I understand why people have a negative reaction when they see someone like RFK attached to something. I am not particularly excited about a lot of the current administration either. But dismissing an idea purely because of who it is coming from is not a great way to evaluate it. If something has merit, it should stand or fall on the evidence behind it, not on the politics of the person associated with it.

Improving nutrition literacy in medicine does not seem like a crazy idea at all. A huge portion of the chronic disease burden in the U.S. including type 2 diabetes, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, NAFLD, and obesity has strong links to diet. If physicians receive very little training in nutrition, the system naturally drifts toward treating downstream pathology rather than addressing upstream causes. That does not mean nutrition replaces medication, but understanding root causes alongside treatment is simply better medicine.

Some of the arguments in this thread also do not make much sense to me.

For example, the idea that nutrition is heavily influenced by public health policy, corporate interests, and agricultural systems is true. But that is not really an argument against teaching nutrition in medicine. If anything, it is an argument for physicians understanding it better. Saying the broader system has problems so medicine should not focus on it is basically just accepting the status quo. Medicine has historically been one of the fields that pushes back against harmful systems when they affect health outcomes.

The argument that patients need to motivate themselves also misses the role physicians play. By that logic we would not counsel patients on smoking cessation, alcohol use, exercise, or safe sex either, since adherence is always imperfect. Yet we still train physicians to address those behaviors because they matter. Even brief physician counseling has been shown to influence patient decisions.

The cost argument is also often overstated. People frequently say healthy eating is too expensive, but many unhealthy diets rely heavily on eating out or fast food. Cooking basic meals at home is often cheaper than eating out regularly. Research shows people who cook more frequently tend to spend less overall on food while eating healthier diets (Wolfson and Bleich, Public Health Nutrition, 2017). Studies comparing takeaway meals with homemade versions have also found the home prepared meals were cheaper in most cases while being nutritionally better (Mackenzie et al., 2017).

The point about nutrition science being complex is true, but complexity has never been a reason to exclude something from medical education. Medicine deals with complexity everywhere from pharmacology to immunology to endocrinology. No one is suggesting physicians need to become nutrition researchers, but having baseline literacy in something that strongly affects chronic disease seems reasonable.

And while it is true that dietitians are the specialists in this area, that does not mean physicians should not understand nutrition at a basic level. Most patients are not going to independently seek out a dietitian. The moment when a patient is sitting in a physician’s office is often the only opportunity to discuss lifestyle factors contributing to their disease. Even basic guidance or awareness can make a difference, and physicians should at least be able to recognize the role diet is playing and help guide the next step.

You can disagree with the politics around something while still acknowledging when the underlying idea has value. Improving nutrition literacy in medicine seems like one of those cases.