and he started the American College of Culinary Medicine.

And then the other is Dr. David Eisenberg, who is the former executive director and founder of the Teaching Kitchen Collaborative, and he's an integrative medicine physician. So these two guys have been thinking about this 20 years ago at least, and they had written a little bit about it in the literature, and I was able to find that. And so the concept that what if medical students should learn about nutrition and food in a cooking class?

So we built that as a model, we called it the Cooking and Nutrition Module, and they would all come to this 1975 era teaching kitchen that we have on campus, and they had so much fun. And the main feedback I got was we need to learn how to do this earlier. And so all of this led to my recognition that we were not the only ones doing this work, it's a national movement, it was very early days at the time.

But I was able to get connected with Dr. Tim Harland, as I mentioned, who had started this at Tulane University and built the first medical school -based teaching kitchen that was focused on training medical students in a teaching kitchen, but also serving the community. So just to define culinary medicine, which is really something that we're all working on defining more broadly as a collective organization at the American College of Culinary Medicine, we're gonna have a formal definition within the next few months.

But it's a broad look at the intersection of nutrition. How does the quality of our diet intersect with culinary strategy? You have to like it to eat it, right? It has to taste good. We're not asking people to eat nasty food. And then how does that intersect with medical care? Prevention, management, and treatment of really any chronic disease is affected by diet. So it's the medicine, the nutrition, and the cooking blended together.

And it can be an education strategy, can be a research strategy, and it can be a community and patient care strategy. And we're doing all of that now.

Jollie (06:45)

This is so neat. did, so in Tulane, when do you think, do you know when that first teaching kitchen was set up?

Jaclyn Albin (06:49)

It was about 2013, and so it's been nearly, nearly 10, a little over 10 years actually now that they started, and then that birthed a curriculum. Their first focus was really building curriculum. How do we teach medical students these things? And it's not just about nutrition. When you bring a group of students into a kitchen, like just imagine what's happening. Who doesn't like to eat? Who doesn't like to be with their friends? So it's...

combating loneliness and isolation, it's wellness and team building, it's integrating the role that food plays in health very early in their training, and then it's also, hey, we have a dietician who's helping teach this class, let's understand what interprofessional partnership looks like. What is my role as a physician? What is the dietician's role? Who else should be here? How do we talk to our social work teams, our community advocates?

What are the ways in which everyone has a role in improving diet when literally all of Americans are impacted by poor quality diet? And then also understanding the social drivers of health. How does transportation and food security and housing security, how do all of those things intersect into someone's ability to have a healthy diet?

Jollie (08:04)

I love this. What you're trying to do and folks like you and lifestyle medicine is growing and you just like wrapping your arms around the patients, but not just the patients either, their families. And you're not just looking at,

their current health status, but what's brought them there and what are all the environmental factors and food is such a huge part of it. I just, I just love this.

Jaclyn Albin (08:27)

I mean, that's part of our food story shapes so much of our lives. And actually, let me talk about patient care, because UT Southwestern has supported a culinary medicine clinical service line. We're the first one in the nation, which means that patients can be referred to our clinic and health insurance pays for them to get support from both me and our dietitian chef. And so they're basically getting either one -on -one support where they see both of us in succession.

Jollie (08:40)

wow.

Jaclyn Albin (08:56)

And my role is let's dive into your food story. What is your relationship with food? If we don't understand that, then we don't have anywhere to go for tailoring what someone's health goals might look like and how food could be part of it. Some people will tell me I use food for comfort. I have a love -hate relationship with it because I love it, but then I also hate what some of the choices I make do to my body and how I feel about it. And then it's a cycle of shame. Other people will say, mm.

I just need to live, I don't really care, but I don't wanna put a lot of energy into my food, and so I make choices that aren't supporting my health. And so the strategy we're gonna take in helping someone with those different places of coming from, where they're coming from, is gonna be quite different. And then let's talk about if someone's had food insecurity, can we help them get access? Do they know how to cook? You know, if you don't know how to cook.

I can tell you all day to eat more of XYZ vegetable, but you don't know how to make that delicious. It's not gonna be on your dinner table. And so that whole strategy building is what we do in culinary medicine. And then they'll work with my dietician chef to intersect the nutrition goals we have for them and the culinary skills that they need. And then we also teach this in group settings. So again, patient insurance covers disease specific.

connections to food. So they can come to our classes where we're talking about diabetes and we're teaching them about dietary strategies for managing their blood sugar. And we're talking about how to take your favorite dishes and tweak them and modify them so that they meet your health goals. And then we can do that for high blood pressure, for heart disease, for arthritis, for autoimmune disease, for inflammatory conditions. There's dietary and culinary strategy for all of that.

And so it can and should be part of a health system plan. And I'm excited that over the next year or two, we've been collecting patient follow -up data. They're so inspired by this, they change their lives. And we know habit change, behavior change, that's hard. But when you make a change, it's a trickle effect. So you're changing your diet, now you wanna move more. Now you're connecting with your community, your neighbors, your whole mind.

Jollie (10:46)

you

Thanks for watching!

Jaclyn Albin (11:08)

set an outlook on life changes a bit after you start empowering yourself to change food. And so I think this is the future and the number of people who are interested in building this into their practices has just exploded.

Jollie (11:21)

This is me. I have like 20 questions to ask you all at the same time. This is great. OK, so gosh, it seems like you could spend like an hour and a half with a a patient. Like how does so you got one on one engagements, but then you also have group dynamics. So let's take like a typical average interaction you have. Like how does how does the patient even get to you?

Jaclyn Albin (11:23)

Okay, let's do it!

