What Is Culinary Therapy? Exploring Food, Healing & Wellness

When most people hear the word therapy, they probably picture sitting across from a therapist and talking about what is happening in their lives. But therapy does not always have to happen through conversation alone.

As a therapist, I have found that sometimes people can communicate, explore, learn, and process in different ways when their hands are engaged in an activity. For me, culinary therapy is one of those approaches.

Culinary therapy is the intentional use of culinary activities within a therapeutic relationship to support identified therapeutic goals.

That might mean preparing a meal, working with ingredients, exploring sensory experiences, learning a culinary skill, creating something together, or using food and cooking as an entry point into a deeper therapeutic conversation.

The food is important.

But the food is not necessarily the entire point.

Sometimes, what happens while we are making the food is where the therapeutic work begins.

Culinary Therapy Is About More Than Cooking

Cooking is something most of us do for practical reasons. We need to eat, so we prepare food.

But when culinary activities are intentionally incorporated into therapy, the activity can become a vehicle for exploring other areas of a person's life.

A person may be working on confidence. Another may be developing coping strategies. Someone else may be working on communication, emotional regulation, executive functioning, relationships, identity, or independence.

The culinary activity provides an opportunity to practice.

Instead of simply talking about confidence, a person might successfully complete a recipe they initially thought they couldn't make.

Instead of only discussing problem-solving, they might encounter a real situation in which an ingredient is missing and have to figure out what to do.

Instead of talking abstractly about communication, two people might have to work together in a kitchen where they need to share space, divide responsibilities, and communicate clearly.

The activity creates an experience that can then become part of the therapeutic process.

The Kitchen Can Become a Therapeutic Environment

There is something different about working alongside someone rather than simply sitting across from them.

The kitchen gives us something to focus on.

We have ingredients to gather, tasks to complete, decisions to make, and a meal to create.

That can sometimes make conversation feel more natural.

A person who may struggle to sit down and immediately talk about difficult experiences may find it easier to begin talking while washing vegetables or preparing ingredients.

The therapist can observe how the person approaches tasks, responds to mistakes, handles frustration, communicates, makes decisions, and adapts to unexpected situations.

The culinary activity doesn't replace the therapeutic relationship.

It becomes another way of engaging within it.

Cooking Creates Opportunities to Experience Success

One of the things I find particularly valuable about culinary work is that it can create tangible experiences of accomplishment.

You begin with ingredients.

You follow a process.

You make decisions.

You solve problems.

And eventually, something exists that wasn't there before.

You made it.

For someone who doesn't feel particularly capable, that experience can matter.

Maybe they learned how to safely use a knife. Maybe they successfully prepared a dish. Maybe they tried an ingredient they had never used before. Maybe they made a mistake and discovered that the meal could still be saved.

These moments can become opportunities to explore self-efficacy—the belief that we are capable of accomplishing something.

Research in culinary medicine is increasingly examining this relationship between hands-on cooking and confidence. A 2022 scoping review of 33 culinary medicine and culinary nutrition studies found improvements in culinary skills and nutrition knowledge across many of the programs reviewed, with some studies also reporting changes in dietary behaviors.

A culinary medicine program on Chicago's South Side similarly found increases in participants' confidence related to kitchen skills and chronic disease management, particularly among those who attended multiple sessions.

The research isn't saying that cooking magically fixes emotional or physical health problems.

It is showing us something much more useful:

Hands-on learning can create opportunities for people to experience themselves as capable.

Cooking Engages the Senses

Culinary therapy also offers something that traditional talk-based settings may not always provide: sensory engagement.

Cooking involves sight, smell, sound, touch, and taste.

We see the colors of fresh ingredients. We smell herbs and spices. We hear food sizzling. We feel textures. We taste and make adjustments.

That sensory experience can provide opportunities to practice paying attention to the present moment.

For some people, sensory experiences can also open doors to conversations about memory, comfort, culture, safety, preferences, and personal experiences.

A smell may bring back a childhood memory.

A particular texture may remind someone of a family meal.

A recipe may remind someone of a person they love.

Food can become a doorway into stories that might not have emerged through a direct question.

