Preventing Type 2 Diabetes with Home Cooking: Current Evidence and Future Potential
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Published on: August 20, 2007
Rani Polak1,2, Amir Tirosh3, Barbara Livingston4
1Department of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation, Harvard Medical School, Institute of Lifestyle Medicine, Spaulding Rehabilitation Hospital, 300, 1st Avenue, Boston, MA, 02129, USA. rpolak@partners.org.
Purpose Of Review:
Various dietary regimes have proven effective in preventing diabetes, yet its prevalence is growing. This review's goals are to examine the relationship between home cooking and diabetes and to present the literature on home cooking education programs as a novel strategy to improve adherence to healthy nutrition, thus decreasing the risk of diabetes.
Recent Findings:
Consumption of home-cooked food is linked to healthier nutrition and decreased risk of diabetes. Further, home cooking interventions have a short-term positive impact on nutritional intake of both children and adults, and on diabetes prevention. Well-designed randomized controlled studies are needed to rigorously evaluate the long-term impact of home cooking interventions on cooking behavior, dietary intake, diabetes, and healthcare costs. Culinary education is an emerging field that aims to change nutrition education paradigms. Clinicians can empower patients to adopt home cooking by role modeling home cooking themselves, including home cooking content in their medical encounters, and through comprehensive lifestyle medicine interventions.
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