FUTURE speaker shows patients how food is medicine

May 22, 2025, David Mitchell — Benjamin Leong, M.D., M.S., M.P.H., DABOM, has had a lifelong fascination with food, but it took him a while to realize that his culinary curiosity could lead him to a career in health care.  

“I realized that lot of health care was really impacted by costs and efficiency, and this ultimately impacted public health,” he said. “Having the perspective and empathy gained from direct patient care, which I learned through working with family physicians, I saw that one could take that perspective and impact local and federal policy and public health.”

Leong continued to work with family physicians while studying public health at Tufts University in Boston. During that time, he also volunteered at a food bank and turned that experience into a project focused on evaluating the nutritional value of the food provided to the community.

“That set the foundation for me,” said Leong, who earned two master’s degrees at Tufts before moving on to medical school at Tulane. “Food could be nourishing and complementary to health or it could be toxic and detrimental to health. Everything is serendipitous. It was fantastic that I was (at Tulane) during the development of the Goldring Center for Culinary Medicine.”

Leong’s mentor at Tulane was Timothy Harlan, M.D., the internist, professor, chef and author who was then medical director of the nation’s first teaching kitchen at a medical school.

Harlan’s idea was to integrate more culinary lessons into medical school and residency education, teaching learners to talk to patients about food in an evidence-based and engaging manner. Leong also had the unique opportunity to learn culinary medicine in the kitchen from chef Leah Sarris, who served as the inaugural director of operations at the Goldring Center.

“If you have that culinary background, you’re able to be so much more dynamic in the tools and ideas you can offer patients rather than just saying, ‘Try to eat a few more fruits and vegetables,’ or ‘Try to eat more whole grains,’” he said. “Medical students are expected to have some level of culinary competency before they graduate from Tulane. We were one of the first institutions to enter this field of culinary medicine at the medical student and resident level, and the idea has spread throughout the rest of the country.”

Leong will present a session on obesity and lifestyle medicine during FUTURE (formerly National Conference) July 31-Aug. 2 in Kansas City, Missouri.

“These tenets of lifestyle medicine—food is medicine, exercise is medicine—are not new,” he said. “But it’s always been a struggle.”

Leong’s session will cover those concepts along with newer weight loss drugs and motivational interviewing. Packaged together, he said, these tools can make a difference.

How do you talk about the right type of lifestyle in a patient-centered way while also giving patients the right support medically to be successful?” he asked. “The goal is not necessarily to lose a certain amount of weight, and that’s why there is a motivational interviewing aspect. I always start by asking my patients, ‘What Is your goal? Why do you want to do this?’ The response is never, ‘I’m here to lose 50 pounds.’ The answer is, ‘I want my diabetes gone.’ Or, ‘I want to come off these medications.’ Or, ‘I want my knees to stop hurting so I can play with my kids or grandkids.’ And so when we set that goal, we also set a bit of a finish line.”

Leong said getting to know his patients makes it easier to help them.

“If you are just saying, ‘This is how easy it is to prep these basic types of foods,’ you are not reaching them where they are,” he said. “You can learn their taste preferences. What are their financial barriers? What are the social determinants of health that limit their access to certain foods? When you have that discussion in a more engaging forum—let’s say, in a lifestyle medicine clinic with culinary medicine, in a grocery store or in group settings—our patients tend to open up, and you find out a lot more information.”

Leong worked in urgent care settings for four years before finding his calling at Kaiser. Although he’s a trained family physician, he functions as a referral service for colleagues as an obesity medicine specialist. He said meeting patients where they are with lifestyle goals reinforces what family medicine truly is—healing and preserving health. He also provides healthy living education for students, residents and his physician peers.

“It’s really hard to take care of others if you can’t feel well and take care of yourself,” he said. “The foundation I received from my mother and my time at Tufts and Tulane has spurred a lot of what I do today. I finally figured out why I went to school and did what I did. This was the ideal destination for my career, and I’m ecstatic I finally found it. I cherish this opportunity to do what I do. Not only do I see my patients getting better, I have healed and grown professionally because of it.”

Leong is passing on what he’s learned about food and health to his own children.

“I love to go grocery shopping, be creative, experiment with different things,” he said, “and my wife and I love to get our kids involved. We invested in plastic knives and cutting boards for the kids. Our 5- and 4-year-olds have their own sets. They now get mad if I cut the stems off strawberries or slice the cucumbers without giving them an opportunity. The other day, we were watching Master Chef Junior, and my oldest says, ‘I want to be on that show.’ They start taking people at 8, so we have three years to get her ready to be yelled at by Gordon Ramsay.”