Culinary Medicine in Viet Nam: What It Is, What the Evidence Supports, and Its Potential Role in Healthcare

Culinary Medicine in Viet Nam: What It Is, What the Evidence Supports, and Its Potential Role in Healthcare

Last reviewed: 29 September 2026

Knowing what constitutes a healthy diet and being able to eat that way in everyday life are not the same thing. A person may understand that vegetables, fruit, legumes, whole grains, nuts, seeds, and other nutrient-dense foods are good for health, yet still struggle with what to buy, how to prepare it, how to make it taste good, how to fit it into family meals, or how to do all of this within limited time and budget.

Culinary medicine has developed partly in response to this gap between nutrition knowledge and everyday practice. It brings evidence-based nutrition closer to the kitchen, helping translate dietary recommendations into food choices, cooking skills, meal preparation, and eating patterns that people can realistically use and sustain.

The field is attracting growing international interest, but it is still evolving. Culinary medicine should not be presented as a replacement for clinical nutrition care, medical treatment, or public health nutrition. Nor should it be reduced to the idea that particular foods can “cure” disease. Its most useful role may be more practical: connecting nutrition science with the skills, culture, preferences, resources, and circumstances that shape what people actually eat.

What is culinary medicine?

There is no single universally adopted definition of culinary medicine. A 2025 multidisciplinary working group of 30 participants from healthcare, culinary, foodservice, nutrition, research, education, and community settings concluded that the field has evolved across different professional and community contexts. Rather than producing one definition for everyone, the group developed stakeholder-specific definitions reflecting how culinary medicine may be understood and used in healthcare, foodservice, education, and community settings. [1]

For the purposes of this article, a practical working description is:

Culinary medicine is an evolving, interdisciplinary approach that translates evidence-based nutrition science into practical food choices, cooking skills, and culturally relevant eating practices that can support health and healthcare.

This is a working description for this article, not an official or legally recognized definition in Viet Nam.

The word “translates” is important. Nutrition science can tell us that reducing sodium can help lower blood pressure. Culinary medicine asks what that recommendation means when someone is preparing soup, broth, dipping sauces, stir-fried vegetables, noodles, or a family meal. Nutrition science can support greater consumption of vegetables, legumes, and other nutrient-dense foods. Culinary medicine asks how these foods can be prepared affordably, conveniently, safely, and in ways people will actually want to eat again.

This practical dimension is now explicitly recognized within Lifestyle Medicine education. The 2025 Lifestyle Medicine Core Competencies include understanding the practice of culinary medicine and its role in sustainable healthy eating behavior. They also updated the food-processing competency to focus on both the level and type of food processing, rather than treating all processing as equivalent. [12]

At the same time, professional standards specific to culinary medicine remain under development. A 2026 consultation with international experts produced a preliminary interprofessional framework covering areas such as nutrition science, culinary arts and foodservice, health promotion and behavior change, food science, food systems and sustainability, cultural diversity, and communication. The authors describe the framework as an initial foundation requiring further refinement and external validation, rather than a finalized universal competency standard. [2]

Why could culinary medicine be relevant in Viet Nam?

Viet Nam has a diverse and deeply rooted food culture, with substantial regional variation in ingredients, dishes, preparation methods, and eating practices. A Vietnamese approach to culinary medicine should therefore not begin by asking how to replace local foods with an imported diet. A more useful question is how current nutrition evidence can be translated into Vietnamese meals, ingredients, cooking methods, shopping habits, eating environments, and family life.

There are also important nutritional challenges. In Viet Nam's nationally representative World Health Organization STEPS survey conducted in 2021 among adults aged 18 to 69 years, 59.0% consumed fewer than five servings of fruit and vegetables per day. Estimated average salt intake was approximately 8.1 grams per day, lower than the 9.4 grams estimated in 2015 but still above the World Health Organization recommendation of less than 5 grams per day for adults. The proportion of adults with a body mass index of 25 kg/m² or higher, meaning overweight including obesity, increased from 15.6% in 2015 to 19.5% in 2021, while raised blood pressure increased from 18.9% to 26.2%. These figures describe the 2021 survey population and should not be interpreted as new prevalence estimates for 2026. [3]

