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Recently, culinary professionals, hospitality leaders, and students from across Arkansas gathered for Arkansas Diamond Chef, an annual culinary competition and fundraiser hosted by the UA–Pulaski Technical College Foundation. The event brings together student chefs, professional mentors, local restaurants, and community supporters for an evening centered around food, hospitality, and culinary education. Funds raised through the event support scholarships, student success initiatives, and programs within the Culinary Arts & Hospitality Management Institute (CAHMI) at UA–Pulaski Technical College.  

The evening featured restaurant tasting stations, live culinary competitions, auctions, and recognition of leaders in Arkansas’s hospitality industry. Student teams were paired with professional chefs in a fast-paced cooking competition that highlighted creativity, teamwork, and technical skills.  

One of this year’s student competitors was UAMS Culinary Medicine Instructor Alyssa Frisby, who recently graduated from the Culinary Arts program at UA–Pulaski Technical College. Alyssa was honored to earn second place in the competition after months of preparation and practice alongside her culinary team, led by Chef Scott Rains from Table 28. 

With a background in nutrition and culinary medicine, Alyssa enjoys exploring ways to connect cooking skills with practical, approachable nutrition education. Her interest in culinary medicine continues to shape her work both in and outside of the kitchen. 

Experiences like Arkansas Diamond Chef highlight the value of mentorship, collaboration, and hands-on learning within Arkansas’s culinary community. Alyssa is grateful for the encouragement and support she received from classmates, chefs, faculty, and colleagues throughout the experience. 

Alyssa Frisby, registered dietitian for the Culinary Medicine program, was featured on Channel 7’s Saturday morning show, Daybreak, to discuss healthy eating choices with viewers. She offered expert guidance on incorporating nutritious foods into everyday meals and reinforced the Culinary Medicine program’s mission of using food as a tool to support health and well-being.

For tips on making healthy eating choices, watch the full interview here.

Alyssa Frisby, M.S., RD, LD, earned a bronze medal with the UA–Pulaski Tech Student Culinary Team at the American Culinary Federation’s regional competition in Omaha. She also took first place in the Diamond Chef Arkansas competition, partnering with fellow student Kenneth Knowlton and mentored by Chef Donnie Ferneau in the fast-paced, culinary showdown that serves as a fundraiser for the UA-PTC Culinary Arts and Hospitality Management Institute.

Alyssa Frisby is Heating Things Up in an Epic Statewide Cooking Battle

We are so proud of our very own, Alyssa Frisby! She is the best registered dietitian, senior brand and project manager, instructor, culinary student, and all-around human being you could ever meet.

Alyssa began attending Pulaski Tech Culinary Institute last fall, and has shown excellent dedication and passion towards her studies. On March 29, Frisby is participating in the elite American Culinary Federation’s Regional Qualifying Competition in Omaha, Nebraska. She will represent the University of Arkansas Pulaski Tech Culinary School Student Team that is seeking eligibility in the National Competition.

She was also chosen to be on Chef Donnie Ferneau’s Team that will participate in the Arkansas Diamond Chef Competition this spring. Diamond Chef is a fast-paced, high stakes culinary battle featuring some of the best chefs in the state alongside future culinary standouts. This event will take place at the Culinary Arts and Hospitality Management Institute on April 3.

These opportunities highlight Alyssa’s dedication to advancing her culinary expertise, which she integrates into her work in culinary medicine at UAMS.

Good luck, Alyssa!

2024: A Culinary Medicine Year in Review

We don’t know about you, but we still cannot believe it’s 2025! This year it feels like we’ve hit the ground running. And while we can’t wait for the future, it’s important to remember everything we accomplished in the last year. So, let’s take a little walk down memory lane and go over the highlights.

Spring 2024

Starting in the Spring approximately twice monthly throughout the entire year, we offered grocery distribution opportunities to the community of the 12^th St corridor. Thanks to our partners at Potluck Food Rescue, we turned the UAMS Community Café into a pop-up farmers market available to anyone in need that lives in the area. We offered fresh produce along with extra goodies from local restaurants and grocery stores. This was one of the most rewarding projects we’ve ever taken on, and we had a blast connecting with the people that live in the neighborhood.

During the month of March, we partnered with FoodCorps and Chicot Elementary to create a series of family friendly cooking classes. Dr. Michael Thomsen and Dr. Stephanie Lopez-Neyman from the UAMS College of Public Health both played an integral role in the success of this series. The idea was to incorporate every family member in the dinner making process for an inclusive atmosphere, and also to mimic a family dinner night. For instance, the older kids and adults cooked up some nutritious meals in the kitchen, while the younger kids used their creative abilities to set the table and produce a nice ambience for the dining experience.