Yeah. So two things is I spent 10 years practicing primary care as an internist and a pediatrician. And one thing I hated was being asked to refer my patients to things that I had never heard of and had no idea what it meant. So I actually made the decision that referral to our program can be patient led. So a patient can literally just call up the health system number. We have a UT Southwestern Culinary Medicine page and there's a phone number on there. So patients can self -refer.

And because I am a primary care clinic service, I did that intentionally as well so that patient co -pays stay low. And so they don't need a referral because it's primary care. And I believe it's primary care, right? So they can refer to our primary care clinic and then they get scheduled. I spend 20 to 30 minutes with the intro of these things and then they get another full half hour with my dietician. So a patient visit is at least an hour.

Jollie (12:29)

Okay, yeah.

Jaclyn Albin (12:44)

and they're going home with some specific goals. Are we gonna change behavior with one hour visit? No, but we're hopefully gonna leave people with hope that things can feel better and be better and some initial specific strategies for change. Because we know that human behavior change has to be specific. Like I'm going to spend 15 minutes walking around the block on Monday, Wednesday and Friday for the next month. Like that's the kind of goal you need to make. I'm gonna add,

you know, chopped greens to my dinner, Tuesdays and Thursdays when I'm cooking. You know, people have to get really granular. And so we're helping them work towards that. We're also helping them find their why. And you brought up earlier how this is a family affair. Many people come to us and say, I have grandchildren that I love and want to be here for, and I can't get up and down off the floor because I feel so unhealthy. And I would like to change that. Or I want to model

to my grandchildren what healthy eating looks like, or there's a diagnosis that they're trying to manage, or they're trying to prevent a health condition that someone in their family has been through. So people come there, and when you can anchor on someone's why, then you tie the effort of behavior change back to that. And you also give people an awareness that this is not their fault. We live in an unhealthy society. It's not a personal failure.

that people struggle with this, it's a societal failure. And so we can put forth efforts against the grain while also working to change our communities and our larger society through policies. And I think that's a big part of the conversation is giving people like absolution that this is not any sort of personal failure that they find this hard.

Jollie (14:30)

Yeah, this is, it's crazy. I think society is really struggling with this sense of agency and mindset and independence. mean, traditionally, especially here in Texas, I've talked about this on the pod before. We are an independent people. We pull yourself up by the bootstraps. You should be able to take care of yourself, community at the same time. But if you have a problem, it's kind of your fault.

And I mean, I'm meeting people that are starting to get away from that and understand, especially with health, this is absolutely a society problem. If you have means, if you're educated, if you're intentional about eating whole foods, natural foods, not processed foods, it's still really, really hard. I mean, we're all in this together.

Jaclyn Albin (15:16)

Yeah, It's both. It's both. But I would say there's a spectrum of how much choice individuals have. And people who have a lot of choice are still struggling. And the people who have the least amount of choices are probably the ones where our policies and programs need to target first, saying, hey, you don't even have a grocery store in your whole community. Let's start there, right?

If you don't even have access, you can't make change. But there's a lot of people with access that still don't know where to begin, and they need to be wrapped around as well, because that's how we have this grassroots effect, where we can all uplift the people around us once we find a way forward.

Jollie (15:56)

Yeah, you've I love that. You've you've you've talked about community a few times. So you have the so somebody whether they self refer or somebody else sends them to you, you have that initial interaction. And then like how frequently do you see them again or do they get moved into is the next phase the group sessions?

Jaclyn Albin (16:01)

Mm.

Yeah. Great question. So that's individualized. I think that it's hard to make an algorithm for what everybody needs. Everyone is going to be individual. So some people, frankly, they might see us one time and they're not ready. And they decide they're not ready. And so they don't come back because they, I do get some patients coming to me who are hoping that we had some sort of magical solution that they just didn't know about yet. And I think when we get down to the reality of this is hard,

but we're here to walk alongside you, we're here to try to simplify it, we're here to tailor it, then a lot of people say, okay, when can I come back? I wanna come back. And then when they come back, it's usually two to three months, and we're looking at exactly the goals we made last time, and then we're building new goals. Sometimes we're like, okay, that didn't work. Why didn't it work? Do we need a different goal, or did you just have a life barrier that we need to talk through?

and really working through what stands in the way and then what facilitates success and then leaning into that. people go through different seasons, we have unexpected things that happen in our lives that can derail. So how do we get back on the train tracks? And so that's what a lot of those follow -up visits look like. They also sometimes look like huge success where someone feels amazingly different and they just can't wait to keep moving down the path. The group classes.

We are doing this in the Redbird area of the southern sector of Dallas County in Oak Cliff. So when UT Southwestern and Parkland both moved into Oak Cliff, the focus was around bringing better access to medical care to a community that hasn't had it and saying, hey, you don't have to drive up to the med center to get care from our health system. We're bringing our quality care to you, right?

And that was when the opportunity came for us to build culinary medicine as a service line because the community asked for it. They asked for cooking and nutrition support. And so it allowed us to jump in. The way in which we deliver the group cooking classes, which we call shared medical appointments, because it is a medical appointment that's on your record. Like if you log into your little portal, it's there. It's an appointment and I'm billing health insurance just as if I saw you one -on -one in the clinic.

but it occurs in a community kitchen in the area. So we're within five minutes of the health system, but I've built partnerships with two faith -based organizations that have lots of kitchens. And so they have kitchens that are kind of up for grabs and available. One of them is Concord Church and one of them is Oak Cliff Bible Fellowship. so we go into their kitchen spaces where we're actually leasing the kitchen and as actually the rule, you know, to follow the rules for these things, to make something a health system.

you have to have a lease and a sign and that's it, right? So I have a sign that says UT Southwestern Culinary Medicine Cooking Class and then we have a leasing agreement, but it's more than transactional because we have stakeholders and leaders in those community organizations who took our classes and gave us feedback and told us how we can make this most adaptable to their community and what resonated with them, what they would suggest we change or evolve. And then we're constantly seeking their feedback.

so that we can grow something that really is exactly what the community wants and needs. And so patients coming into that program, it's a commitment. It's six classes, and they're each two hours long. And you show up, you check in, you get your blood pressure and such taken just like you would at any medical visit. And then we're teaching them a culinary skill. So how do I cut an onion or a bell pepper or something more efficiently and safely? What does a knife hold supposed to look like? How do you have maximal control and safety?

