What Should Doctors Tell Their Patients About Nutrition?

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The November issue of San Francisco Medicine is devoted to Food for Thought: Practical Nutrition for Physicians (the entire issue is online).

It's got a great collection of short articles, led off with mine. A throwback to the days when I taught nutrition at the University of California San Francisco School of Medicine, it's called "Doctor's Orders: What Should Doctors Tell Patients About Nutrition?"

I am a realist. I am well aware of the fact of time constraints, and my list of suggestions for what doctors should tell patients about diet and health is necessarily short. Fortunately, it doesn't take long to tell patients that what they eat matters to their health. It takes only a minute to explain that healthy eating simply means attending to food variety, minimal processing, and moderation.

This is a terrific collection of articles. Some of the others:

    • David Wallinga: "An Unhealthy Food System: Suggestions for Physician Advocacy"
    • Brian Raymond: "Taking Action: A Health Sector Guide to Food System and Agricultural Policy"
    • Kelly Brownell: "How the Food Industry Drives Us to Eat"
    • Narsai David: "Eating Sensibly: Using Common Sense and Moderation"
    • Shannon Udovic-Constant, MD, and Steve Heilig: "Health Policy Perspective: Sugar Politics Versus Health"

Take a look and use!


This post also appears on foodpolitics.com.

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Marion Nestle is a professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health at New York University. She is the author of Food Politics, Safe Food, What to Eat, and Pet Food Politics. More

Nestle also holds appointments as Professor of Sociology at NYU and Visiting Professor of Nutritional Sciences at Cornell. She is the author of three prize-winning books: Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health (revised edition, 2007), Safe Food: The Politics of Food Safety (2003), and What to Eat (2006). Her most recent book is Feed Your Pet Right: The Authoritative Guide to Feeding Your Dog and Cat. She writes the Food Matters column for The San Francisco Chronicle and blogs almost daily at Food Politics.

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