Meet Dr. Sonali Ruder: The Foodie Physician from ER to the Kitchen

Immerse yourself in the culinary world of Dr. Sonali Ruder, famously known as the Foodie Physician. Get ready to be inspired by her extraordinary journey from the hospital ER to the heart of the kitchen. Her passion for cooking ignited during her stressful residency, leading her to compete in cooking competitions, attend culinary school, and even launch her own healthy cooking website. Experience firsthand, her belief in the healing power of home-cooked meals, and how it shapes her cooking and her life.

Dr. Ruder opens up about her battle on the front lines during the COVID-19 pandemic. She advocates for simplicity and meal planning to save time, money and eat more healthily.   She also gives us a peek into her upcoming online courses, designed with the aim to prevent diseases such as high blood pressure, heart disease, and diabetes. So, join us for this conversation and discover the connection between cooking, health, and happiness. Don't forget to check out Dr. Ruder's website and connect with her on social media for more food for thought.

www.thefoodiephysician.com

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Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

Welcome, welcome everyone, to Local Living Community Podcast for Palm Beach to Parkland. I'm David Conway, your host for today's episode, and today I have someone on who I've actually admired for years. My wife has too. We've been reading her recipes. A local resident lives right here in West Delray Beach, the foodie physician, dr Sonali Ruder. Dr. Welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 2: 0:38

Hi, thank you so much. I'm so excited to be here.

Speaker 1: 0:41

Yeah, it's a real, real pleasure to finally get the chat with you and get to know a little bit more about you. So why don't we start Tell us a little bit about your background, your journey and how you ultimately became the foodie physician?

Speaker 2: 0:55

Sure, sure. Well, it's a little bit of an interesting story, I think, because I'm a doctor that fell in love with cooking after I'd already finished medical school, and so then I went back to culinary school and became a chef as well. So I'm part of the time I'm an ER doctor I work in Coral Springs and the other part of my time I'm actually running my website, which is called the Foodie Physician. It's a healthy cooking website and basically, yeah, the way I got started was many years ago when I was training, doing my emergency medicine residency.

Speaker 2: 1:31

I fell in love with cooking and one day, just completely on a whim, I entered a cooking competition on the Food Network. They were looking for America's best home cooks to submit their favorite recipes. So I submitted a recipe, thinking nothing was going to come of it. And next thing I know, I was chosen as a finalist and they flew me out to Los Angeles and I competed on a cooking show called Ultimate Recipe Showdown and this was hosted by Guy Fieri and Mark Summers, and it was an amazing experience. I didn't actually win the competition, but that just kind of spurred me on and motivated me and got me into cooking and it really became my passion and after that, basically that, I ended up going to culinary school, started a blog while I was in culinary school and over the past 10 plus years have just kind of grown that blog into a business, and that's where we're at today.

Speaker 1: 2:25

So you were. This was during your residency, is that correct? So you're pretty busy during a residency.

Speaker 2: 2:34

Yeah, exactly, I had finished medical school and I was doing my residency training, and so you're working all sorts of crazy hours, nights, days and I actually got into cooking because I found it was very relaxing. So shifts in the ER can be very stressful and I found coming home and getting into the kitchen very relaxing. That's how I would de-stress after a busy day at work, and I just fell in love with it.

Speaker 1: 3:00

So at that time were you cooking for one? Who were you cooking for? Friends or loved ones?

Speaker 2: 3:07

Yeah, that's actually a great question because I had another motivation. That's when I met my husband, who's also an ER doctor. We were residents together so all of a sudden I had someone to cook for. It makes it a lot more fun when you have someone to cook for. So he was the recipient of all of my experiments in the kitchen and even when I went to culinary school. The best part about culinary school is every night you bring home all the food that you cooked in school. My husband ate very well for that year.

Speaker 1: 3:36

So you went from cooking in your kitchen.

Speaker 2: 3:38

Yep, today's broadcast comes up at practices. Let's announce the first week of the day.

Speaker 1: 3:40

On a Next thing. You know you're on TV.

Speaker 2: 3:42

Yes.