How do I cook foods that maybe I haven't cooked before that are gonna improve the health and variety of my diet? So my dietician chef partner, Millette Seiler, she will do that piece. And then we're taking everyone into the kitchen where they're cooking on a team of other patients. And all the ingredients and recipes are preset for them. And they're able to just take kind of the setup station and run with it.

And then afterwards, have probably the most fun of class is called sell your dish, where they have plated it in an appropriate portion size. We talk about that. We teach people how to read nutrition labels. And then they say, how is this different? We make tacos. Everyone loves tacos. That's one of our classes. What did you do differently? you cut down the meat on that taco and we added diced mushrooms and some lentils. Did you even notice much of a difference? You didn't, but now you just made.

you know, the plant profile, the fiber and everything in that nutrition label is moving in the right direction. Is this something your family would eat? Okay, maybe not. Well then what if we back it up a step and we only add mushrooms but we're not doing the lentils? So we're teaching people about really practical adaptations. Can we make that pancake with oats instead of white flour?

Let's try it out, is it good? What if we made a fruit sauce instead of syrup? So we're meeting people with the foods that they like, but teaching them how to modify while maintaining deliciousness, but improving nutrition. And I think it's just, there's nothing like empowering people. And actually on our website, at UT Southwestern Culinary Medicine page, there's a video of patients sharing their testimonies, because that's really where it's at, is when people share their stories with each other and lift each other up.

And I think that's the magic. It's not us. It's the magic of people coming together to prepare and share food. And then we're tying it all in back to their health conditions and evaluating their health conditions and saying, here's why this dish is good for your cholesterol. Here's why this modification improves blood pressure control and so forth and so on.

Jollie (21:56)

This sounds like the most fun you could ever possibly have at a doctor's appointment.

Jaclyn Albin (22:01)

I hope so, right? And it's easy to park. That's the other way. But, you know, it's the most fun for me as well, right? And in the modern era of practicing medicine, there are more needs to meet than the time and resources that we have. And I often left my, you know, my prior clinical sessions feeling just like demoralized and exhausted because I felt like it was never enough and I never had enough time. I never had enough.

ability to dive deeper into the things my patients were facing. And I wasn't sure if they felt supported in the way that they needed to be for success. And so I leave these classes energized and feeling inspired that people have something really tangible and practical to go home and do. And I hope that this layer of support also supports all of my physician colleagues and, know, PA and nurse practitioner colleagues who are seeing patients and feeling like I used to feel.

But now their patients comes in with a good story and says, hey, I'm doing this thing and my blood pressure is better. And it's a win for everyone.

Jollie (23:05)

You're almost giving permission to folks to be creative with their food because they've been stuck in the same rut for decades sometimes and they just didn't know. You don't know what you don't know.

Jaclyn Albin (23:20)

Absolutely, we'll teach people, what about making your own salad dressing? Let's talk about how easy that is. What are the benefits of making your own salad dressing? You cut down on sodium, you cut down on added sugars, it's cheaper. We teach people how to make spice blends and how to use spice of a variety of different cultural backgrounds in dishes. And we'll make a dish sometimes and say, hey, some of you might like this spice blend. Some of you want it hotter, some of you want less. Some of you want to use a completely different profile. This same dish works with

a variety of strategies and how do we build a bowl, build a plate around favorites? In fact, that's one of our concepts is let's start with a whole grain such as brown rice, but hey, have you tried quinoa? Let's talk about quinoa. How do you make that taste good? Did you know it has more protein than most whole grains and might be a good option for someone trying to increase their protein? And then let's pair that with a legume bean, a lentil.

There's beans and lentils are one of the best things for us to add to our diets because they're affordable and they take on the flavor of whatever they're in. So they're adaptable and flexible and they have protein and fiber and a lot of micronutrients that most Americans are missing. And then you add your herbs, your spices, your vegetables, your other proteins and you can build out an easy meal with that's tailored to you. And it also works for, hey, how do we please the picky eaters at home?

A lot of people come in and say, it's my husband. it's my kids. it's my aunt that lives with us. And there's a family member who's the main barrier to them making change. And they need someone to walk them through that. And so I think there's just so much power in being able to hone in on this domain. And I'm also board certified in lifestyle medicine. So I can't help but leak into, let's talk about movement. Let's talk about stress.

You're not gonna, patients will come to me wanting to lose weight, which is not the primary focus of our program. We're focused on healthy relationships with food that reduce disease. And that may or may not mean weight loss for everybody. But if they wanna lose weight and they're discouraged, I'm often coming back to their stress level. Our bodies hold on to weight when we're under stress chronically. How does dealing with stress sometimes need to be the first step? And it's not all about diet and exercise. And patients will get emotional

feeling as though they've done everything in the diet and exercise space and they're not making progress and they didn't even realize their lack of sleep and their stress were driving some of the challenge they're facing. And so just being able to think holistically, the American Board of Lifestyle Medicine is certifying physicians and other health professionals just at an exponential rate because so many people are looking for being able to offer this to their patients. I think it's an exciting time for patients who are looking for something different to find it.

Jollie (26:10)

It's so refreshing because yeah, so many people, everybody, mean, everybody has failed on a number of diets. And it's funny when I meet somebody and tell them about Interrupt Hunger and our nonprofit and what we're trying to do, so many times say like, what's your food plan? What's your eating plan? I'm like, we are so far from that. Like you said something when we talked last that really stuck to me. It's not about restrictive. It's about adding things. So talk to me about that.

