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Med schools failing on
nutrition teaching
Almost 60 per cent of US medical schools do not meet
recommendations for nutrition education for med students, producing
physicians - the first port of call for nutrition advice for many
consumers - who may have inadequate nutrition knowledge.
Twenty years ago the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) reported
that 21 hours of education in nutrition was required but found that
many medical schools did not offer nutrition courses. The 1985 NAS
report said: "Nutrition education programs in US medical schools are
largely inadequate to meet the present and future demands of the
medical profession."
A new survey, published in The American Journal of Clinical
Nutrition (Vol. 83, pp. 941S-944S), re-examined the state of
nutrition education in 106 medical schools. "Remarkably, less than
one half (41 per cent) of the responding schools provided the
minimum 25 hours or more recommended by the NAS in 1985, 17 schools
(18 per cent) required only [less than or equal to] 10 hours of
nutrition instruction" The researchers also found that during the
clinical years (third to fourth year) 36 per cent of schools offered
less than five hours of teaching nutrition.
Thus, it appears that we are producing a pool of physicians who
feel largely unprepared to counsel their patients about
nutrition.Other surveys in the literature have reported that
physicians feel unprepared to deal with the growing problem of
obesity, with 32 per cent of US adults clinically obese.
There is an ever increasing amount of good science that
demonstrates how very important nutritive factors, like the use of
dietary supplements, are for not only maintaining health, but in
preventing disease. Based on the study, information on nutrition,
diet and supplementation cannot be accurately provided to the public
by their physicians, which means that the public, who works longer
hours and has more demands on their time than ever, making it harder
to find good information, suffers the most.
The American Medical Association refused to comment on the study
since it was published in a non-AMA journal.
primary source: Adams KM, Lindell KC, Kohlmeier M,
Zeisel SH. 2006. Status of nutrition education in medical schools.
AJCN 83: 941S-944S | 