Speaker 1: 3:43

Nationally televised program with, with, with Gaffieri, who everybody loves, right as he is great in person, as he is on television.

Speaker 2: 3:53

He was, so that was one of his very first shows. He was not very well known and I have to say that to this day he is one of the nicest food celebrities I've met, just like a genuinely nice guy.

Speaker 1: 4:04

I think he actually won a food network competition to become a network host, right.

Speaker 2: 4:09

Yeah, exactly, he won, and I think it's called the next food network star. He won that and, yep, that's how we got famous.

Speaker 1: 4:15

So then, after that is when you went to culinary school.

Speaker 2: 4:18

Yes, so after that competition actually after that competition I started entering cooking competitions. I did.

Speaker 2: 4:28

Yeah, there was a whole world of they don't do it so much anymore but tons of cooking competitions a national chicken competition, national beef cookoff. Even one of the cooking competitions was through the South Beach Food and Wine Festival down here in Miami. So I won a free trip to Miami. Because I won that competition and I did that for a few years. I just I loved, like, the competition aspect of it, the excitement, and after I did that for a few years I decided to enroll in culinary school to actually learn real like fundamental culinary technique.

Speaker 1: 4:58

So how do you think being a doctor influences your beliefs and your cooking?

Speaker 2: 5:06

So that's a great question.

Speaker 2: 5:08

I so, in the ER, basically I am seeing people with emerging conditions every day.

Speaker 2: 5:14

You know, people having heart attacks, having strokes, people in kidney failure and after doing this for many, many years, I started getting frustrated and wanted to kind of learn more about how we can actually prevent these diseases before they start. You know, there's a lot of things we could do in terms of diet and lifestyle to help keep your blood pressure in check, to help keep your sugar in check and to help prevent heart disease and strokes and all these other things that I see every day in the ER. So that that's actually how I got interested in all of this is to try to try to basically help people get in the kitchen, encourage people to get in the kitchen, that it doesn't have to be hard or intimidating, because one of the best ways to eat healthy and follow a healthy lifestyle is to actually cook your own food. When you cook your own food, you know exactly what you're putting into that food, rather than buying food out at restaurants, you know, or even some packages to the grocery stores that are very processed.

Speaker 1: 6:08

Dr. Am I right here? Sometimes I'll cook at home, and I know I'm not cooking the healthiest meal, you know, it's not just the grilled chicken with steamed veggies and wild rice, but I still feel I'm better off nutritionally than going out to a restaurant, would you believe that's generally true?

Speaker 2: 6:30

Yes, absolutely. That's actually one of the biggest misconceptions people have. For example, when I talk to them about controlling their sodium to keep their blood pressure in check, the first thing people say is but I don't put a lot of salt from the salt shaker into my food. I have to explain to them that that's a very, very tiny fraction of the amount of salt you're getting into your diet. Most of the sodium is actually coming from packaged foods that you buy from the grocery store, like packaged mac and cheese, canned soups, even packaged breads like breakfast cereals A lot of things that you wouldn't think have sodium. That's where you're getting the sodium. Then also restaurant food. You ever got to a restaurant and you come home and you just have that feeling where you just feel so full and you're getting that uncomfortable feeling.

Speaker 1: 7:17

It's because Two nights ago. Two nights ago.

Speaker 2: 7:19

Pretty much every time I go out. Yeah, it's just, I went to culinary school so I know how they make restaurant food. It tastes so good because they use a lot of butter and salt and sugar. That's why the food tastes so good. Yes, you are almost always going to be cooking healthier when you're cooking at home.

Speaker 1: 7:38

In addition to the website, which is the foodiephysiciancom. You're an author, too, right.

Speaker 2: 7:45

Yeah, I love to write On the website. I write all my own articles, so I've always loved to write. I'm also a cookbook author. It started when I was pregnant with my first child, with my daughter. I was looking for information about what I could and couldn't eat when I was pregnant and I was finding a lot of conflicting information online. I decided to write a book about it. I have a pregnancy cookbook. Then, after my daughter was born and I was trying to figure out what to feed her, I did the same thing Again. I wrote a baby food cookbook which runs all the way from when you first start your baby on solids to when they're toddlers and you're cooking for the whole family. Then I have a few other ones in there. My most recent one is actually an ebook. It's an air fryer ebook because that's the latest popular trend. It took a little while for me to embrace the air fryer, but now I actually love it because it is a healthy cooking technique and it's so convenient.

