Basic Diet Orders: Helping Patients Adopt Healthy Diets

Although the value of a healthy diets and lifestyles in preventing and treating disease is well established, too few healthcare providers raise these issues with their patients. The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System surveyed approximately 13,000 obese individuals in 50 states, and found that only 42% had been advised by a health care provider to lose weight.¹

Surveys show that physicians and medical students feel ill–prepared to address nutritional questions.² Aside from a lack of information, physicians are often concerned about patients’ ability to stick to lifestyle changes. They may also face a lack of reimbursement and significant time pressures, among other problems.^1–3 Despite these reservations, the fact that patients seek out, respect, and are motivated by advice from physicians⁴ indicates that clinic visits present an important opportunity to effect major nutritional changes that improve health.

Partly in response to a growing consensus that practicing physicians and medical students should learn about nutrition, the National Institutes of Health developed the Nutrition Guide for Training Physicians.⁵ This publication is designed to help physician–educators integrate essential medical nutrition knowledge and behavioral skills into undergraduate and graduate medical curricula.