In April we always like to participate in the annual UAMS Be a Part of the Cure Walk, and this year was no exception. We set up a booth and chatted with all different types of community members (both young and old) about nutritional education and cooking. We love the walk because it’s an excellent opportunity to get the word out about our passion and what we do.

Summer 2024

The summer brought on the heat in the kitchen. The UAMS Pathways Academy’s Ramp-Up students joined us to make delectable culinary creations and talk nutrition during one of our teaching kitchen experiences. The Ramp-Up program is uniquely geared towards high school age scholars who are interested in a career in the health and medical field. Kids always bring a different energy into the kitchen, and it’s refreshing and fun.

We were fortunate enough to be able to send one of our team members to the Health Meets Food Conference which took place during June in Colorado. Dr. Gina Drobena, our Program Director, represented our team at the conference. “The best part of the experience has been talking to other people who are just as passionate as we are about using food as medicine and leveraging the teaching kitchen as a tool to improve health and health education,” is what Dr. Drobena said about her conference experience. She came back with some innovative ideas to make our Teaching Kitchens the most enjoyable, efficient, and environmental as possible.

Fall and Winter 2024

We were honored to be a featured unit during this year’s UAMS Day of Giving. On October 10, Channel 7 came to our Cooking with Parkinson’s Class to highlight our program and emphasize the importance of supporting such a transformative health program. Alyssa Frisby was interviewed and did an excellent job explaining exactly what a donation means to Culinary Medicine. We were so grateful for the opportunity to be noticed and amazed by the generosity of the citizens of Little Rock. Thanks to these wonderful people we can offer better equipment, education, and experiences to the students at UAMS, thus truly impacting the future of our state’s health.

Also in the Fall, we had the honor of receiving our fourth Chancellor’s Circle Grant at the Clinton Presidential Center. Again, we are so grateful that we get to continue to expand our programming and offer free classes to students, faculty, and staff.

We wrapped up the year with a small Holiday gathering to celebrate all the hard work we did throughout the year. Our team believes it’s important to take time to be mindful and appreciate the wins, and we did so in style with deliciously mouthwatering treats and beverages.

Well, that’s a wrap on the highlight reel! It’s worth mentioning that while those events were being planned and taking place, our regularly scheduled programming remained the same. All the usual suspects including our Cooking with Parkinson’s Class, GME Wellness Workshops, OBGYN Teaching Kitchens, Geriatric Teaching Kitchens, and Get Healthy UAMS Teaching Kitchens for faculty, students, and staff continued as normal. 

In 2025, we are hopeful to become integrated into more departmental curriculums and look forward to interacting with patients more frequently. All in all, we had a fantastically productive 2024 and can’t wait to do it all again and then some. Here’s to the future and another extraordinary year!

Alyssa Frisby, M.S., RD, LD, was the featured speaker on the UAMS Health Talk podcast. Listen to the podcast on the UAMS Health website.

University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences held a cooking class for Parkinson’s patients on Thursday as part of their Day of Giving.

Alyssa Frisby,a registered dietitian at UAMS and Arkansas Children’s Hospital, spoke about how the classes help give back to the community.

“It’s really an opportunity for anybody who has been impacted or touched by UAMS to give back so that we can do the awesome work that we do,” says Frisby.

“With culinary medicine, we are teaching home chief skills and basic nutrition education, and we give participants the experience to practice those things in our teaching kitchen here on campus.”

Watch the full story on the KATV website.

By Kev’ Moye 

July 2, 2024 | The University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences’ (UAMS) Center for the Study of Obesity collaborated with UAMS Culinary Medicine to pilot a cooking demonstration project at Chicot Elementary and Early Childhood Center in the Little Rock School District (LRSD).

The center, which is part of the UAMS Fay W. Boozman College of Public Health, launched the healthy cooking demonstration courses specifically for families affiliated with the Little Rock community school.

“The classes were exciting because it highlighted the potential for community schools to support public health through healthy lifestyle interventions,” said Michael Thomsen, Ph.D., director of the center.

Chicot Elementary is in the southwest part of the city. Data suggests that numerous public health disparities affect the area, including access to healthy foods.

In fact, a general conversation between community members who have in-depth knowledge of the issues led to the creation of the cooking program, according to Stephanie Lopez-Neyman, Ph.D., postdoctoral fellow in the center.