Speaker 1: 8:45

It is healthier right.

Speaker 2: 8:46

It is. You just use a fraction of the amount of oil that you would if you're cooking something on the stove or the oven. It's also super fast. If you have young kids like me and they're hungry and they want food 30 seconds ago, it's a big time saver in the kitchen.

Speaker 1: 9:01

I got to ask you. I didn't. No-transcript. The Queen of England is coming over for dinner, okay, okay, what are we cooking? What should go? Do you have a go to? And let's make it your favorite, okay.

Speaker 2: 9:19

It's funny because my tastes have changed over the years, because when I first started the blog, I was using it to show off all of these fancy dishes I was making in culinary school and then over the years it's kind of adapted.

Speaker 2: 9:33

Now my recipes I try to keep them approachable, easy things you could make in around 30 minutes or so, because I know most of us are busy. So my go to I would say, if I had to choose one for right now, the one I make all the time is just a very easy salmon teriyaki in the air fryer. Once again, the air fryer, because salmon is one of the most nutritious things you can eat healthy omega-3s, which have a lot of heart benefits for our heart, for our brains, lean protein. So we eat a lot of salmon and in the air fryer it cooks in like six to eight minutes. Another benefit of the air fryer is that there's no fishy smell to your kitchen.

Speaker 2: 10:09

Sometimes my kids wouldn't want to eat salmon in the past because when you cook it in a pan it can make your kitchen smell fishy. Nothing like that with the air fryer. And I pair it with a simple teriyaki sauce that I make at home, because that's another example of how things are healthier when you make it at home. If you buy a teriyaki sauce from the store, that's going to have tons of sugar in it, probably a lot of sodium too. So homemade sauce is going to be a lot healthier, and it usually tastes better too when you make it at home.

Speaker 1: 10:37

So when you're not being the foodie physician, you're not working in the ER saving lives. What's relaxation mode for you? Do you have a relaxation mode?

Speaker 2: 10:49

I do. It's funny because I originally got into cooking because that was relaxation mode for me, but now it's a little different because now it's my job too. So if I can ever cook something that's completely just for myself or my family, nothing to do with the blog then that's relaxing for me. But other than that, honestly, I love spending time with my family. I've got a 10-year-old and a 4-year-old. When we moved up here to Delray we all got bicycles, so now my husband and the kids, we like to bike around the neighborhood. We love watching movies, we love going in our pool this little obsession of mine. My husband and I recently discovered escape rooms. So someone gave us a gift card to a local escape room where it's one of those places where they give you an hour in a room and you have to solve puzzles to try to get out.

Speaker 1: 11:40

I've seen them.

Speaker 2: 11:41

Yeah, we did one and we loved it, and so now we've done like four or five more since then and they're great. So that's like our latest hobby. We both love solving puzzles.

Speaker 1: 11:51

That's as a couple or as a family.

Speaker 2: 11:54

As a couple so far, but we want to go do a family-friendly one too.

Speaker 1: 11:58

That sounds great, then we're going to try it myself.

Speaker 2: 12:00

Yeah, totally, it's really fun.

Speaker 1: 12:02

All right. Obviously, it seems like you have a great life, very fulfilling life. Have there, though, been any hardships or challenges that you've been through in the past that you think maybe helped make you stronger or actually benefit you now?

Speaker 2: 12:20

Yeah, definitely One of them. I kind of mentioned already when we talked about the original cooking competition I did, which was the ultimate recipe showdown. I was extremely disappointed because I did not win the competition. I prepared, I went all the way out to LA. I lost.

Speaker 1: 12:39

That's pretty traumatic, doc. I got to tell you how you made it through that. That could have been the end of it but it motivated me to work harder.