Jaclyn Albin (26:36)

Yes. OK, so this is, I'll get a little bit of a soapbox about this because I think Americans in particular, we do have that individualistic streak and Texans even more so perhaps. Whereas when I work with groups that are from particularly Europe and other countries that do culinary medicine and teaching kitchen based work, they're much more communal in the way they think about strategies. We're much more individualistic.

And so in many ways, Americans are desperate for a personalized plan of how they should eat. And the secret is that 95 % of us need to eat the same categories of food. And we can tailor those categories to our preferences and our cultural background, but there are very few people who actually need highly tailored dietary plans. know, the market's taking off in this space because a lot of people are selling

products and philosophies around this, but the reality is that most of us don't need that. I even love my dietitian partner will always say, there isn't a diabetic diet. There's the diet that everyone should eat that is a bit more important for people who have diabetes. When we talk about this, it's about what we add. If you spend any time on social media, you'll see the nutrition factions at war about

animal protein or carbohydrates, which to me is such a distraction from the main point, which is that number one, diet is our top risk factor for all causes of early death, okay? We've got, yes. When we look at US Burden of Disease collaborators in the JAMA is the journal 2018, they look at the top risk factors for death.

Jollie (28:14)

Let's see, wait, wait, wait, let's say that one more time, just for effect.

Jaclyn Albin (28:26)

and for morbidity or suffering, okay? And diet has surpassed tobacco, poor quality diet, as the top risk factor for early death. And we know that dietary quality impacts everything about our health, and one in 10 Americans get enough vegetables. So I am not gonna get into arguments about eggs or no eggs.

fish or no fish, red meat or no red meat with people and really let that dig in because they are missing the point. The point is what we do know definitively and really cannot be argued with is that everyone needs more plant foods in their diet. So when we break down plant foods, why are they special? Plant foods come with what we call phytonutrients. Phytonutrients include antioxidants, which everyone mostly knows that term. Antioxidants fight free radicals, which are the

DNA damaging effects, typically of the environment. You walk out in the sun today, you got some free radicals. You breathed in some pollution, you got some free radicals. know, we're getting DNA instability in our cells and systems just from everyday exposures, and antioxidants in our diet help stabilize how our bodies cope with those exposures and reduce the risk for things like cancer and other damage to occur.

because of the instability of certain parts of our DNA from everyday life, okay? So I mean, you can't live in fear of the things that harm, but you can say, all right, it might be unintentional about what helps my body heal, sleep, movement, nutrition. So when we think about fruits and vegetables, this is perhaps overused, but I think very apt is the concept of eating the rainbow. Every color of the rainbow represents a different family of phytonutrients.

And so we're fighting not only from antioxidants, but from other phytonutrients that we don't even fully understand. We're fighting disease. And green does different things than orange and yellow, which does different things than purple and blue. And so as you think about your diet, do you get the whole rainbow on your plate every couple of days? I don't think it's realistic to say every single day, right? But every few days, are you eating the rainbow? And when I work with kids, I actually give them a coloring sheet.

Jollie (30:34)

Yeah.

Jaclyn Albin (30:39)

And you know what, four year olds and up, they can tell you the colors and you write the colors in and you say, tell me something you like in every color. Can we find something that you like every color? And then let's make a list of foods that maybe you're willing to try. And what are you gonna try to get in? They're saying it in front of their parents. Guess what? Little Johnny just told me he's gonna try carrots this week. And so then that helps the parent have a platform on which to continue the messaging and really try to promote learning to like new foods.

So that's produce, color, color, color. And let's not get in the weeds about raw versus cooked versus frozen versus fresh. Like just eat the produce people. We need more produce and we're really falling short of that one. Okay, then the next one is legumes, which I've already mentioned. And I love how accessible they are. They're so cheap, right? You can get a of beans, $1. Dried beans, $1 and that's gonna make multiple cans. And so encouraging people to think about

Jollie (31:27)

Very cheap.

Jaclyn Albin (31:35)

Can you just splash some on top of your salad? Can you throw it in your soup? Can you put it on a taco? How can we get more legumes in our diet? And we know that the dietary fiber in particular, as well as the healthy impact on our microbiome, our gut microbiome is heavily influenced by the amount of plant foods that we eat because they serve as the food for those bacteria and it promotes healthier colonies when we're eating a lot of plant foods.

And then I mentioned whole grains already. So whole grains are highly evidence -based in their benefit for heart disease, dementia, stroke, and many other outcomes, cancer risk as well, specifically colon cancer. And so we wanna get whole grains into our diet. And then the last one, which I think doesn't get enough love is herbs and spices, which are powerhouses of flavor and nutrients that fight disease. And so how can we get, I love to grow,

herbs in my backyard. I've got basil, rosemary, parsley right now and oregano. And so I just go like snippet. It's pretty effortless to keep herbs growing even on a window seal. And so can we help people realize these are affordable ways to enhance nutrition in their existing diet, even if they didn't change anything else. So when I'm talking to someone, what's one thing you can add? How can you get one of these things on your plate that's better than what you're doing today so that better is not

You know, we don't let perfect be the enemy of doing better. Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Jollie (32:59)

Just better. Which direction are you going? Yeah. So I'm thinking, somebody that's listening that, that doesn't, that, that doesn't have the opportunity to go to somebody like you, culinary medicine or a dietitian. So where do you start?

Jaclyn Albin (33:12)

So I think we do make fun of the internet because they have a lot of, I would say social media is a dangerous place until you have some foundational knowledge. When you have some foundational knowledge about what's true and not true, you can kind of learn to read, that sounds a bit out there. What are they trying to sell me at the end of this?

