SCOTT DETROW, HOST:
Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. announced today that 53 medical schools in 31 states have agreed to expand their nutrition curriculum. Starting this fall, their students will spend 40 hours learning about the link between diet and health. NPR's Maria Godoy has the details.
MARIA GODOY, BYLINE: As far back as the 1960s, the American Medical Association recognized that the nutrition education at medical schools is inadequate. The National Academies of Sciences recommends med students get 25 hours of training on the topic, but studies show most med schools fall short. Secretary Kennedy says this hampers doctors' ability to prevent and treat diet-related chronic disease.
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ROBERT F KENNEDY JR: Chronic disease is overwhelming our country, and it is accelerating.
GODOY: Approximately 1 million people die every year in the U.S. due to diet-related chronic diseases. A 2019 study found the U.S. spends $50 billion a year in health care costs related to poor diet. Kennedy says schools have agreed to put nutrition back where it belongs at the heart of patient care.
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KENNEDY: This is how we implement the MAHA agenda. This is how we make America healthy again.
GODOY: Bolstering doctors' education on diet and health is widely seen as a positive move, and Kennedy was joined by leaders from groups including the American Medical Association and the Association of American Medical Colleges. But Marion Nestle, a professor emeritus of nutrition and public health at NYU, says the devil is in the details.
MARION NESTLE: I want to know who's going to evaluate this. What are the schools going to do? Who's paying attention to that? Who's evaluating what they're doing?
GODOY: Nestle notes that some of Secretary Kennedy's nutrition advice, like frying food in beef tallow, goes against established science. HHS has provided medical schools with 71 curriculum suggestions. Some like identifying nutrition deficiencies are pretty mainstream, but Nestle says others, like the use of supplements, are more controversial.
NESTLE: You would be amazed at how little evidence there is for supplements making healthy people healthier.
GODOY: Nestle says she would've preferred a streamlined mandatory curriculum for all medical schools that focused on the fundamentals of nutrition and spotting deficiencies, rather than a smorgasbord of options that schools can choose from, which includes things like crop rotation and composting.
Maria Godoy, NPR News. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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