The policy context also supports greater attention to practical nutrition. Viet Nam's National Nutrition Strategy for 2021–2030, with a vision to 2045, emphasizes appropriate nutrition throughout the life course, equitable access to nutrition and food, and approaches suited to different populations, localities, regions, and communities. [4]

There has been an important additional development in 2026. The Law on Disease Prevention No. 114/2025/QH15, effective from 1 July 2026, includes a dedicated chapter on nutrition in disease prevention. It states that nutrition in disease prevention should be implemented throughout the life course, according to age and population group, and should be appropriate to the physical status, culture, and economic circumstances of people in Viet Nam. The law identifies measures including nutritional screening, assessment and monitoring; nutrition counseling and guidance; nutrition information, education and communication; and appropriate nutrition interventions. [5]

On the same day the law took effect, the Ministry of Health issued Decision No. 1982/QĐ-BYT, providing professional guidance on measures for implementing nutrition in disease prevention. [6] These developments do not create a separate licensed profession or scope of practice called culinary medicine, but they strengthen the policy context for practical, culturally appropriate, evidence-informed approaches to nutrition.

Culinary medicine may add value at the practical end of this continuum. Telling someone to “eat less salt” is different from helping them understand how flavor can be developed with herbs, spices, aromatics, acidity, texture, and cooking methods while gradually reducing salt and high-sodium condiments. Telling a family to “eat more vegetables” is different from helping them identify affordable vegetables they already know, prepare them efficiently, preserve taste and texture, and make them a regular part of meals. Nutrition recommendations can fail when they stop at information.

Culinary medicine is more than a cooking class

Cooking is central to culinary medicine, but cooking alone does not make an activity culinary medicine. A general cooking class may teach technique, enjoyment, or cuisine. Culinary medicine adds an explicit evidence-based health or healthcare purpose.

Depending on the audience and setting, a program may combine nutrition science with ingredient selection, food-label interpretation, meal planning, food preparation, flavor development, recipe adaptation, food safety, behavior-change skills, and discussion of barriers such as cost, time, access, family preferences, and cooking facilities. Teaching can take place in physical kitchens, healthcare or university settings, community spaces, or virtual environments in which participants cook from home. Recent medical-education literature documents in-person, virtual, and blended approaches. [11]

This does not mean culinary medicine should become a prescriptive food ideology. There is no single menu appropriate for every person, disease, age group, cultural background, or economic situation. The World Health Organization's updated 2026 guidance emphasizes four core principles of a healthy diet: adequacy, balance, moderation, and diversity. A healthy diet must also be safe. [13]

The same need for nuance applies to food processing. Frozen vegetables, pasteurized milk, tofu, fermented foods, canned legumes, and packaged snack foods have all undergone processing, but they are not nutritionally equivalent. The 2025 Lifestyle Medicine Core Competencies deliberately updated the relevant competency to consider both the level and type of food processing and their relationship with health outcomes. [12]

What does the evidence actually support?

The evidence base for culinary medicine is growing, but it is not equally strong for every outcome. Current studies provide useful evidence for outcomes such as nutrition knowledge, cooking confidence, self-efficacy, counseling skills, perceived barriers to healthy eating, and some dietary or anthropometric measures. Evidence for sustained improvements in major clinical outcomes remains more limited.

A systematic review first published online in 2025 and appearing in the 2026 volume of the American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine examined 25 culinary medicine studies involving 4,186 participants from racial and ethnic minority and other underrepresented populations. Interventions had been implemented across different settings, but study designs, duration, content, and outcome measures varied substantially. Effects were inconsistent and risk of bias was high. The authors concluded that culinary medicine interventions show promise, while emphasizing the need for greater methodological rigor and controlled study designs. [7]

More recent trials illustrate both the potential and the limitations. A randomized controlled trial published in 2026 examined a remote culinary medicine program among adults with overweight or obesity. Fifty participants were included in the modified intention-to-treat analysis. Both groups received dietary counseling and culinary resources, while the intervention group also received twelve culinary medicine sessions. At 12 months, the intervention group had lost an average of approximately 4.0% of baseline body weight, compared with a small average weight gain in the control group, producing a statistically significant between-group difference. The result is encouraging, particularly because follow-up extended to one year, but the sample was small and the intervention combined culinary medicine with health coaching. It should not be interpreted as establishing culinary medicine as a stand-alone obesity treatment. [8]

