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.
VanRoo developed her first culinary medicine curriculum for UCI medical students while serving as director of Culinary Recreation and Experiential Programs for the university’s Campus Recreation. That project, which led to her current role, like many she introduced for Campus Recreation, reflected her passion for teaching through food.
Let food be thy medicine, and let medicine be thy food.
Hippocrates
VanRoo collaborated with the university’s Campus Climate Council to introduce Conversation Kitchen, where meals from regions experiencing conflict and transformation served as a catalyst for exploring the role of food in mediating conflict, communicating values, solving problems, reflecting the locale and expressing shared humanity. She also created Cooking with the Professor, a series of faculty-student gatherings, each one featuring a different faculty member who shared a recipe that reflected his or her research interests, cultural background or cooking passions.
Over the years, VanRoo has introduced many people to healthy food that tastes good, serving in such roles as assistant culinary director for Sur la Table, consultant for The Gourmet Child, corporate executive chef for Rimrock Capital Management and owner of her own business. She partnered with Jet Tila, celebrity chef, restaurateur and author, to develop Asian-themed menus for corporate executives and, today, considers the cooking luminary her most significant mentor.
VanRoo is excited the share the concept of food as medicine with other professional chefs. She participates in development of a culinary certification program for professional chefs under the auspices of the Culinary Medicine Advisory Board. She is also active in the Teaching Kitchen Collaborative, a global network of 45 teaching kitchens affiliated with leading academic medical centers, public youth services institutions, and private employers.
Inspired by the Hippocratic oath of her physician partners, VanRoo looks to another statement attributed to Hippocrates to guide her work, “Let food be thy medicine, and let medicine be thy food.”
- Culinary Medicine Elective – Medical Students
- Culinary Medicine Faculty Training – Faculty
- Group Visits – Patients / Clinical Care
- UCI Culinary Health – UCI Faculty and Staff Program
- Recipes in Learning Library
