Kennedy-adapted medical school pushes for additional nutritional training

When students return to UT Health Houston’s McGovern School of Medicine this year, they will be able to participate in hands-on experiences in nutrition, including cooking demonstrations in the teaching kitchen, tours of the campus’s “Holistic Garden,” and the opportunity to take elective courses focused on culinary medicine.

These immersive programs are a response to Secretary of Health Robert F. Kennedy’s call to teach more nutrition in medical schools as part of the Trump administration’s efforts to address the rise in chronic disease in the United States. Kennedy said part of the problem is that doctors don’t routinely discuss diet and nutrition with their patients.

The culinary medicine lessons are part of 71 nutrition-related topics that the Department of Health and Human Services wants future doctors to be familiar with. Other topics in the ministry’s nutrition education drive include increasing the bioavailability of nutrients through soaking, sprouting, and fermenting foods, and prioritizing food-based medicine as a primary approach to managing chronic diseases caused by metabolic dysfunction.

The majority of the 163 MD-granting schools and 48 DO-granting schools, including several major institutions, have not yet joined Kennedy’s new initiative. So far, approximately 73 medical schools (54 MD programs, 19 DO programs) in 36 states have signed on.

While some medical schools are heeding President Kennedy’s call for more nutrition education, some told STAT they will avoid topics that are not supported by evidence, including those that align with the priorities of the Surgeon General’s Make America Healthy Again political movement. Nutrition experts have warned that some of these topics could lead to a “deterioration of health” in medical education.

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