{"id":212830,"date":"2025-09-09T12:44:11","date_gmt":"2025-09-09T12:44:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/212830\/"},"modified":"2025-09-09T12:44:11","modified_gmt":"2025-09-09T12:44:11","slug":"rfk-jr-demands-med-schools-beef-up-nutrition-education","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/212830\/","title":{"rendered":"RFK Jr. Demands Med Schools Beef Up Nutrition Education"},"content":{"rendered":"

Even as lawmakers, medical professionals and his own kin call on<\/a> secretary of health and human services Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to resign for spreading misinformation, medical education organizations are on the hook to give Kennedy their plan for expanding nutrition education requirements by Wednesday. <\/p>\n

It\u2019s one of the latest public health directives Kennedy has put forth to advance his so-called Make America Healthy Again agenda<\/a>, which is heavily focused on addressing chronic illness through diet and lifestyle choices.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThe chronic disease epidemic is the most urgent and costly health crisis in America today. We can\u2019t afford another decade of delay,\u201d Kennedy wrote in an editorial<\/a> published in The Wall Street Journal last month. \u201cReforming medical education to put nutrition at its core will equip the next generation of doctors with the tools to restore the health of our nation\u2014to make America healthy again.\u201d<\/p>\n

While nutrition education experts say updating physician training requirements alone won\u2019t lower chronic disease rates, they\u2019re hopeful that the government\u2019s nutrition education push will spur changes advocates have wanted for years. <\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s best when accrediting bodies and medical institutions make changes to medical training on their own based on public need and the very best scientific evidence,\u201d said Stephen Devries, executive director of the Gaples Institute<\/a>, which uses education and advocacy to advance the role of nutrition and lifestyle in medicine. \u201cThat said, the government does have a stake in the preparedness of physicians to deal with major public health issues like this current burden of diet-related disease.\u201d <\/p>\n

In June, Kennedy\u2014who has made false or misleading claims<\/a> about vaccines, raw milk and food dyes\u2014mentioned in passing that he was considering withholding federal funding<\/a> for medical schools that don\u2019t offer nutrition education. But that threat wasn\u2019t included in the official Aug.\u00a027 directive<\/a> he issued with Education Secretary Linda McMahon, which demanded that premed programs, medical schools, residencies, medical licensing exams, board certifications and continuing education organizations all formulate nutrition education reform strategies within two weeks. <\/p>\n

While data from the Association of American Medical Colleges<\/a> shows that all medical schools in the United States already require some form of nutrition education, Kennedy and McMahon said it\u2019s not enough. They cited data<\/a> from the peer-reviewed Journal of Wellness that said medical students reported receiving an average of 1.2 hours of formal nutrition education per year. <\/p>\n

\u201cMedical schools talk about nutrition but fail to teach it,\u201d Kennedy said. \u201cWe demand immediate, measurable reforms to embed nutrition education across every stage of medical training, hold institutions accountable for progress, and equip every future physician with the tools to prevent disease\u2014not just treat it.\u201d<\/p>\n

Nutrition Education Deficiency <\/p>\n

Kennedy is far from the first person to advocate for more robust nutrition education for future and practicing physicians. <\/p>\n

\u201cThe deficiency of nutrition education in medical training is a real problem and it has been for many years,\u201d said Devries, who is also an adjunct associate professor of nutrition at Harvard University\u2019s T.\u00a0H. Chan School of Public Health. While many programs offer nutrition electives, \u201cvery little has been done in an organized and consistent way.\u201d <\/p>\n

In 1985, the Food and Nutrition Board of the National Research Council recommended that preclinical medical students receive 25 to 30 classroom hours in nutrition. At that time, more than half the medical schools in the country taught fewer than 20 hours of nutrition. Forty years later, as medical education has become more complex, numerous newer studies<\/a> suggest there\u2019s even less of an emphasis on nutrition education. <\/p>\n

\u201cOne of the barriers to adding more nutrition content in medical schools is that there isn\u2019t enough time in the curriculum to pack everything in,\u201d said Devries, who has developed short nutrition education courses for medical students and doctors. \u201cIn order to make this a realistic option, it has to be condensed and also impactful.\u201d<\/p>\n

Without proper nutrition education, physicians rarely address patients\u2019 diet or exercise choices until they develop chronic illnesses such as type\u00a02 diabetes, fatty liver disease, hypertension or stroke, said Nate Wood, director of culinary medicine at the Yale School of Medicine. And even after patients are diagnosed with those and other chronic conditions, most physicians choose to treat them with pharmaceuticals over dietary counseling, which can drive up health-care costs. <\/p>\n