And there's actually been a recent study that I believe it was over 90 % of food -based messages on TikTok are not accurate or evidence -based. However, it can be a resource to get a good recipe idea if someone knows the foundation. So where do you go for the foundations? A few key things. Is one, if someone has a diagnosis of diabetes or hypertension or heart disease, the organizations like

the American Diabetes Association, American Heart Association, they actually have a lot of good recipes and nutrition content on their websites. Are they perfect? Have they always had the right views on the role of food? They're evolving, just like all of us are evolving as new science comes out. But I do think in general, they're a movement in the right direction with their recipes and resources. If somebody says, hey, I just need someone to really break down the basics for me,

I recommend going to the Gaples Institute, G -A -P -L -E -S Institute, where there are five free patient modules. They have them in English and Spanish. And they're basically eight to 15 minute modules on these core topics about carbohydrates in our diet, proteins in our diet, fats in our diet, how do we make a healthier plate for our families. And those are a great resource for anyone who just says, I just really need a little bit of...

of basics, and it's done by a cardiologist. It's a nonprofit. And then they also have a youth. It's sort of done like a comic book or an interactive fun for kids module. That's about 20 minutes. And so you can even say, hey, let's get a kid involved. So that's one resource. The Harvard School of Public Health has a blog known as The Nutrition Source.

And they really bring a lot of, let's break down this new article out there and talk about what we take away from it. Because one of the challenges we're facing in science right now is that most laypeople don't know how to look at an article and understand what we can conclude. Because the quality of how science is done interprets the strength of that evidence. And the media doesn't really help us with this because they often have these headlines that

really miss the full story. And so be careful about getting your science information from the media. It's a starting point. But then if you don't know how to read an article, go back to one of these reliable places like schools of public health, because they really care about people. They want people to be healthier. And how can we learn from that? And then lastly, I'll say the culinarymedicine .org site has tons of open access recipes there and handouts about different conditions.

that we use in our curriculum that we teach, but also are available for anybody who wants to go grab them and say, hey, I need a dinner idea. What's an option that might be healthy for me? And this is gonna grow. They're actually launching a meal planning option where people could put in their preferences. I could go in and say, we're gluten free. I want this many meals over the next week that are leftovers. these are my busy days. These are the days I can cook.

and then it will spit out recipe suggestions for a meal plan. And then there's a lot of paid versions of this kind of stuff. I'm just sharing the free ones so that people could have somewhere to begin.

Jollie (36:49)

Yeah.

So let's see, as you're talking, if so, if folks haven't been to Dallas, once you describe what what the population of Oak Cliff is like, because you're surrounded by Latinos from all different Central and South American, you got African Americans, Middle Eastern, lot of immigrants. There's a lot of.

cultures mixing around so talk us about culture and food

Jaclyn Albin (37:20)

So some people see that as a barrier. I see it as an opportunity because the beauty of being American is that we can learn and have access to cultural dietary patterns that are so diverse and interesting. And so, you know, if you're a fellow foodie, see this as a win that we have a diverse city where we have a lot of food options. But when you're thinking about teaching people dietary change, I think it's just important to always proceed with humility when we're giving anyone else

any type of dietary advice, recognizing that you're an expert on your diet, I'm an expert on my diet, and everyone is an expert on their own dietary pattern. And so when someone is wanting to change for health reasons, we're very careful to not criticize the cultural aspects of their diet, even the ones that might need modification. But let's take traditional Latin background foods, which depends on the region of the world as to how emphasized these foods might be.

but something like avocados, emphasis on legumes, all different types of beans, emphasis on corn, those are excellent nourishing foods that we emphasize in classes while saying, okay, what if we were gonna make a dish that's traditional to the culture, but we're gonna back down on some of the saturated fat that we add to this bean dish or to a tamale or something. So we'll teach people how to make their cultural foods with a little bit of tweak, but then we'll also say,

you know what, if you wanna make it the way your grandma did today and you'd love it, do that, because there's room for that. We just have to be intentional about when we eat foods purely for pleasure, which might be some of those heritage foods that grandma made. And in fact, that's the very first question I ask everyone who is doing a new cohort of six classes, tell me about a food from your childhood that means something to you. And people will share something really empowering and beautiful. And I'll actually tell you,

Jollie (39:13)

emotional.

Jaclyn Albin (39:16)

our patient classes are diverse, our medical student classes are even more diverse. And we have allowed students with very specific cultural backgrounds where they're tied to a lot of their food habits to present to the group and say, I want you to bring a topic, a dish. So it's really like a show and tell on food. And someone can say, I didn't like that. And we're like, okay.

Maybe that's not for you. That's a bridge too far to maybe what you're familiar with. So I think there's room for everyone's food and we celebrate cultural foods because most cultural traditional foods are actually far more nourishing than what the standard American diet has become. And if people move back to those cultural traditions, they'll be moving in the right direction. Last thing I'll say is that there's a great website called Old Ways, which looks at

How does the Mediterranean dietary pattern, which is really principles, not Mediterranean food, apply to traditional African cuisine, Asian cuisine, Latin cuisine, and thinking about how every culture can lean into the categories of food that we're missing in a way that's unique to them?

Jollie (40:26)

very good. shifting gears again. So our youngest daughter is six and we've really been intentional about trying to cook together more. And it is it is such a special time of the week. And we're doing it at least one meal a week. And sometimes it's it's it's Saturday mornings and we're getting to the point of saying like

You know, instead of having going out and getting donuts or something like that, I'm like, OK, you can have something sweet, but you're going to learn to make it. And it's so much fun, you know, creative juices start flowing, but just the the bonding in the community like it. It's just magical.

Jaclyn Albin (40:55)

Mm -hmm.

