Professional Training & Education

Q: How is Food as Medicine different from other nutrition conferences?
A: FAM is a comprehensive training program, not a conference. We present a coherent nutrition curriculum designed and taught by a faculty made up of medical educators and skilled clinicians. Every aspect of this weeklong training is carefully planned to teach health professionals everything they need to know to start teaching and/or practicing nutritional medicine.

Q: Why is the topic of nutrition getting so much media coverage now?
A: The fact that there is more and more good scientific data indicating that, without a doubt, what we eat directly affects our health, for good or ill, has gotten the public’s attention. An authoritative study [Perspectives in Nutrition, 2004] states that “diet and nutrition are ‘personally important’ to 85% of consumers in the United States.” I think people want to know what to eat to make themselves feel better and are looking to the popular press when their doctors don’t have the answers.

Q: What do you see as some of the major problems with the way Americans eat?
A: The U.S. Department of Health & Human Services [National Vital Statistics Reports, 2000] stated that “nutrition plays a significant role in the onset and progression of 6 of the 10 leading causes of death.” The typical American diet evolved not to make Americans healthy, but rather to meet the public’s demand for relatively cheap, readily available precooked food. Processed food is the result. We have lost the essence and energy of food: vitamins, minerals, fiber, essential fatty acids. We have also lost to a significant degree the fabulous taste of fresh whole foods, the vibrant health they offer us, and the role food plays in bringing together friends, families and communities.

Q: Whom do people go to when they want advice about how they should eat?
A: People by and large would like to have their doctors counsel them about nutrition, or at the very least, affirm that good nutrition could make them feel better and refer them to a qualified professional.

Q: What prompted you to develop Food as Medicine?
A: It is clear that patients want information about nutrition and that most medical practitioners are unprepared to counsel them. Physicians need to be aware of the substantial nutrition literature, as well as to learn the clinical skills necessary to discuss nutrition skillfully with their students and patients. Food as Medicine was designed to meet this need. Our goal is twofold: first, to help health professionals integrate clinical nutrition into their practices, and second, to make nutrition an integral part of every medical student’s education.