A separate 2026 quasi-experimental study involving 89 patients with type 2 diabetes and elevated body mass index found improvements in cooking self-efficacy, perceived health, and perceived barriers to healthy eating after a five-session culinary medicine intervention. Glycated hemoglobin decreased significantly within the intervention group, but the between-group comparison was not statistically significant. That distinction matters. The study provides clearer support for behavioral and educational benefits than for a conclusion that the intervention independently improved glycemic control. [9]

These findings illustrate why culinary medicine needs careful communication. Helping people cook with greater confidence, improving dietary behaviors, or supporting weight management are meaningful outcomes. They should not automatically be translated into claims that culinary medicine reduces cardiovascular events, prevents diabetes complications or cancer, prolongs life, or lowers healthcare expenditure.

Health professions education is an important area of current culinary medicine research

Healthcare professionals frequently encounter conditions in which nutrition matters, yet conventional training does not always prepare them to translate nutrition science into useful conversations about food. Culinary medicine has therefore attracted particular interest within health professions education.

A randomized controlled trial published in 2025 compared a hands-on virtual culinary medicine curriculum for primary care residents with a didactic nutrition curriculum. Nutrition knowledge improved substantially in both groups. Culinary medicine was not superior across every outcome, but participants receiving the culinary intervention gained greater confidence in counseling patients about plant-forward eating and reported providing nutrition resources to patients more frequently after training. The study supports culinary medicine as a useful educational approach without showing that cooking-based teaching is universally superior to high-quality conventional nutrition education. [10]

A 2026 systematic review examining nine studies across six German medical-school sites similarly found improvements in diet-related knowledge and/or attitudes toward nutrition counseling following interactive culinary medicine and related nutrition education. Students generally evaluated the programs positively, although the methodological quality of included studies was moderate and many outcomes were self-reported. [11]

For Viet Nam, health professions education may therefore be a sensible early area for exploration. Culinary medicine could help physicians, nurses, clinical nutrition practitioners, pharmacists, rehabilitation professionals, medical students, and other health professionals better understand what dietary recommendations look like in actual food preparation. A physician does not need to become a chef, and a chef does not become a clinician by teaching healthy cooking. The value lies in collaboration.

Culinary medicine is inherently interprofessional

Food crosses professional boundaries. A physician may bring knowledge of diagnosis, medications, clinical risk, and treatment priorities. A clinical nutrition practitioner may have more specialized expertise in nutritional assessment and disease-specific nutrition care. A culinary professional may contribute skills in preparation, flavor, texture, recipe adaptation, food safety, and kitchen workflow. Professionals trained in behavior change can contribute to motivation, goal setting, and the development of sustainable habits.

These areas of expertise are most useful when they complement rather than compete with one another. The evolving international literature increasingly reflects this interprofessional model, both in the 2025 consensus work on definitions and in the preliminary competency framework published in 2026. [1,2]

This is particularly important in Viet Nam because professional titles and scopes of practice cannot simply be imported from another jurisdiction. Terms such as “dietitian,” “nutritionist,” “health coach,” or “culinary medicine specialist” may have regulatory meanings elsewhere that do not map directly onto Vietnamese law. Completing an international course or receiving a foreign certificate does not by itself create a new Vietnamese healthcare license or expand a person's authorized clinical scope of practice.

What are the legal and professional boundaries in Viet Nam?

