195. Food as Medicine: A New Model for Health Care | Tamar Samuels

Treat your fork like a prescription and your plate the front line of care as produce, protein, and mindset turn everyday eating into real medicine. Dr. Andrew Fix sits down with Tamar Samuels, registered dietitian and co-founder of Culina Health, to examine why nutritional therapy often fails in practice despite being so logical on paper. If most people already know the basics—eat more plants, cut the processed stuff—why doesn’t that knowledge automatically lead to action?

Tamar lays out the real barriers: limited access to guidance, confusing nutrition narratives, and perfection-based rules that collapse under stress. Prevention and longevity don’t require an overhaul, they require patterns you can live with.

Tamar’s approach is refreshingly practical. Build meals around produce and protein. Choose progress over precision. Bring in support before willpower burns out. Food as medicine doesn’t have to feel clinical, it can be familiar, forgiving, and built one ordinary meal at a time.

Quotes

• “Most people don't think about a dietician as part of that general team. And yet we eat all day long. And the food that we eat really informs all of these other conditions that we see our doctors regularly for.” (08:14 | Tamar Samuels)
• There's a huge gap here in why people aren't seeing registered dietitians. And there's a lot of reasons behind it, mostly because people don't even know what dietitians are or many dietitians are cost prohibitive.” (08:32 | Tamar Samuels)
• “The problem isn't the lack of access to nutrition information. It's too much access to nutrition information.” (18:25 | Tamar Samuels)
• “It doesn't have to be perfect. We're not aiming for perfection. You're never going to hit your goals every single time, every day, right? It's just about paying attention. You're much more likely to get there if you pay attention and monitor and track and get this community support than if you wouldn't have done that.” (35:10 | Tamar Samuels)
• "It's okay to emotionally eat. The problem is when we rely exclusively on emotionally eating as our major or as our main tool to manage stress and to, you know, help manage a variety of different emotions." (41:32 | Tamar Samuels)

Connect with Tamar Samuels:

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Tamar Samuels is a registered dietitian, co-founder, and Head of Clinical Partnerships at Culina Health, where she leads collaborations with healthcare providers to bridge nutrition care and traditional medicine. With over a decade of experience, she champions Food as Medicine and patient-centered care. Integrating lifestyle medicine, behavioral science, and evidence-based nutrition, Tamar helps people build healthier relationships with food. A graduate of NYU with clinical training at Mount Sinai Hospital, she has been recognized by Well+Good as one of NYC’s top holistic dietitians. Her expertise has been featured in outlets such as The Huffington Post, Women’s Health, Shape, and The Tamron Hall Show.

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