This is a past class that no longer accepts registration.
We know that a well-balanced diet filled with nutritious foods is helpful for addressing chronic conditions such as heart disease and diabetes. But did you know that the foods you eat can also help boost your immunity? With the cold and flu season upon us, it’s important to consider how your diet affects your body’s ability to stay healthy. In this session, you will learn about the nutrients that can boost your immune system and keep you healthy all year round. We will cook nourishing recipes and explore the connection between your gut microbiome and immunity.
- Course Dishes:
- Kitchari – a traditional Ayurvedic stew full of healing herbs and spices.
- Kale salad with pomegranates, pumpkins seeds and an orange vinaigrette
- Baked pears with honeyed yogurt
- Homemade ginger ale syrup
Instructor: Jessica VanRoo, Executive Chef
In the skilled hands of Jessica VanRoo (“Chef Jess”), food becomes medicine that melts in your mouth.
A professional chef with two decades of experience and a culinary management degree from Art Institute of Orange County, VanRoo has a keen understanding of the power of food. This awareness feeds her passion for teaching people tips and techniques for preparing food that tastes great and can improve health.
VanRoo is executive chef of the UCI Susan Samueli Integrative Health Institute’s Mussallem Nutritional Education Center, a teaching kitchen where whole health flourishes through food as medicine. She is the creative chef who develops institute programs that please the palate and promote culinary medicine. Her menus are rich in produce, reflecting the influence of her upbringing in Taiwan.
Under VanRoo’s leadership, nutritional education center instructors – professional chefs and registered dietitians, often accompanied by physicians – connect the dots between food and health in programs for health professionals, patients and community organizations. She has also equipped the eight-station teaching kitchen and dining space to support group medical visits and culinary medicine research that involves meal preparation and service.
