If you love cooking, and you love nutrition, and your passion is to share that wisdom with others, perhaps you want to jump on the Culinary Nutrition Expert bandwagon.

If your passion is health, there are likely a number of different educational paths calling your name. So how do you know whether the Culinary Nutrition Expert (CNE) Program is right for you?

Here are a few key questions to ask yourself when deciding which path to take.

1. Do you love maximizing the health of your meals?

When it comes to cooking, there’s no doubt about it – deliciousness is important. But in the Culinary Nutrition Expert Program, ingredients are chosen not only for their tastiness, but for their healing power. Every ingredient in a dish is carefully selected for its health benefits, especially when developing recipes and meal plans for specific health conditions.

That means that gluten will never appear on a CNE-approved ingredients list, because even if the client in question doesn’t have a gluten intolerance, gluten isn’t a health-promoting ingredient. But likewise, we wouldn’t be adding a cup of spirulina to our roasted carrot soup, because even if it’s health promoting, that combo is the opposite of delicious (and a cup would be way too much anyway). Does anyone actually love the taste of spirulina?

If balancing taste with nutrient density is where it’s at, well, that’s what we’re here for!

2. What part of nutrition is most exciting to you? 

The Culinary Nutrition Expert Program is about just that – culinary nutrition. Our focus is food. If cooking just isn’t your thing and you’d prefer to work one-on-one with clients with a major focus on therapeutic supplementation, a holistic nutrition or functional nutrition program may be a better fit (plus some continuing education courses would also be essential). But if food is your focus, and you have a passion for expanding this practical knowledge base, learning how to create your own recipes, creating healing meal plans, learning how to write about recipes and health, teaching your own workshops and classes, developing food products and more – the Culinary Nutrition Expert Program might be exactly right!

3. Are you excited at the prospect of sharing what you learn with others?

You don’t need to have a goal of teaching cooking classes or workshops to get a ton out of the program. But we hope you’ll be inspired to get out there and spread your new knowledge, whether it’s around the family dinner table, on a food blog, in your very own cooking classes, by creating a product to sell or perhaps consulting with product developers, restaurants, hotels and conference centers. There are many job and career avenues that you can take – it’s a matter of figuring out what path you want to walk along. We are teaching the teachers!

Of course, if you’re interested in taking the program for interest only (our Honorary level is great for that), that’s always an option. We guarantee that once you start learning, it might be tricky to stop yourself from teaching everyone you meet! If sharing your culinary nutrition wisdom through teaching is a goal of yours, whether to your family, one-on-one with clients or in a group setting, the program is set up to help you make that dream a reality.

4. Are you a hands-on learner?

The Culinary Nutrition Expert Program is all about applying theoretical knowledge to real life. Like in a holistic nutrition program, we learn about blood sugar balance, but we immediately put that knowledge into practice by cooking blood-sugar-balancing meals and developing recipes filled with fibre, protein and nutritious fats.

We absorb information more easily when we can associate it with a delicious meal, so we learn how to cook and talk at the same time, teaching cooking workshops where participants leave with full bellies and a ton of new knowledge. And if workshops aren’t for you, you still will be able to communicate the why behind your culinary creations.

5. Does reading about the program fill you with excitement (and maybe a little butterflies in the belly)?

Let yourself get excited. Dream about the possibilities. Being a little nervous is a-okay but you should be excited at the prospect! The world is literally starving for the information we share in this program and we can’t do it alone. We rely on our students and alumni to share the wisdom in their respective communities. Your service is needed. You are going to love learning all you will learn, and those who seek your guidance will have their lives transformed.

There are loads more resources ready for you over on our prospective students page. We hope to see you in the kitchen in September!