Culinary medicine is not currently listed as a separate professional title requiring a practice license under Viet Nam's Law on Medical Examination and Treatment. Clinical nutrition, however, is specifically included among the professional titles that require a practice license, and the Minister of Health regulates the scope of practice associated with professional titles. [14]

The law also gives nutrition a defined place within medical examination and treatment. Article 67 states that nutrition in medical examination and treatment includes clinical nutrition and counseling or guidance on patients' diets. The activities provided for under the law include nutritional examination and assessment, identification of malnutrition-related issues, professional guidance on disease-related nutrition, monitoring of nutritional status, and nutrition education and communication. [14]

Circular No. 32/2023/TT-BYT, read together with its current amendments, provides more detailed rules on professional scope and technical activities. Its relevant appendices include technical activities for physicians practicing in nutrition and for clinical nutrition practitioners. [15]

This creates an important practical distinction. General education showing people how to prepare lower-sodium meals, use familiar vegetables, read food labels, or cook legumes is not the same as clinically assessing an individual with chronic kidney disease and providing individualized disease-specific nutrition management. A general cooking demonstration for people living with diabetes is not the same as adjusting diabetes medication or delivering individualized clinical nutrition care.

The precise legal characterization of an activity depends on what is actually being done, by whom, for whom, and in what setting. Calling an activity “culinary medicine” does not expand anyone's legal scope of practice. Healthcare organizations should therefore define professional roles, clinical governance, referral processes, and responsibility clearly before implementing programs that go beyond general health education.

Culinary medicine should complement treatment, not compete with it

Food matters in the prevention and management of many chronic diseases, but that does not justify creating a false choice between food and medicine. A person with hypertension may benefit from lowering sodium intake, improving dietary quality, increasing physical activity, and addressing excess weight while still requiring antihypertensive medication. Someone with type 2 diabetes may benefit from better food choices, cooking skills, and meal structure while also requiring medication and clinical monitoring.

The same principle applies to serious disease. Culinary medicine should not be marketed as a replacement for cancer treatment, kidney disease management, mental healthcare, prescribed medications, surgery, or other evidence-based therapies. Foods have biological effects, but that does not make a meal pharmacologically equivalent to a medicine.

The phrase “food is medicine” can be useful in drawing attention to the importance of nutrition, but taken literally it can become misleading. Food is also culture, pleasure, family, affordability, agriculture, social connection, and everyday life. Culinary medicine can bring health considerations into those realities without pretending that every meal is a medical treatment.

A Vietnamese approach should begin with Vietnamese food, not an imported menu

Much of the published culinary medicine literature currently comes from North America and Europe. Some programs teach Mediterranean-style or plant-forward dietary patterns, and these studies provide useful scientific and educational insights. They should not automatically become a template for Viet Nam.

A Vietnamese program can instead begin with familiar questions. How can sodium be reduced without making food unacceptable? How can vegetables and legumes become more regular parts of meals rather than simply an instruction given at the end of a consultation? Which traditional ingredients and preparation methods already support healthy eating? Which contemporary eating patterns may create new challenges? How could a meal be adapted for an older person with poor appetite, someone with diabetes, or a family with limited time to cook?

Cultural relevance does not mean declaring all traditional foods healthy, just as modernization does not make every new food unhealthy. It means starting from what people actually eat and applying evidence carefully.

Affordability matters just as much. A model that depends on expensive imported ingredients, specialized equipment, or foods unavailable outside major cities is unlikely to be useful nationally. Healthy eating needs to work with local markets, seasonal foods, household budgets, cooking facilities, work schedules, and family structures. This direction is particularly consistent with Viet Nam's 2025 Law on Disease Prevention, which expressly requires nutrition in disease prevention to be appropriate to the physical status, culture, and economic circumstances of people in Viet Nam. [5]

The same perspective appears in the 2025 Lifestyle Medicine Core Competencies, which added explicit attention to social determinants of health. Healthy choices are shaped by social, economic, cultural, and environmental conditions. Healthcare professionals therefore need to understand the circumstances in which people make food choices rather than treating eating behavior solely as a matter of knowledge or personal discipline. [12]

What should culinary medicine not become?

Culinary medicine risks losing credibility if it becomes another channel for nutrition misinformation. It should not promote “detox” diets, miracle foods, unsupported supplement claims, unnecessary extreme restriction, or broad claims that particular foods can “balance hormones,” eliminate inflammation, or cure disease without adequate evidence.

It should also avoid teaching that all carbohydrates, fats, animal foods, processed foods, or traditional condiments are inherently harmful. Dietary recommendations should reflect the totality of the evidence, individual nutritional needs, health conditions, cultural context, and overall dietary pattern.

