How to improve the impact of nutrition guidance by general physicians: public health versus individual patient?

This paper will review the impacts that family physicians might exert over their patients' health, wellbeing and nutrition status. It commences with the examination of some of the characteristics of public health and family medicine as well as those of the societies in which family medicine is practised. This leads on to a discussion of several food, nutrition and consumer-related agendas which set the context for the work of family physicians. These agendas delineate the scope of family physicians' nutritional guidance. They suggest that current nutrition goals are one subset of a wider range of possibilities. Finally, several courses of action are proposed which may improve family physicians' impact on patients' lives.