We are what we eat, so the say and goes.

That age-old wisdom is behind the emergence of a new field in medicine.

Ali Rogan brings us this report at the intersection of arts and health as part of our Canvas series.

Today we are going to be cutting a whole bunch of things.

In this professional grade kitchen, classes in session, but it's not culinary school.

And these students aren't chefs in training.

In fact, some say they hardly cook at all.

We have a few squashes.

This is a spaghetti squash.

They are third and fourth year medical students taking the culinary medicine elective at George Washington University.

It's a growing field that combines the art of cooking and the science of medicine with the goal of improving patients' health through food.

We take all of that information that we learn in the first two years, the pre-clinical years of medicine,

biochemistry, physiology, metabolism, et cetera, and translate that into the conversation

that you can have in the examination room with your patient about food. Dr. Timothy Harlan

is the executive director of the culinary medicine program here.

Come on, I'll show you.

As a med student, he wrote about the link between food and health for cardiovascular patients.

Later, while working at Tulane Medical School, he set up a teaching kitchen.

For a while, we worked out of an ad hoc kitchen at Tulane, and we would go out to community centers.

But then Dean's offices and universities see how valuable it is.

He says the value is in empowering doctors to talk to their patients about food.

Only a small percentage of physicians say they feel comfortable doing that,

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