Absolutely. It is fun. And we're sort of frantic and harried all the time. And when we slow down and we say, hey, guess what? The fact that I need to feed my family is instead of being a stressor, could that be a bonding moment? And I love that, actually. My kids will sit and do their homework at our kitchen island, which sometimes I have to separate because we're distracting each other.

But the ability to even prepare food where I'm chopping vegetables while they're asking me math questions, it creates community. And independently of changing diet quality, there is a lot of associated benefits around child health, school performance, and mental health when they grow up with a family meal experience, even just once a day. And so I love including kids. My daughter, my youngest is 10.

and she started about five in the kitchen. And we actually, as a 10 -year -old, she uses a chef's knife independently with a little steel protection glove. On the other hand, and actually I have to tell this story the other day, because this was her taking it to the next level for the first time. I called her and I said, okay, I'm coming home a little later than usual because I was teaching a patient class. Your dad got stuck at work and he's not gonna get home until it's time to take your brother to baseball practice.

And so we have a problem because we need to feed that kid before his two hour baseball practice. And there wasn't really not any leftovers. And so my daughter says, it's okay, mom, I'm gonna make dinner. And I'm like, all right, I'm just gonna let her go for it. She is an independent sort of child, okay? So this is what she does. She gets out, we always keep corn tortillas. They're an affordable, easy whole grain. So she puts a little olive oil on them and toast them in the toaster oven.

Jollie (42:41)

That's so cool. Love it.

Jaclyn Albin (42:54)

And then she gets a can of beans down. She knows how to open cans and rinses the beans, because if you get the bubbles off, it gets some salt and some of the potential gas producing effects. And then she gets out, we had a purple cabbage. She gets out a cabbage and slices it up into strips. And she did that with some bell pepper and gets out the salsa. She's like, we had bean and veggie tacos, mom.

Jollie (43:16)

I love it!

Jaclyn Albin (43:16)

and she gets the dishes, which I can't even normally get her to bust her plate. Something about this moment of responsibility for her empowered a way of supporting the family that I now know that she's capable of. So we're gonna work on making that a regular thing. But I love that building that into children, that's gonna change the next generation's ability to do this.

Jollie (43:37)

My gosh, give them confidence, give them agency. Like, mom, it's okay, I got this. That is so cool.

Jaclyn Albin (43:43)

I I know, I wasn't quite sure what to expect when I got home and my entire kitchen's clean.

Jollie (43:49)

So do you have a couple like go -to meals that you might share in like breakfast or something for dinner that's plant forward and healthy and fun and easy?

Jaclyn Albin (43:59)

Absolutely. Well, so one of them I kind of alluded to, call it build your own bowl. So on the weekends, I typically make a large batch of a whole grain. So it'll be brown rice, it'll be quinoa, a variety of things. And then I will also usually either make some beans or lentils, but I also use canned beans all the time. That's a great convenience resource for a quick meal. So on a busy night, what we'll do is we'll just warm up.

frozen whole grain, because I'll make a ton on the weekend only once, and then we'll put it in the freezer and use it throughout the week. And so we'll pull out the whole grain, everyone gets some of that, then we'll pull out a legume, so it's either canned beans or if I've made them pre -made, also freeze well and can be warmed up. And then I usually, the main cooking in real time is I roast veggies. That's my favorite way of eating vegetables, they taste so good and flavorful.

So we'll usually have broccoli or bell peppers and onions. Sometimes we'll do sweet potatoes, just any kind of vegetable. In the fall, we'll do squashes and you just coat them in a little bit of cooking oil and a little bit of seasoning and put them in either a small toaster oven or an air fryer. Or if you need to make a big batch as I'm usually doing, I put cookie sheets in the oven. And that's 20 minutes.

And in the meantime, I'm handling warming up the leftover whole grain legume base. And we'll put the roasted veggies on top. And then usually we're gonna top that with guacamole or salsa or something that just adds a pop of flavor, a little citrus squeeze. And everyone can decide how much of each ingredient goes in their bowl. And that allows some autonomy. Or if you have a younger child, you could put everything into sections instead of all one bowl. So that's a go -to for us. Another favorite.

is we do a lot of bean -based chilies where I may use one pound of an animal protein, like a ground turkey or sometimes a really lean ground beef, because we do occasionally eat meat at my house. And then I will load it up with vegetables because it's an opportunity in a super stew to add a ton of vegetables without really having to put much effort in. So celery, carrots, sweet potatoes, bell peppers, they go beautifully in a chili.

and then you add a bunch of beans and tomatoes of course, and that's an easy meal and you can just Google that and get some good recipes online. And then we roast fish a lot. So we'll bake or sometimes grill salmon or types of white fish and then I'll pair that again with a simple whole grain and roasted veggies. So healthier eating, it doesn't have to be really hard. But you get your, I generally recommend try one new thing a week.

Don't try more than one new crazy idea in a week that's kind of a culinary adventure, because then you get overwhelmed and you end up not using the ingredients and food goes to waste. But get your staples in a list where you're gonna make them regularly and then you keep it inspired by adding something new each week. And then ask the kids to get involved. Say, hey, what do you want us to cook this week? How are you gonna help? How are you gonna go to the grocery store?

Jollie (47:03)

It is really fun going to the grocery store. I know a lot of people don't actually go to the grocery store anymore, but going with your kid or your partner, your spouse, whatever, like it's again, it's community, it's bonding and you get to come up with creative ideas and I don't know. It's a lot of fun.

Jaclyn Albin (47:19)

Yeah, can be fun for some, dangerous for others. So you find the notes.

Jollie (47:22)

Yeah, you you said something that I think, I talk to folks like prepping is such a key. And some people push backs like, don't have time to prep my meals. you don't understand.  if you take some time on the weekend, like you said, you make a big batch and you can, pretty much everything you could freeze for the week, it saves you so much time during the week. And not just time, but stress.