Nor should every meal become unnecessarily medicalized. Food can contribute to health without every plate being scored, optimized, monitored, or treated as therapy. Enjoyment, convenience, culture, family, and social eating remain legitimate parts of food.

The most credible culinary medicine is therefore not necessarily the most restrictive. It is the version that helps people make evidence-informed choices that are practical enough to continue.

How could healthcare organizations in Viet Nam use culinary medicine?

A responsible approach would be to begin modestly and define the purpose clearly. A hospital, clinic, medical school, university, or professional organization does not necessarily need a purpose-built teaching kitchen before beginning useful work. Initial models could include practical nutrition education for healthcare professionals, demonstration-based sessions, supervised cooking workshops, virtual teaching kitchens, appropriately designed group education, or collaboration between clinical and culinary educators.

Content should begin with a defined educational or clinical need rather than with recipes. A program for healthcare professionals might focus on translating dietary recommendations into practical patient conversations. A hypertension program could explore sodium, condiments, flavor development, label reading, and meal preparation. A diabetes program could address dietary quality, carbohydrate-containing foods, fiber, meal patterns, portions, and behavior change. Programs for older people may need to consider protein and energy adequacy, appetite, chewing or swallowing difficulties, physical function, affordability, and social eating.

Clinical pathways also need clear referral thresholds. A participant with suspected malnutrition, significant unintended weight loss, eating-disorder symptoms, advanced kidney disease, complex food allergy, pregnancy-related nutritional needs, dysphagia, severe metabolic disease, or another condition requiring individualized assessment should not simply remain within a generic cooking program when more specialized care is appropriate.

Culinary professionals can make valuable contributions, but health-related content requires appropriate clinical governance. Recipes used for clinical education should be consistent with the stated nutritional objectives, and disease-specific claims should remain within the evidence and the professional scope of those making them.

We should measure more than whether people enjoyed the class

Culinary medicine programs are often engaging and acceptable, but participant satisfaction is not the same as effectiveness. If the field is to develop responsibly in Viet Nam, implementation should be accompanied by evaluation.

Depending on the purpose of the program, relevant outcomes could include nutrition knowledge, cooking confidence, food-preparation skills, purchasing practices, dietary quality, sodium intake, fruit and vegetable consumption, attendance, retention, and whether behavioral changes are sustained over time. In appropriately designed clinical programs, relevant measures may also include body weight, blood pressure, glycated hemoglobin, or lipid levels, but these outcomes need to be interpreted within the clinical context and study design rather than automatically attributed to the culinary intervention.

Health professions education should likewise measure more than personal cooking ability. Programs could examine nutrition knowledge, confidence and quality of counseling, ability to translate guidance into practical advice, appropriate referral behavior, and recognition of professional boundaries.

For Viet Nam, an especially important research question is whether an intervention remains feasible and effective beyond selected participants in major cities. Affordability, cultural adaptation, rural implementation, digital access, staff time, kitchen infrastructure, sustainability, and health equity are as important to implementation as the initial educational or clinical outcome.

So, what is the potential role of culinary medicine in Viet Nam?

Culinary medicine should not be introduced as a new treatment that Viet Nam is currently missing. A more useful starting point is to see it as a practical bridge between nutrition evidence and everyday eating.

Its near-term value may lie particularly in health professions education, experiential nutrition learning, culturally relevant healthy-cooking education, behavior-change support, and carefully evaluated pilot programs in healthcare and community settings. It may also provide a useful platform for collaboration among healthcare professionals, clinical nutrition practitioners, culinary professionals, educators, researchers, and communities.

The current evidence is sufficient to justify thoughtful exploration, but it does not justify broad claims that culinary medicine independently prevents or treats chronic disease. Randomized and controlled studies are increasingly encouraging, while systematic reviews continue to identify heterogeneity, risk of bias, and the need for larger studies, longer follow-up, and clinically meaningful outcomes.

