John La Puma
Santa Barbara
-California-
United States

Dr. La Puma is Clinical Director, Chef Clinic®, co-founder of ChefMD® and a New York Times best-selling author twice. He has led clinical trials of nutritional interventions designed to improve obesity, hypertension, osteoarthritis, insomnia and diabetes, and pioneered culinary medicine. His mission is to help you get measurably healthier with what you eat and how you live. Dr. La Puma taught the first Nutrition and Cooking course for medical students in the US, at SUNY-Upstate with Dr. Michael Roizen of the Cleveland Clinic, and the first Culinary Medicine clinical course for medical students in the US, at DMU. He has authored over 50 peer-reviewed scientific papers and three medical books, including a CME book. His work has been published by the New England  Journal of Medicine, JAMA and the British Medical Journal. Dr. La Puma is Founding Editor of Alternative Medicine Alert, delivered the first lectures at Harvard and at TEDMED on Culinary Medicine, and at the University of Chicago on Comfort Food, and is consistently rated among the very best speakers by the audiences he addresses. He co-hosted 100+ episodes of Lifetime TV’s “Health Corner”, most recently with Joan Lunden and Leeza Gibbons, and hosted the weekly “Chef MD” TV segments on Lifetime TV for nearly 5 years. He hosts the national PBS series “Dr John La Puma’s ChefMD Shorts” airing through Fall 2016; the 90 minute PBS Special “Eat and Cook Healthy”; and the 13 part YouTube Series “Refuel Minute for Men”. He sees patients as an internist in Santa Barbara, California with Chef Clinic; visit him at drjohnlapuma.com.

He performed his residency in internal medicine at West Los Angeles Veterans Administration Medical Center and UCLA, and completed the first postgraduate fellowship in general internal medicine and clinical medical ethics in the US, at the University of Chicago. Dr. La Puma became a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago, Professor of Nutrition at Kendall College’s School of Culinary Arts, and cook at James Beard-award winning Chef Rick Bayless’ Topolobampo in Chicago. Dr. La Puma graduated with honors from the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago (now a Le Cordon Bleu school) in Professional Cooking.