Well: What doctors don't know about nutrition

Some of the most common questions patients ask their doctors focus on the link between diet and health, according to the Well blog on NewYorkTimes.com. But as Dr. Pauline Chen explains this week in her Doctor and Patient column, many of the nation’s medical schools are failing to provide new doctors with adequate nutrition education. She writes:
"Researchers from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill asked nutrition educators from over 100 medical schools to describe the nutrition instruction offered to their students. While the researchers learned that almost all schools require exposure to nutrition, only about quarter offered the recommended 25 hours of instruction, a decrease from six years earlier, when almost 40 percent of all schools met the minimum recommendations. In addition, four schools offered nutrition optionally, and one school offered nothing at all. And while the majority of medical schools tended to intersperse lectures on nutrition in standard, required year-long or semester courses, like biochemistry or physiology, only a quarter of the schools managed to have a single course dedicated to the topic."
Read the rest here.
I like one of the comments: "Money talks and the beet growers associations can’t afford TV advertising like Lilly can."