John La Puma M.D. is board-certified in internal medicine, a professionally trained chef and certified California naturalist. Founder of CHEF Clinic ® and ChefMD, he has pioneered culinary medicine in the U.S., and taught the first culinary medicine, cooking and nutrition course in a U.S. medical school, at SUNY-Upstate with Dr. Michael Roizen, of the Cleveland Clinic.

Dr. La Puma co-hosted Lifetime TV's national cable television weekly series "Health Corner", and cooked with Chef Rick Bayless at Topolobampo in Chicago, both for nearly five years. A NY Times best-selling author, for ChefMD's Big Book of Culinary Medicine and The RealAge Diet, the latter with Dr. Roizen, his books have sold over a million copies and have been translated into eight languages, and six PBS specials. Dr. La Puma is currently studying nature therapy in medicine, and producing and hosting the 13 episode mini docu-series "A Green Rx", which can be seen on his YouTube channel weekly.

Dr. La Puma has lectured on food and culinary medicine at Harvard, the University of Chicago, TEDMED , Kaiser Permanente and aboard The World . His present work focuses on using specific prescriptions of nature therapy as A Green Rx to treat nature deficit disorder, acute pain and digital addiction. Other conditions under study are longevity, anxiety, heart disease, post-traumatic stress disorder, diabetes and heart disease. Dr. La Puma farms avocados, rare citrus and medicinal herbs and spices on an urban certified organic demonstration orchard in Santa Barbara, California.