According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention<\/a>, 90\u00a0percent of the nation\u2019s $4.9\u00a0trillion health care costs are attributable to a chronic illness; some studies<\/a> say more investment in preventive care could help lower those costs by billions. <\/p>\n

\u201cWe jump straight to prescribing medications because we have good data to say they\u2019re effective and it\u2019s much easier to get a patient to take medication every day than to make big changes to their lifestyle,\u201d Wood said. \u201cEven if physicians did want to counsel on diets, they don\u2019t know what to say because they weren\u2019t really taught what specific dietary changes should be enacted to treat certain conditions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Combating Misinformation? <\/p>\n

A lack of nutrition education also makes it difficult for doctors to accurately answer patients\u2019 dietary questions. <\/p>\n

\u201cPhysicians get questions all the time from patients about food trends on social media and supplements, and they\u2019re really not prepared to address that,\u201d Wood said. \u201cEven physicians are susceptible to misinformation because they don\u2019t have nutrition knowledge and they\u2019re not adequately trained on how to evaluate the nutrition literature\u00a0\u2026 So, physicians may end up falling for nutrition misinformation and dispensing that to their patients.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although Wood is encouraged by the government\u2019s attempt to emphasize nutrition education, he\u2019s concerned that HHS and the Education Department may follow up by mandating the teaching of specific nutritional claims that aren\u2019t supported by scientific evidence, such as Kennedy\u2019s unsubstantiated belief <\/a>that beef tallow is healthier than seed oils for cooking. <\/p>\n

Though neither Kennedy nor McMahon has suggested they plan to do that, \u201cI\u2019m a little worried that some of these talking points they\u2019ve been hammering on for the past year will end up being mandates for medical schools,\u201d Wood said. \u201cThat would be really bad.\u201d<\/p>\n

But beefing up nutrition education for physicians is only one part of addressing the chronic disease epidemic Kennedy is crusading against. <\/p>\n

\u201cOur food environment is also set up to make unhealthy choices the default,\u201d Wood said, noting that highly processed foods are often cheaper and more accessible than fresh, healthier options. \u201cOn top of that, doctors don\u2019t really have time to talk about nutrition in the clinic as much as would be needed to dramatically impact people\u2019s diets.\u201d<\/p>\n

That\u2019s why he and other nutrition education experts also want Congress to pass the stalled Medical Nutrition Therapy Act<\/a>, which would expand Medicare coverage of medical nutrition therapy services.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhile doctors need baseline nutrition education, they also need to be able to refer patients to experts in the field\u2014dietitians, who are vastly underutilized,\u201d said Leah Sarris, a registered dietitian and culinary medicine consultant. \u201cAfter medical students have gone through culinary medicine training, they tend to respect the role of registered dietitians and refer patients to them more.\u201d <\/p>\n

In 2022, a study in the International Journal of Disease Reversal and Prevention found that 71\u00a0percent of cardiologists referred 10\u00a0percent or fewer of their patients to dietitians or nutritionists. However, those who participated in nutrition-focused continuing medical education were almost twice as likely to refer patients to a dietitian or nutritionist compared to those who had not completed such training. <\/p>\n

The need for more dietitians is one of the many factors that\u2019s missing from Kennedy\u2019s plan to address chronic diseases, said Sarris, who developed the interdisciplinary culinary medicine program at Tulane University School of Medicine. It also ignores the implications of the government\u2019s recent and proposed cuts to programs that help people access medical care and nutritious food, such as the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program and the Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women, Infants, and Children. <\/p>\n

\u201cI love that RFK Jr. has brought attention to the fact that we need to improve nutrition education within the medical sector,\u201d she said. \u201cBut no matter what we teach people, if they can\u2019t afford healthy food, they won\u2019t improve their health.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Even as lawmakers, medical professionals and his own kin call on secretary of health and human services Robert…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":212831,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[2563,407,2879,210,2878,420,50,1182,67,132,68],"class_list":{"0":"post-212830","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nutrition","8":"tag-career","9":"tag-education","10":"tag-events","11":"tag-health","12":"tag-higher","13":"tag-jobs","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-nutrition","16":"tag-united-states","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-us"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115174406013285009","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212830","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=212830"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/212830\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/212831"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=212830"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=212830"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=212830"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}