Students in medical schools across the country spend less than 1 percent of lecture time learning about diet.
Earlier this year, Mount Sinai, the biggest hospital network in New York City, invested in a meal delivery service. Though it seemed like an unusual move at the time, the network’s decision makes sense if you consider the intrinsic relationship between food and health—a connection underscored by countless other recent examples of healthcare initiatives that harness diet as a tool to improve well-being.
At a California rehabilitation facility, for instance, doctors use the rituals of eating to help people recover from trauma. And over the past decade, cities across the country have launched “food prescription” programsthat incentivize participants in the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) to buy fresh fruits and vegetables at farmers’ markets. A number of nonprofit organizations have launched medically-tailored meal services for people suffering from diet-related diseases.
Culturally and politically, we’re increasingly acknowledging that what we eat plays a major role in our health. Which is why it’s especially strange that healthcare providers know so little about it.Medical curriculums have been developed historically, foregrounding disciplines like biology, behavior, and disease to the detriment of food and nutrition.
In a new report published by the Harvard Food Law and Policy Clinic, researchers write that, on average, students in medical schools across the country spend less than 1 percent of lecture time learning about diet, falling short of the National Research Council’s recommendation for baseline nutrition curriculum. Neither the federal government, which provides a significant chunk of funding to medical schools, nor accreditation groups—which validate them—enforce any minimum level of diet instruction.
And it shows: While you and I might show up for our annual physicals expecting feedback on our what and how much we should be eating, just 14 percent of doctors feel qualified to offer that nutrition advice.
How did the gap get this wide? Much of it can be explained by the way medical curriculums have been developed historically, foregrounding disciplines like biology, behavior, and disease to the detriment of food and nutrition. Today, the legacy of this framework makes it hard for medical schools to retroactively integrate nutrition into their curriculums.