John La Puma, M.D. is cofounder of ChefMD and a board-certified specialist in internal medicine. He has pioneered the idea of food-as-medicine that’s tasty, including delicious eating plans for osteoarthritis pain relief, weight loss, cholesterol-lowering, anti-aging and childhood obesity. He hosts the weekly TV segment “What’s Cooking With ChefMD?” every Sunday morning on the cable network Lifetime Television and Lifetime Real Women in the national TV series “Health Corner.” Lifetime reaches more than 90 million households and “What’s Cooking With ChefMD?” is seen by at least 250,000 viewers, 25-54, each week.
Dr. La Puma is a best-selling author. His first general audience book became a New York Times best-seller, The RealAge Diet: Make Yourself Younger with What You Eat; his first cookbook became an Amazon #1 Cookbook, Cooking the RealAge Way: Turn Back Your Biological Clock. Both are published by HarperCollins and co-authored with Michael Roizen, MD. Dr. La Puma contributed recipes to the New York Times #1 best-seller You the Owner’s Manual.
Dr. La Puma is a popular speaker, and has given over 400 lectures to professional groups and 300 lectures to educationally-interested audiences as a keynote speaker. He has also been a consultant and spokesperson for companies such as CIGNA, Caremark and Kraft. He has appeared on NBC, CBS, ABC, FOX, PBS and CNN outlets. The New England Journal of Medicine, the Encyclopedia Britannica, the Wall Street Journal and the New York Times have published his work. USA Today, Prevention, Reader’s Digest, Parade, and Newsweek have featured his work as well. RealAge has been featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, Good Morning America, Today, and hundreds of others.
Dr. La Puma is a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the College of Creative Studies and the University of California, Santa Barbara, and graduate of the Baylor College of Medicine. 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 U.S., at the University of Chicago. Dr. La Puma is the author or co-author of over 50 peer-reviewed scientific papers, 150 other contributions to the medical literature and 3 medical books, including a CME book.
Formerly a Clinical Associate Professor of Medicine at the University of Chicago, Professor of Nutrition at Kendall College’s School of Culinary Arts, Dr. La Puma cooked once weekly at James Beard-award-winning Chef Rick Bayless’ Topolobampo and Frontera Grill in Chicago for almost 4 years. Dr. La Puma also graduated from the Cooking and Hospitality Institute of Chicago (now a Cordon Bleu school) in Professional Cooking, and taught the first Nutrition and Cooking Course for Medical Students in the U.S., at SUNY.
Dr. La Puma still practices internal medicine, using the ChefMD concept to motivate his patients. Repeatedly named “One of America’s Top Physicians” by the Consumers’ Research Council, and called a “Secret Weapon” by The Wall Street Journal, Dr. La Puma was honored with the National Association of Medical Communicators 2007 “Award of Excellence”. He is based in Santa Barbara, California.
For more information, please visit the ChefMD website.