Speaker 2: 12:52

Actually, when I ended up going to culinary school because of my background, I was selected to represent my school in a big cooking competition. They had a cooking competition every year where different culinary students would compete. I flew out to Chicago. I represented my school, I trained with my instructor for weeks and ended up winning the competition. The prize was a scholarship to culinary school, so it ended up paying for my culinary school education. I ended up getting my redemption, but that would be one. Honestly, the more serious one that we could talk about is COVID as an ER doctor. I was in the ER throughout the entire thing, so definitely that was a very tough, challenging time. Both me and my husband are ER doctors. It was tough. We went through it all, with the coming home and changing in the garage and sleeping separately from our kids. It was rough, but things have finally gotten a lot better. I think I'm a better doctor because of it. We're very fortunate that we're still healthy and we try to remind ourselves of that every day.

Speaker 1: 14:05

That's great. Well, that was a time, wasn't it? You hear stories of families that have a doctor in the family or someone working in the ER and how they had to separate, but you don't hear too many were both of you. We're going through that together. Yeah, A separate one.

Speaker 2: 14:28

I have to say that that helped because from the beginning, my husband and I we've done everything together. He's actually also the other half of the foodie physician. I don't know if I mentioned that, but he does all of the food photography. We train together, we started the blog together. We do everything together. It definitely helped because if I had to go through all that with COVID by myself, without someone who could relate to everything I was going through, it would have been a lot harder.

Speaker 1: 14:55

For someone who may never go on your website, may never read one of your cookbooks or your blogs, is there one piece of advice or a tip, nutritionally or related to food, that you can leave with them?

Speaker 2: 15:10

Yeah, I have so many, but I'll try to choose one or two. I would say keep it simple. You don't have to be a culinary school trained chef to come up with delicious, healthy meals for your family. The other thing I would say is to plan. I'm a planner. I've always been a planner.

Speaker 2: 15:30

One of my biggest tips is to plan out your meals for the week. It's called meal planning. Just taking 30 minutes on the weekend to plan out your meals for the week will save you time, will save you money and you'll end up eating a lot healthier too. On Saturdays or Sundays, I'll take 30 minutes. I'll just look at my schedule and figure out which days I want to cook that week. Am I cooking a meal after I work a 10 or 12 hour shift at work? No, I cook on the days when I'm off and I make enough so that I'll have leftovers to repurpose on those nights when I know I'm going to be coming home late. Then I make my list for the week what I'm going to be eating and then I go to the grocery store once. Make one trip to the grocery store.

Speaker 1: 16:11

One trip.

Speaker 2: 16:12

One trip that will save you from making those last minute multiple runs to the grocery store during the week at five o'clock when you're trying to figure out what to make for dinner. It'll save you money because when you plan your meals you can repurpose your ingredients. For example, if I'm going to buy a rotisserie chicken to serve to my family one night, then the next night I'm going to make them into chicken quesadillas or chicken tacos or chicken pasta. That'll save money and that way you're using up everything that you buy. This will also prevent last minute runs to pick up, take out or last minute runs to the fast food place. If you plan your meals, I would say menu planning and just taking even 30 minutes, like I said, to plan out what you're going to eat for the week makes such a huge difference.

Speaker 1: 17:00

That's great stuff For our listeners. How can they become part of the foodie physician experience? Where can they find you?

Speaker 2: 17:08

The easiest way to just go to my website, which is thefoodiephysiciancom. We are also on every social media platform Instagram, facebook, youtube, twitter, pinterest all as the foodie physician. If you go to my website, you can just sign up for my email newsletters. That way, you're always up to date with new recipes that I'm posting In the future. Actually, I'm going to start getting into the online course world. I'm going to start making some digital courses that people can access on my website, with online cooking classes and recipes to help prevent various diseases like high blood pressure, heart disease, diabetes, things like that. The best way to find me is to go to the website, and it has all my contact information there.

Speaker 1: 17:57

Dr, it's been such a great conversation, aspirational, informative. You've been a great guest. Thank you very much for coming on the podcast.

Speaker 2: 18:06

Thank you so much for having me. It was a pleasure.

Speaker 1: 18:08

To our listeners. Thanks for joining us and we'll see you next time on Local Living.