Doctors Don’t Know Nutrition

Since I have been doing some deep dives into the importance of proper nutrition, I learned so much and have reaffirmed a lot of what I already know. Thank you all for your support and comments with these deep dive posts too. One of you was stunned to learn that doctors really are NOT trained in nutrition at all (all of us should be). NOPE! It’s sad when a chef and a sports trainer knows more about nutrition than our health care providers, but that is where we are in society today.

My quest continues. I am continuing my own quest for information, and as I do, I learn more and more everyday. Here is what I uncovered today.

While the amount of required nutrition education for doctors varies, the general recommendation is for 25 hours of nutrition training during medical school. However, a significant number of medical schools fall short of this recommendation. Many schools do not meet this recommendation. Studies show that the average nutrition training hours are often much lower, with some surveys indicating an average of only 11 hours across the entire medical program. Less than 20 percent of medical schools have a single required course in nutrition. Most physicians do not understand nutrition well enough to teach it, and if they can’t teach it, then how can they treat their patients, especially when so many diseases and disorders can be prevented by good nutrition and dietary habits? I find this to be very scary, and very unprofessional. I also find it to be a form of malpractice. Nutrition courses should be MANDATORY for all medical professionals. They should at least be required at a minimum, to have has much training as a chef or a sports trainer. But sadly, they are not.

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Author: ajeanneinthekitchen

I have worked in the restaurant and catering industry for over 35 years. I attended 2 culinary schools in Southern California, and have a degree in culinary arts from the Southern California School of Culinary Arts, as well as a few other degrees in other areas. I love to cook and I love to feed people.

13 thoughts on “Doctors Don’t Know Nutrition”

  3. You are so right! Where I live the GP doctors don’t do anything but send you to another doctor that specializes in one thing. I’ve been around for many years and we never were sent to a specialist, the GP doctors did most everything. Now they print out information you need to know because they don’t know the answer to your problem without using the computer. Same with the dentist. The dentist used to pulled teeth, do root canals and any other issues they found. I went to the dentist and they had no idea why I had a bump on my gums. She sent me to one specialist and he said I needed a root canal. He sent me to another dentist and he started the root canal and stopped, told me my root was cracked and the bump was an abscess. $800 just for that one visit and he never helped me. He sent me to get the tooth pulled. The oral surgeon pulled the tooth and left part of the root in which was extremely sharp. I had to go back so he could finish the job he screwed up the first time. So no, I’m not surprised they don’t know about nutrition.

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  6. Years ago (pre-internet), our local newspaper ran a column wherein an M.D. answered questions from readers. I read it just for laughs because the guy was an idiot. Someone asked him about a specific health condition (can’t remember what it was) and wondered if changing her diet could alleviate it. The doc replied that “we used to think that diet was helpful in treating [whatever the condition was], but we no longer recommend that, because now we have drugs to treat it.” That struck me as emblematic of the way modern medicine approaches health conditions in general: there’s a drug for this one, there’s a surgical procedure for that one. No one makes any money off of telling people to change their diet, but loads of people have become fabulously wealthy from pushing drugs and surgery — and they control most of our health care delivery system.

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