This is odd because health and nutrition are tied together. What you eat has a direct effect on the state of your health. But doctors are not trained in nutrition. They’re like the police. They’re trained in what to do after something bad happens but may be less effective in the prevention of those same bad happenings. Ignorance of nutrition falls on us all. I had no idea, however, that doctors really don’t receive any training in nutrition.
But the curiosity about nutrition that physicians share with the general public does not equate to clinical competence. In a 2018 survey,6 61% of internal medicine residents reported having little or no training in nutrition.6 Physician inattention to nutrition is not only a function of insufficient training, but also of physicians’ own health and dietary practices. A 2012 study7 demonstrated that physicians were less likely to record an obesity diagnosis (7% vs 93%; P < .001) when their own body weight was higher than their estimate of the patient’s weight.
JAMA Network
Leave a Reply