“The cooking demonstration at Chicot is actually the vision of Nicole Chandler of the LRSD community schools and Jennifer Glasgow, chief education officer for the city of Little Rock,” Lopez-Neyman said. “They discussed how they’d like to create cooking demonstration class for families. When Dr. Thomsen learned about their aspirations, he gave me the assignment of making it all come to fruition. That included teaming up with the UAMS Culinary Medicine program.

“They would handle the cooking aspect of the program. The Chicot Elementary staff would recruit the families. I’d be responsible for overseeing the project.”

To maximize the potential of the cooking classes, the center’s team members surveyed grocery options in southwest Little Rock. Lopez-Neyman and Thomsen led an audit of each store within a one-mile radius of Chicot Elementary. Making sure a meal’s ingredients were readily accessible in the neighborhood was important.

Additionally, most of the students and families at Chicot are either African American or Hispanic. Based off the demographics and the audit, the center selected tasty, health-conscious recipes that the families would likely prepare at home.

“We discovered that there were lots of convenience stores, a Family Dollar, Dollar General stores, a Kroger and a Walmart,” Lopez-Neyman said. “But you still must drive to those places. Having reliable transportation is difficult for some of the families.

“The Dollar General I went to had a small produce area that carried basic vegetables and fruits. However, the frozen fresh fruits were very limited.”

Once the cooking demonstration pilot commenced, word spread about what was taking place. The opening session had only four families participate. But with each ongoing session, the number of participants grew.

“We wanted families to have fun and also understand that it’s not expensive to eat healthy,” Lopez-Neyman said. “Our big thing was exposing households to wanting to cook as a family and scale back on going out to eat. We encourage people to eat at home as a family as it tends to be healthier than eating from a restaurant.”

To help the center accomplish its goal, the guidance of the UAMS Culinary Medicine program proved invaluable. Alyssa Frisby, registered dietitian and senior brand and project manager for the Culinary Medicine program, said her team emphasizes the importance of nutrition education. Each cooking demonstration places her in immediate contact with community members, helping them live healthier lives.

“It allows us to show participants the different steps and skills needed for each recipe while giving confidence to the participants as they get a better understanding of how to prepare the recipes.” Frisby said. “The demonstrations also provided a low-risk environment for people who are trying out new ingredients or recipes.”

Frisby received lots of compliments about the meals.

“The participants were very receptive to trying the recipes, even if the ingredients were unfamiliar,” she said. “I especially enjoyed watching the children who assisted the adults in preparing the meals and seeing the joy on their faces when they got to be in charge of different tasks.”

Lopez-Neyman also received positive reviews and saw plenty of smiles and laughs from the families. She and the entire center staff loved how the pilot unfolded. The center is now optimistic about expanding the project. Potentially building upon the cooking program with the aid of a grant is ideal, Lopez-Neyman added.

“It started as an idea,” she said. “We simply listened to what people wanted. We partnered with the right groups to make it happen.

“Now that we see that the cooking demonstrations can be a successful, the next step is to find out if we can move it forward — perhaps at other LRSD community schools.”

On Monday, December 18, Culinary Medicine held a No-Cost Farmer’s Market for the 12th Street Neighborhood. The event was a tremendous success, which means we will be doing it again soon! We distributed 584 pounds of produce and 62 pounds of bakery goods. The remaining 220 pounds went to the UAMS food pantry, Stocked and Reddie. The 12th Street Community Café was an excellent place to host, and we hope to help bring in customers along the way. 

We started setting up for the event early in the day to make sure everything was perfect. After a few hours of preparation, we were ready for community members to come on in. And they did. First, customers are asked to fill out a survey so that we can improve things in the future, then they are free to take whatever they need. Sweet potatoes, bell peppers, carrots, onions, oranges, apples, a variety of breads, pineapple, and even some advent calendars are just a few examples of the offerings.

RD Alyssa Frisby and medical student Breyanna Dulaney cooked up delicious red beans and rice for the tasting. Thanks to Potluck Food Rescue, community members had a wide variety of foods, such as produce and bakery goods, as well as flowers and some basic need items to select from and take home.

Potluck Food Rescue is one of our wonderful partners that helped bring in more options to the neighborhood. They travel around the city to different restaurants and grocery stores to gather leftover food and re-distribute it to people in need. We appreciate their mission and are thrilled to have them help us with this project. 

As mentioned above, we will be doing this again. Our next 12th Street No-Cost Farmer’s Market will be held on January 22 at 5:30 p.m. We plan to host these events at least once a month. If you need help with food security, please come and join us. All are welcome.