Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. proudly announced that medical schools, which receive federal funds and grants, will now be asked to incorporate diet education into their curricula to address related chronic disease.
In his announcement Wednesday, Kennedy quoted Hippocrates, “the father of medicine,” who said, “Let food be thy medicine, and medicine be thy food.” Kennedy interprets this to mean that Americans should try to treat more chronic diseases by adjusting their diet rather than always taking pills, and he says that right now, medical schools often provide little to no nutrition training to many surgeons.
The Trump administration’s “bold reform in our medical education system” will involve both HHS and the Department of Education to address “a situation that everyone has long recognized as wrong, but no one has yet had the gumption to fix,” Kennedy said.
I’m leading a team at @HHSGov, along with @EDSecMcMahon, targeting the woeful lack of nutrition education in medicine. We can reverse the chronic disease epidemic simply by changing our diets and lifestyles, but to do that, we need nutrition to be a basic part of every doctor’s… pic.twitter.com/GFOYE5RuYm
— Secretary Kennedy (@SecKennedy) August 27, 2025
The secretary slammed the “woeful lack of nutrition education in medicine” and argued, “poor diet drives America's chronic disease crisis, fueling seven of our 10 deadliest conditions each year, [which] claims an estimated 1 million American lives through diet-related illnesses.” And with over $4 trillion being spent every year to treat what Kennedy calls “these preventable diseases,” he believes we should not “graduate physicians unprepared to confront their root cause.”
The HHS secretary added, “The good news is that diet not only causes these conditions, it can also prevent and reverse them. But for too long, we've instead analyzed the chronic disease crisis, commissioned studies, and pontificated about the importance of nutrition without taking any meaningful action. Recent data reveals a critical disconnect.”
Related: HHS Defunds Woke California Sex Ed Program
The answer is education, Kennedy said. “Although all medical schools claim to include nutrition in their curricula, most medical students report receiving no formal nutrition education throughout their entire training,” he stated. “This leads to a troubling reality. Most medical students recognize nutrition is necessary. Nearly all medical residents are asked to counsel patients about nutrition. [But] fewer than a quarter of practicing physicians feel adequately prepared to provide nutrition advice.”
Kennedy is optimistic that the diet-related chronic disease “epidemic” can become a tragedy of the past with proper diets and lifestyle adjustments, which doctors should be able to recommend. “We'll start by embedding nutrition directly into college pre-med programs and testing it on the MCAT. Every future physician should master the language of prevention before they even touch a stethoscope,” Kennedy insisted.
Ultra-processed foods, unhealthy lifestyles, and too great a medical reliance on Big Pharma have contributed to making many Americans chronically unhealthy. “Under President Trump's leadership, we are going to systematically transform nutrition education throughout American medicine for more than 200 of America's medical schools, 13,000 residency and fellowship programs, and ultimately, each of the nation's 1.1 million practicing physicians,” Kennedy laid out his ambitious plan.
He enthusiastically predicted, “In the future, doctors won't just prescribe drugs, they'll be able to prescribe diets as well by confidently screening for diet-related diseases and collaborating with nutrition experts to recommend food-based solutions.”
As the cherry on top, Kennedy hopes the reforms will ultimately save America “hundreds of billions of dollars and prevent millions of debilitating chronic diseases… We're going to reconnect medicine with its roots.”
Support our work at PJ Media so that we can continue to bring you the truth. Join PJ Media VIP and use the promo code FIGHT to get 60% off your VIP membership!
Join the conversation as a VIP Member