Nutrition education in the medical curriculum.

Nutrition education in medical schools is still for from established. Part of the difficulty in establishing nutrition as an integral part of the curriculum is a failure by many educators and people in the health professions to recognize the subject as a science. Graduate nutrition programs do not consistently provide practical clinical instruction. Patients look to their physicians for guidance in nutrition, and, as has been shown, such knowledge among physicians is only modest. Although aspects of nutrition are taught in medical school, they largely go unlearned because their importance is not stressed in light of the multitude of other facts that must be assimilated. Alternatives to nutrition education in medical schools, including continuing medical education, are discussed in this paper.