Jaclyn Albin (47:29)

Mm -hmm.

Jollie (47:48)

Because I know in our family, like, we don't fight over finances or this or that. Like, we fight over, like, what are we going to have for dinner? And it's like the single most stressful part of our family.

Jaclyn Albin (47:48)

Yes.

love that you brought this up because I really think anything that makes our lives a little easier takes an initial time investment. And so people do have to overcome that hump. So right now, I'll just use an example that I'm making some changes to the way our finances are managed in hopes that it's a better financial decision for us longer term. But it's taking time for me to automate where and how I pay bills and things like that.

And so anything like that that we're investing in will take initial effort. so I think I would always come back to people to say it matters more than anything else. So it's worth investing in. And we have to get there philosophically to get there logistically. And then telling people, it takes you twice as long. I mean, it takes you like the same amount of time to double something, maybe a little bit more time if you're chopping vegetables.

Another big breakfast thing for us is I'll make homemade muffins a lot that are oat flour based or incorporate different whole grains or legumes into the muffin and then I'll freeze a batch for the following week. So every time you meal prep something, you can just say, can I double this and will it freeze? Another quick thing to just look up on the internet, can I freeze this particular thing? And I think as we get into the habit pattern, it's not so overwhelming. So I for one go to the store once a week

buy the whole week's groceries, sometimes use Instacart, and then we have a menu on the refrigerator. This is what we're having Monday. This is what we're having Tuesday. I have one day every week that I call smorgasbord leftovers, which means there's one serving of this and one serving of that. Choose your own adventure. And so that's okay too, normalizing leftovers and that families have to adjust to that. That's real life. And I really have our eating out down to once a month now, and that includes takeout. And so usually we're gonna

Jollie (49:50)

wow. That's huge.

Jaclyn Albin (49:53)

I know, right? We're gonna go for a nice dinner now. It's like a date night or something fun because we're doing it so infrequently because we always have food that is easy to throw together at home. And so that takes time to build. People shouldn't expect for that level of kind of you're in a groove to happen right away. Just pick one thing.

Jollie (50:09)

Yep. Yeah, it's gonna take some time. You know what I've found for myself personally? I've gamified this and like not through an app or anything like that, but it's just, it's become so much fun trying new things. Like in South Texas, we have the privilege of having tons of fresh peppers. There's Anaheim and poblano and jalapeno and all these different ones that I'm like, what is this?

And you just, you you try it and you try different marinades, you try different herbs and some of them are horrible. Like, okay, not gonna do that again. But you keep trying and it's really becoming fun.

Jaclyn Albin (50:43)

Hahaha

Yeah. Well, and that's where it becomes an adventure and a hobby that actually brings joy to your life and is beneficial. And I love that you brought that up. Sometimes they don't work out normalizing that. And I always joke I'm sort of a mediocre cook. I work with a chef on the regular basis, and her skills are definitely above mine. But this is a skill like anything else in our lives. But it's something that we want to pass on to our children.

just like we want them to know how to do their own laundry, we want them to know how to feed themselves. And what are the options? Your favorites don't have to be my favorites. How do we make it adaptable? How do we make it modifiable? And how do we also kind of say, all right, you know what, sorry, tonight's dinner is on the menu, it's not your favorite, thanks for having a good attitude. And if you flat out refuse to eat it, we always have some pecans in the pantry and some apples. So not making a second meal for kids, I think, is important.

They can choose to eat or not eat the primary meal, but keeping the secondary options pretty boring.

Jollie (51:45)

You know, I just, this idea, because I'm, instead of doom scrolling now on social, I've got my folders for recipes. And if I'm on TikTok or Instagram, like almost like five a day, I'm like, my God, that looks so good. I'm gonna try that. I was just thinking, like if you have, I know we both have younger kids. So we've been talking about that a lot, but like, you can do something really fun with your kids and their friends and plan something and have their parents come over and like have the kids.

Plan a meal or help them prepare it. mean, there's so many different things you could do once you realize it's okay. It's okay to try, yeah. Yeah, this is fun.

Jaclyn Albin (52:23)

Yeah, it's a safe space to mess up. I love that. And the other thing I'll throw out is you don't have to take away the traditional foods that, say, teenagers want to eat. If I have a group of junior high boys over here, I am not only going to give them a veggie tray, but I am going to give them a veggie tray. But I'm going to make it look really fun. And I'm going to have all different dips. And we're going to have lots of options. And they'll also be some of the food that they're expecting to have if they're coming over.

But how do we shift the narrative just a little bit and say, hey, guess what? That veggie tray, it was clean. They ate it. So let's stop assuming that kids and adults don't want to have access to beautiful, colorful fruits and vegetables and other options. Let's make it fun. I love the gamification. Have a family contest. That would be a great thing to do over the holidays. Who can modify a traditional family recipe by adding XYZ category of food?

Jollie (53:19)

It'd be so fun. love going back to the your teenagers, because I remember I'm glad you brought that up. You don't tell them that you're bringing out that you just put it there and they ate it and they ate it all, right? Yeah.

Jaclyn Albin (53:28)

No, you just put it there. I mean, they're playing video games. They're not talking to you anyway. So when you don't announce it, you don't make it a big deal. It just is. Like if I put out a loaf of banana bread, I don't say that contains oats, almond flour, and blah, I mean, like you're just going to put it out there and let them eat it. And if they don't like it, I'm sorry. I'll make something different for you next time.

Jollie (53:49)

This is great.

This is you. This has been wonderful. This has been a lot of fun. I've learned so much from you. How how many culinary medicine programs do we have around the country right now?

