The prescriptive whiteness of culinary medicine: Reinforcing medical authority through epistemic erasure

Culinary Medicine (CM) is positioned by physician leaders as an innovative, interdisciplinary model addressing the long-neglected role of food and nutrition in clinical healthcare. Yet its institutional rise recenters medical authority and erases the feminized and racialized expertise that had led dietary care for over 100 years. This article critiques CM as a case study in epistemic erasure and medical dominance, examining how professional and institutional hierarchies shape which knowledge is recognized as legitimate. Drawing on frameworks of racial capitalism, epistemic injustice, and feminist standpoint theory, this article finds that CM devalues and marginalizes dietetics and ignores community-based models of nutritionally tailored meals, despite decades of success. By framing CM as novel, the origins, knowledge, and expertise informing culinary-focused dietary care is recoded through male- and physician-dominated institutions. CM’s implementation often reproduces structural biases, including racialized gatekeeping through biometric eligibility and the dismissal of cultural foodways. While CM holds potential for addressing diet-related health disparities, it must confront the exclusionary logics it reproduces to truly achieve health equity. CM must center the expertise of those historically excluded, particularly women, communities of color, and community-based practitioners, to build equitable, interprofessional models that prioritize professional humility and structural transformation over institutional prestige to improve population health.