Culinary Medicine - 2025 Edition

Reviewed by Alisha Miller, Assistant Professor, Anderson University on 7/11/25

Comprehensiveness rating: 5 see less

I found the open textbook to be an valuable and good resource that bridges a gap between nutrition science and practical health application. The book delievers a well laid out explortation between food, nutrition, and health. The book covers essential topics in nutrition and does a nice job supporting the text with evidence-based recomendations and references. For students in Exercise Science, Athletic Training, or allied health programs, this approach supports a deeper understanding of how nutrition directly affects client outcomes, performance, recovery, and chronic disease prevention. The book does a nice job with information and case studies. It is limited in the information regarding special populations such as pediatrics, sports nutrition, and geratirc populations. Also, adding in instructor resouces would be helpful.

Content Accuracy rating: 5

The book does a nice job addressing evidence-based research and providing additional resources.

Relevance/Longevity rating: 5

The textbook does a great job aligning its main purpose food as medicine with the continued movement in healthcare for lifestyle based interventions. I really appreciated the shopping lists and food labeling information. These are important concepts for students to understand and are easy ways for our students or their furture clients to educated themselves. The textbook also follows and aligns with national guidelines. The textbook could expand the discussion on technology and this could be incorporated into make health choices and using food as medicine.

Clarity rating: 5

This text book is well written and would be easy for non-nutriton majors to understand and the information is presented in a manner that it can be practically applied to daily knowledge. The book is well structured and flows well. The visual aids and case studies tie in nicely to reinforce knowledge.

Consistency rating: 5

The chapters are well laid out and laid out in the same manner for each chapter. The table of contents is easy to navigate. Throughout the text the authors contunie to consistently discuss how food choices influcence health outcome and daily behavior. One area of improvement could be; being consistent to how in depth each chapter delves. The chapters on hydration and or supplimentation could be more detailed and expanded on.

Modularity rating: 5

The table of contents provides an easy way for chapters and content to be divided into weekly learning topics. The case studies provide the answers which I appreciate, however since the answers are present it would be hard to assign these for credit. The text could also be easily paired down or paired with other supplimental reading. Each individual chapter could be easily paired with other readings. Adding Instructor Tools would be a bonus as well.

Organization/Structure/Flow rating: 5

The topics flow well from one area of nutrition to the next. The chapters are clearly defined and there is continous integration of clinical and culinary topics.

Interface rating: 4

The textbook is easily accessed and can be downloaded as needed by students. If may benefit from more interactive media content.

Grammatical Errors rating: 5

Medical and nutritional terms are used correctly. Definitions are provided terms that may not be fimiliar to all students.T

Cultural Relevance rating: 4

The textbook does a nice job addressing specific mainstream/current diets. It is consistent with addressing the food choices should be tailored to lifestyle and the the individual. The text also does address food insecurity, affodability, and access which for many students may be eye opening. This helps students understand specific barriers can influence food choices. The text book does lack detailed understanding of food choices and influences on a more global scale. Also the case examples are fairly traditional and generalized and may not represent clients from different backgrounds. Overall, the text does demonstrate cultural awareness.

Comments

Overall, this is a quality text book for students in the allied health fields. The text can easily be used for a full semester nutrition course or sections of the text could be adapted and used with other resources duing a semester. It is easy to navigate and provided sturents with evidence base information to help expand their knowledge base of nutrition.