This pediatrician’s prescription: Food is medicine

A year and a half ago, after selling the pediatric medicine practice she’d spent 25 years building in Bountiful, Dr. Bonnie Feola paused to take a breath. She needed to take time to map out the next step of her life.

As she was moving her books into her home office she made a telling discovery: she had as many cookbooks as she had medical books.

What if, she mused, she could combine her love of pediatrics with her love of cooking?

A “deep dive” into the possibilities followed, and to her delight she discovered an emerging field of medicine that blends the art of food with the science of medicine.

It’s called “culinary medicine.”

Last summer, Dr. Bonnie, as she likes to be called, enrolled in a Harvard Medical School online culinary medicine course. Once she obtained that degree, she enrolled in the Park City Culinary Institute to become a certified chef.

Thus armed, the doctor/chef set up her new pediatric culinary medicine practice. It’s an online business she debuted this week titled Nibbles and Sprouts (nibblesandsprouts.com).

Her medical career has officially moved into the “food is medicine” phase.

The goal: to help children, and their parents, “overcome barriers to eating healthy.”

During her two-and-a-half decades as a general practice pediatrician, Dr. Bonnie saw steady indicators that eating habits are continually headed in the wrong direction, setting kids up for health consequences in the future. One example is the increase in triglycerides being found in children. High levels of triglycerides, or fatty acids, are often indicators of diets with too much sugar, saturated fats and refined foods. The numbers keep rising — often, Dr. Bonnie points out, “in normal looking children” who are not obese.

It’s also alarming that obesity rates keep rising; again, a reflection of the wrong kind of diet.

“There is definitely a link between health and food,” she said, “and I noticed a big gap between what I could talk to parents about and the recommendations I could give them for their children’s health, and then being able to spend enough time to show them how to actually make the necessary changes in improved diet and stress how important it is.”

Would-be patients can sign up on the Nibbles and Sprouts website for in-depth consultations with Dr. Bonnie, but the information is also available to anyone at no cost.

“Anybody can get on my website and see plenty of free information,” Feola said. She has links about allergies and nutrition and ways to get kids to eat new foods. She offers “Five Practical Tips for Picky Eaters” and “Natural Help for your Child’s Constipation.” She lists a lot of her own recipes.

Do not use food as a reward or punishment, she advises, and foods should not be labeled as good foods and bad foods. Also, try not to put foods on the “denied” list.

She remembers when her three kids were young and they asked why they couldn’t have Lunchables in their lunches like the other kids. So they all went to the store and she let them choose the Lunchables they wanted to try.

At the end of the week, the kids said they didn’t want Lunchables any more. They’d rather go back to the healthy lunches their mom packed for them.

“I was surprised, but also very pleased,” Dr. Bonnie remembers. “But they made that decision themselves, as opposed to ‘you can’t have Lunchables,’ labeling them as good or bad food.”

Her target demographic is newborns to age ten. Give Dr. Bonnie your kids early and let her set them up for life.

She doesn’t downplay the difficulty in developing good eating habits for children. Our fast food, processed food culture does not make it easy. The trick, she says, is to not be too extreme, to educate, and to always remember that kids won’t eat it if it doesn’t taste good. Make sure the alternatives to donuts and hamburgers are tasty ones.

“I have very specific tips and tricks that chefs know about,” says the newly minted chef.

“It’s a big problem, it’s a big lift,” she says, “but you know, one mouth at a time.

“I went into pediatrics in the first place because I wanted to help kids be healthy. I think western medicine unfortunately focuses on ‘when you get sick we’ll help you get better,’ as opposed to ‘let’s prevent you from getting sick in the first place. I think ‘food is medicine’ speaks right to that. One of the things that’s been in the news, particularly around culinary medicine, is that poor diet quality is one of the leading predictors of chronic health diseases in the United States today. Let’s be healthier, let’s feel good with how we’re eating, and prevent these chronic diseases.”