For Viet Nam, there is an opportunity to develop this area carefully rather than simply importing an established model from somewhere else. Programs can start with Vietnamese foods and eating patterns, reflect cultural and economic realities, respect professional and legal boundaries, measure meaningful outcomes, and gradually build local evidence.

Ultimately, culinary medicine is not about turning every clinician into a cook or every cook into a clinician. It is about making nutrition advice more usable.

The question is not only, “What should people eat?” It is also, “How can evidence-based nutrition become food that people can realistically prepare, afford, enjoy, and sustain in everyday life?”

That is where culinary medicine may have a useful role in the future of healthcare in Viet Nam.

References

1. Hildebrand CA, Artz KE, Dollinger B, et al. Defining the evolving field of culinary medicine across multiple domains. Frontiers in Nutrition. 2025;12:1588449. doi:10.3389/fnut.2025.1588449.

2. Stirling E, Thomas O, Croxford S. Developing an Interprofessional Framework for Culinary Nutrition and Culinary Medicine Competencies: A Consultation with International Experts. Nutrients. 2026;18(12):1897. doi:10.3390/nu18121897.

3. Ministry of Health of Viet Nam, World Health Organization Regional Office for the Western Pacific. National Survey on the Risk Factors of Noncommunicable Diseases in Viet Nam, 2021. World Health Organization; 2025.

4. Prime Minister of Viet Nam. Decision No. 02/QĐ-TTg dated 5 January 2022 approving the National Nutrition Strategy for the 2021–2030 period, with a vision to 2045.

5. National Assembly of Viet Nam. Law on Disease Prevention No. 114/2025/QH15, adopted 10 December 2025; effective 1 July 2026.

6. Ministry of Health of Viet Nam. Decision No. 1982/QĐ-BYT dated 1 July 2026 issuing the professional guidance on measures for implementing nutrition in disease prevention.

7. Brown B, Adediran E, Taylor E, Ose D, Okuyemi K. Culinary Medicine Interventions Among Racial and Ethnic Minority and Underrepresented Populations: A Systematic Review. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine. 2026;20(2):188–203. doi:10.1177/15598276251370976.

8. Polak R, Budd MA, Finkelstein A, et al. One-Year Weight Loss Following a Remote Culinary Medicine Program: A Bi-Center Randomized Controlled Trial. Obesity. 2026;34(5):1045–1055. doi:10.1002/oby.70193.

9. Heredia NI, Thornton LR, Guevara DC, et al. Impact of a culinary medicine intervention on diet and health metrics in patients with type 2 diabetes and elevated body mass index. PLOS ONE. 2026;21(5):e0347040. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0347040.

10. Wood NI, Fussell M, Benghiat E, et al. A Randomized Controlled Trial of a Culinary Medicine Intervention in a Virtual Teaching Kitchen for Primary Care Residents. Journal of General Internal Medicine. 2025;40(11):2668–2678. doi:10.1007/s11606-025-09652-x.

11. Stock-Schröer B, Edelhäuser F, Scheffer C, et al. How does culinary medicine training impact the diet-related knowledge, skills and attitudes of undergraduate medical students in Germany? A systematic review. BMC Medical Education. 2026;26:895. doi:10.1186/s12909-026-09580-2.

12. Rea BL, Cheema S, Lanza S, et al. Lifestyle Medicine Core Competencies: 2025 Update. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine. 2026;20(3):443–451. doi:10.1177/15598276251379821.

13. World Health Organization. Healthy Diet. Updated 26 January 2026.

14. Office of the National Assembly of Viet Nam. Consolidated Document No. 26/VBHN-VPQH dated 26 February 2026, consolidating the Law on Medical Examination and Treatment.

15. Ministry of Health of Viet Nam. Circular No. 32/2023/TT-BYT dated 31 December 2023 detailing certain provisions of the Law on Medical Examination and Treatment, as currently amended, including amendments under Circular No. 25/2026/TT-BYT.

This article is intended for professional education and general information. It does not provide individualized nutrition, medical, or treatment advice. Culinary medicine may support nutrition education, practical food skills, and healthy eating behavior, but it does not replace medical diagnosis, prescribed treatment, clinical nutrition care, or individualized guidance from appropriately qualified healthcare professionals.

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