Cooking Teaches Us How to Respond When Things Go Wrong

Recipes don't always cooperate.

Something burns.

The sauce is too thin.

The food doesn't taste right.

An ingredient is missing.

The timing gets off.

Cooking gives us opportunities to practice responding to those moments.

Do we panic?

Do we give up?

Do we ask for help?

Do we problem-solve?

Do we try something different?

Do we become frustrated and walk away?

Or can we pause, assess the situation, and try again?

These are not only culinary questions.

They are life skills.

When used intentionally in therapy, experiences like these can provide opportunities to explore how a person responds to frustration, uncertainty, mistakes, and unexpected changes.

Cooking Can Create Space for Creativity

There is structure in cooking, but there is also room for creativity.

A recipe provides a starting point. From there, we can make choices.

We can change an ingredient. Adjust seasoning. Experiment with texture. Try a different presentation. Combine ideas.

That balance between structure and freedom can be powerful.

For someone who has become accustomed to believing there is only one right way to do things, cooking can provide a low-stakes opportunity to experiment.

And sometimes creativity makes room for self-expression when words don't come easily.

Food Carries Memory

Food has an extraordinary relationship with memory.

The smell of something cooking can transport us back decades.

A recipe can remind us of a grandparent.

A holiday dish can bring an entire family gathering back to life.

A meal can remind us of a home we no longer live in.

Sometimes food memories are joyful.

Sometimes they are complicated.

Sometimes they involve grief.

That complexity matters.

Food can connect us to people who are no longer here. Preparing a family recipe can become a way of remembering someone. It can also open conversations about loss, family relationships, identity, and change.

The recipe may be simple.

The story attached to it may not be.

Food Is Also Culture

Culinary therapy cannot be separated from culture.

What we eat, how we prepare it, who taught us to cook, when we eat certain foods, and what foods we associate with celebration all tell us something about who we are.

This is particularly important when working with culturally diverse communities.

We should be cautious about approaching food only through the question of what people should eliminate or change.

Instead, we can ask:

What does this food mean to you?

Who taught you how to prepare it?

What memories are connected to it?

What role does food play in your family?

What does sharing a meal mean in your culture?

These questions allow food to become a pathway toward understanding identity and lived experience.

BIPOC Foodways Are Part of This Story

For Black and Brown communities, food can carry generations of history.

Cooking traditions have been shaped by African foodways, Indigenous knowledge, migration, agriculture, enslavement, adaptation, segregation, economic circumstances, entrepreneurship, family traditions, faith communities, and regional cultures.

Recipes have been passed down through generations.

Sometimes they were written down.

Sometimes they weren't.

Sometimes the recipe was simply, "Watch me."

A person learned by standing beside an elder and observing.

That knowledge is valuable.

It is culinary knowledge, but it is also cultural knowledge.

When we explore food and wellness, we should be able to hold both the nutritional conversation and the cultural conversation at the same time.

We don't have to erase culture in the name of health.

We can learn, adapt, preserve, and make informed choices.

Culinary Therapy and Therapeutic Culinary Arts Are Related—but Different

This distinction is particularly important to me because I work with culinary experiences in more than one setting.

Culinary therapy is the clinical side of this work. As a therapist, I can intentionally incorporate culinary activities into therapeutic practice with clients when those activities support identified therapeutic goals.

But I also use what I call Therapeutic Culinary Arts with people who are not therapy clients.

That distinction matters.

Therapeutic Culinary Arts uses culinary experiences as a vehicle for wellness, learning, creativity, confidence, connection, cultural expression, and practical life skills without positioning the experience as psychotherapy.

That might happen with a community group, a family, young people, older adults, students, or participants in a wellness program.

The goal isn't necessarily to treat a mental health condition.

The goal may simply be to create an environment where people can learn, make something, connect with others, express themselves, build skills, and experience the satisfaction of creating something nourishing.

Why This Distinction Matters

We don't have to call every positive experience "therapy."

A community cooking class can be valuable without being therapy.

A family cooking together can strengthen relationships without being therapy.

A child learning to prepare a meal can build confidence without being therapy.