Jaclyn Albin (54:03)

Great question. We are trying to get a handle on that. And I'll tell you, there are a couple of reviews published in the literature. I published a review early 2023 that is already extremely outdated, looking at medical schools. There are probably somewhere between 60 and 70 medical schools that are teaching culinary medicine. However, the funding is a tough game right now. I personally, our medical school classes are unfunded. So we sort of donate.

other resources to that. But a lot of residency programs. So if you're talking about doctors who are training to be gastroenterologists, endocrinologists, cardiologists, or pediatricians, a lot of them are taking classes, family medicine doctors from my team. And this is happening all over the US. And we're actually working on a project right now to say what types of doctors are getting this knowledge and where, and do case studies to help the programs that want to add this to the education. And then in terms of patient care,

I would say that's a little bit newer in its formality. There have always been amazing cooking programs available. The VA hospital is a great example. They have a huge network of healthy cooking programs across the VA. And they've been able to sort of standardize that offering because of their centralization of resources. And so then we look at different health systems.

Most health systems don't have something like what I'm doing where we're actually making this a patient care experience and health insurance benefit. But I think you're going to only see growth for that because it's the future. It's what the patients want. It's what we want. And we're all frustrated with where medicine is in the medical community. We want people to thrive. That's really what this is about. Instead of surviving, let's learn how to thrive in the midst of our challenges and health circumstances.

and empowering people to do that.

Jollie (55:54)

Yeah, so as you're talking, I'm just thinking, know, a doctor doesn't have to be certified or board certified in culinary medicine to do this. Can any primary care doc or pediatrician or how?

Jaclyn Albin (56:07)

So I think that's a great question. the answer is, someone needs a little bit of additional training. It doesn't have to be the doctor necessarily. I would say dieticians are a wonderful resource. Dieticians are experts in nutrition. Doctors are experts in the medical intersection. But neither one of those groups get culinary training. And so if you really want to be able to work with people on the culinary side, it does take someone with additional culinary training.

And so there is a certification called CCMS, which stands for Certified Culinary Medicine Specialist, that both my dietician and I have. I do believe that someone who wants to do this in patient care should look into that. It's not that hard to get. And I think it builds the background and the network across the United States of people doing this work to ensure that it's at a high standard. So I wouldn't say your average doctor is ready to roll with a program.

that doesn't have additional training in either culinary or lifestyle medicine that's gonna enhance their skills. Dietitians, closer, they're closer. But either having a chef partnership, that would be a great way around it, is to say, get a doctor, a dietitian, and a chef together, put them on a team and say, okay, the three of us together have the skillset to run this, and then you cross -pollinate your skillsets.

Jollie (57:06)

Okay.

That's fantastic. I, you know, down in Boerne, we're at the very early stages of trying to make Boerne the healthiest small town in Texas. And I know this is going to take off. I just have a feeling. We have our very first event next Wednesday at my daughter's elementary school. We got a monthly family fitness night approved. We're going to spread that. One of the other thoughts I had, we've got some amazing, amazing restaurants in Boerne just as most towns across the country do, with these incredible chefs.

Jaclyn Albin (57:43)

Love it.

Mm

Jollie (57:52)

Like how can we take this knowledge and get it out into the community? And you know, that might be a great way. I mean, I can go out and talk to the docs and yeah, talk to the docs, the pediatricians, the family medicine docs. There's plenty of dieticians in here that they work with. Yeah, just get everybody at the same table and.

Jaclyn Albin (58:01)

I find a champion.

It's gotta be a team -based effort. None of us have it all figured out. None of us have all the tools. But when we come together, we have, you actually our chefs at UT Southwestern came to me after I had given a presentation and said, we wanna be part of this. How do we help? And so we're now working on highlighting culinary medicine approved menu items at the medical school cafeteria that the whole campus is eating at, and they're gonna lower the price.

so that it's not only highlighting why it's good for you, but making it more accessible to see if we can increase uptake. So creative stuff like that, that chefs are leading, it's all over the United States. There is a certification in culinary medicine for chefs as well called CCMP, Certified Culinary Medicine Professional. So great community of chefs who are taking leadership in this movement also. Because we all love food. We all come together around food. Everyone loves it.

Jollie (58:52)

wow. OK.

this has been fantastic. Yeah, this is this. Yeah, you just you just have such a feeling this is going to go in so many different directions that we just haven't even thought about yet. So this has been a lot of fun. Thank you so much. Is there is there anything that you'd like to leave us with that you didn't touch on or I mean, we had a lot.

Jaclyn Albin (59:08)

I agree. I agree.

You know, we covered a lot. I guess I would just say, don't make space for shame about food. Let it go. Don't say, I wish I had known this or that. I just know what I know now and I'm moving forward. And what does that look like? Choose one small change that affects your life and has a trickle effect on the community around you, because that's how we do this. And I love the movement that you're doing in Boerne is about grassroots engagement.

That's where real change happens is when we lift each other up with our small wins. The small wins matter so much. So look for small wins and share them.

Jollie (59:52)

That's so much fun. That's so much fun. wonderful. All right. So if how do folks get in touch with you? Where are you active at?

Jaclyn Albin (59:59)

Sure. Well, I'm on LinkedIn. I'm also on just Jaclyn Albin and LinkedIn. You'll find me there. And I talk a lot about our research and some of the national efforts that we're doing to bring culinary medicine forward. And then if you just want like my everyday mom life, I post on Instagram at JLAlbinMD. And that's an easy way to keep up with what we're up to. And of course, I'm happy to see anyone who wants to come up from Boerne in our culinary medicine clinic.

Check out our UT Southwestern Culinary Medicine page for the video of what patients are saying and think about how you might build that in your community.

Jollie (1:00:34)

All right, we'll do. All right, Dr. Albin thank you so much. This has been wonderful. All right, bye now.

Jaclyn Albin (1:00:38)

Absolutely. Cheers.