Teaching Nutrition to Doctors: Dr. Nate Wood, MD, inaugural director of Culinary Medicine at Yale School of Medicine, discusses the persistent lack of nutrition education in medical training. Wood defines culinary medicine as combining nutrition science, medicine, education, and culinary skills to help patients and trainees cook health-promoting food. He reviews diet’s broad impact on chronic disease (cardiometabolic disease, dementia, cancer, mental health, MS), challenges in nutrition research, and Yale’s approach emphasizing plant-forward, minimally processed foods while addressing controversies. Barriers to adoption include crowded curricula, lack of trained faculty, unclear competencies, and limited exam coverage, though nutrition is being added to Step exams. Wood describes free patient classes, community outreach, research showing culinary training boosts counseling confidence, GLP-1s as complementary to lifestyle change, and his upcoming book, “Food Figured Out,” due in 2027.
