Leaning over a stainless steel bowl, chef Heather Nace urged a fourth-year medical student to massage her kale with greater gusto.

“You gotta get in there, girl,” Nace said, explaining that massaging breaks down cellulose so the leaves become tender and palatable. “If you don’t massage it, it’s not going to digest.”

At Tulane University’s Goldring Center for Culinary Medicine, founded in 2012 as the first teaching kitchen embedded in a U.S. medical school, moments like this are the curriculum. Medical students rotate between case studies and cooking stations, translating nutrition theory into meals they can cook themselves and, one day, recommend to patients.

The center also runs free community cooking classes, giving New Orleanians the same chance to build skills and confidence in the

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