An older adult teaching a family recipe can preserve culture and create connection without being therapy.

And when culinary activities are intentionally incorporated into a therapeutic relationship by a qualified practitioner, they can become part of a clinical intervention.

These experiences exist along a continuum.

Cooking can be recreation.

Cooking can be education.

Cooking can be cultural practice.

Cooking can be community building.

Cooking can be part of wellness.

And cooking can also be intentionally incorporated into therapy.

The distinction allows us to honor each of those experiences without confusing them.

The Research Is Growing

The research surrounding culinary medicine and food-based interventions is growing.

A 2022 scoping review found promising evidence related to culinary skills, nutrition knowledge, and dietary behaviors.

Research from Chicago's South Side provides an especially interesting community example of culinary programming connecting cooking skills, chronic disease management, and community.

Other reviews have found promising results from culinary medicine programs while also emphasizing that the evidence base needs more rigorous research and longer-term studies.

That is where I think we should be honest about the field.

There is promise.

There is practice.

There is research.

And there is still much more to learn.

We don't need to exaggerate the science to recognize the possibilities.

The Kitchen Is More Than a Place to Make Food

When I think about culinary therapy and Therapeutic Culinary Arts, I don't think only about recipes.

I think about what happens around the recipe.

Someone learns.

Someone remembers.

Someone creates.

Someone takes a risk.

Someone laughs.

Someone asks for help.

Someone discovers they can do something they didn't think they could do.

Someone teaches another person.

Someone shares a story.

Someone sits down at a table and realizes they aren't alone.

That's the part of culinary work that interests me most.

The meal is important.

But the human experience surrounding the meal is part of the nourishment, too.

So, What Is Culinary Therapy?

Culinary therapy is not simply "cooking as therapy."

It is the intentional use of culinary experiences within therapeutic practice to support therapeutic goals.

And Therapeutic Culinary Arts takes some of those same possibilities into community and wellness settings, where people can experience the benefits of cooking, creating, learning, and connecting without being therapy clients.

Both approaches recognize something that human beings have understood for a very long time:

Food brings people together.

It teaches us.

It tells our stories.

It connects us to our families and cultures.

It gives us opportunities to create.

And sometimes, the act of preparing food can help us discover something about ourselves.

Know Good & Well

At Know Good & Well, I believe wellness is multidimensional.

It isn't only about what we eat. It is also about how we live, how we connect, what we create, what we remember, what we learn, and how we care for ourselves and one another.

My work with culinary therapy and Therapeutic Culinary Arts is part of that larger philosophy.

I am interested in what happens when we stop thinking about food only as something we consume and start thinking about it as something we grow, prepare, create, share, remember, and experience together.

Because sometimes nourishment happens on the plate.

And sometimes it happens while we're making the meal.

Research & Further Reading

Asher, R. C., Shrewsbury, V. A., Bucher, T., & Collins, C. E. (2022). Culinary medicine and culinary nutrition education for individuals with the capacity to influence health related behaviour change: A scoping review. Journal of Human Nutrition and Dietetics, 35(2), 388–395.

Mozaffarian, D., et al. (2024). “Food Is Medicine” Strategies for Nutrition Security and Cardiometabolic Health Equity: JACC State-of-the-Art Review. Journal of the American College of Cardiology, 83(8), 843–864.

Empowering Future Physicians and Communities on Chicago's South Side through a 3-Arm Culinary Medicine Program. This study examined culinary medicine programming involving medical students, community members managing chronic illness, and public middle-school students in Chicago.

Culinary Medicine as Innovative Nutrition Education for Medical Students: A Scoping Review. Academic Medicine, 2023. The review examined the growing use of hands-on culinary education in medical training and identified promising outcomes alongside important limitations in the current evidence base.

A Note on Terminology: The research literature uses several overlapping terms—including culinary therapy, culinary medicine, culinary nutrition, therapeutic cooking, and food-based interventions. These terms should not be treated as interchangeable. Know Good & Well uses culinary therapy to describe the intentional incorporation of culinary activities into the author's therapeutic practice and Therapeutic Culinary Arts to describe culinary-based wellness and educational experiences outside of psychotherapy.