Medical schools adapting to Kennedy push to add nutrition training

When students return to McGovern Medical School at UT Health Houston this year, they will get to participate in hands-on nutrition experiences, including cooking demonstrations in the teaching kitchen, tours of the campus “holistic garden,” and the opportunity to take a culinary-medicine-focused elective. 

These immersive programs are a response to health secretary Robert F. Kennedy’s call for medical schools to teach more nutrition — part of the Trump administration’s push to address the rising rates of chronic diseases in the United States. Kennedy has blamed the problem, in part, on doctors not routinely discussing diet and nutrition with their patients.

Lessons in culinary medicine are part of the 71 nutrition-related topics that the Department of Health and Human Services wants future physicians to be well versed in. Other topics in the department’s Advancing Nutrition Education push include enhancing nutrient bioavailability through soaking, sprouting, and fermenting foods as well as prioritizing food-based medicine as the primary approach to manage chronic diseases driven by metabolic dysfunction.

The vast majority of 163 M.D.-granting and 48 D.O.-granting schools aren’t yet part of Kennedy’s new initiative, including several leading institutions. So far, some 73 medical schools — 54 M.D. programs, 19 D.O. programs — across 36 states have signed on.

Even as some medical schools heed Kennedy’s call for more nutrition education, several told STAT that they plan to steer clear of topics that aren’t backed by evidence, including some that align with the priorities of the Make America Healthy Again political movement championed by the health secretary. Nutrition experts cautioned that some of those topics could lead to “wellness creep” in medical education.