Why Aren't Doctors Taught About Nutrition in School

Watch the entire episode of Think Again, Micronutrients here - /watch/Q7r-tw55RTi5- Why doesn’t the general public know about the importance of nutrients, and the devastating effect of nutrient deficiencies on their health? One of the main reasons is the lack of nutrition education in medical schools. A lagging medical school curriculum with almost zero focus on nutrition remains the societal chokepoint for mass awareness around nutrients, mainly due to the fact that a majority of the population still looks to medical doctors for solutions to their health problems. This appeal to authority will no longer serve us in the development of our understanding of human health, and the evidence only gets clearer and clearer that it, to this point, has done nothing but send us in the wrong direction. This sentiment has begun to shift slightly over the past decade due to the faster spread of information over the internet, and ability to gain access to legitimate scientific literature databases. However, not every person who reads, or spreads, information is necessarily qualified to accurately disseminate its meaning, and therefore the spread of misinformation has also simultaneously become easier, leaving people more confused than ever about the right way to eat for health, and leaving them vulnerable to predatory marketing and propaganda. Governing medical bodies have analyzed and surveyed medical school curriculums for decades. All surveys have come to similar conclusions about the inadequacy of nutrition education, such as “the amount of nutrition education in medical schools remains inadequate,” and “the amount of nutrition education US medical students receive continues to be inadequate,” with that specific 2010 study citing the fact that only 26 medical schools in the US (out of the 127 accredited US medical schools) required a dedicated nutrition course during the entire curriculum. The fact that so few medical schools actually require nutrition training is also concerning when coupled with the finding that a declining number of medical students are actually interested in learning anything about nutrition at all. A review in 2011 referenced the cause of this decline in interest as potentially being related to the fact that, since the 1950s, medical students have all carried a similar sentiment that nutrition education in medical school is inadequate, similar to the studies cited previously. Another more recent study in 2017 in the journal Family Medicine found the exact same thing: doctors across the board think that nutrition education is poorly integrated into the medical school curriculum. “They witnessed little nutrition counseling during shadowing experiences, and the nutrition information imparted was often outdated or incorrect.” And medical students entering residency programs “appear to be deficient in basic nutritional knowledge.” When you combine a lack of trust in the quality of the education itself, paired with no improvement in curriculum (or even a requirement to learn nutrition basics in most US medical schools), it seems perfectly reasonable to understand why fewer and fewer doctors are even interested in learning anything about nutrition during their expensive schooling. After all, why would you want to spend thousands of dollars taking course material that your peers since the 1950s, and even governing medical organizations, all deem “inadequate.” The dissatisfaction with medical school nutrition education is not reserved for institutions in the United States, however, with another study in the Canadian Journal of Applied Physiology, Nutrition, and Metabolism demonstrating an average score of 4.7 for Canadian medical students’ sentiments about the quality of their nutrition education on a scale of 1 to 10 (with 1 being immense dissatisfaction and 10 being satisfaction). Of the students surveyed, 87.3% of them believed that their curriculum should dedicate more time to nutrition education, referencing the fact that most of the medical students were “uncomfortable discussing the role of nutrition in the treatment of disease and nutrient requirements across the lifecycle.” According to data from the National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) in the United States, 2,3,4,5 More than 2 in 3 adults are considered to be overweight or obese, which is classified as at or above the 85th percentile on the CDC growth charts. More than 1 in 3 adults are obese, which is at or above the 95th percentile on the CDC growth charts. About 1 in 13 adults were considered extremely obese, which is at or above 120% of the 95th percentile on the CDC growth charts. About 1 in 6 children and adolescents ages 2 to 19 are obese.

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