A Culinary Medicine Look at Winter Squashes

Keywords: culinary medicine; winter squash; plant-forward dietAs the seasons shift, culinary preferences naturally draw us to different comforting savory and sweet dishes of those seasons.In lifestyle medicine, encouraging patients to align with seasonal, plant-forward dietary patterns fosters enthusiasm for expanding plant diversity and accessing more economical and seasonal produce.For example, Autumn is widely celebrated for all things pumpkin, as well as an incredible variety of other squashes from the plant genus Cucurbita in the gourd family (Cucurbitaceae), collectively known as winter squashes.There are a variety of winter squash, including pumpkin, butternut, acorn, kabocha, delicata, and spaghetti.Although harvested primarily in late summer and autumn, a wide variety of these squashes store well into winter, and modern processing (canned and frozen) makes them accessible yearround.1 The entire winter squash plant can be used in the kitchen.Their naturally sweet flesh can be roasted, steamed, or blended into a variety of dishes, such as soups and sauces.For edible thin-skinned varieties like delicata squash, leaving the skin