More Nutrition Education Is Not Enough RDN Expertise Must Be at the Center

The Academy’s A Seat at Every Table campaign began with a simple premise: Credentialed nutrition and dietetics professionals must be present wherever decisions about food, nutrition and health are made.

Medical education must be part of that conversation. Nutrition is not an optional add-on to healthcare. It is central to prevention, treatment, recovery and long-term health. Yet in too many settings, nutrition is still treated as an afterthought.

That needs to change. As nutrition gains long-overdue recognition in national health conversations, including growing federal attention, we have a real opportunity to strengthen its place in medical education. But that progress will only matter if it includes the professionals trained to deliver nutrition care.

The Academy, the Accreditation Council for Education in Nutrition and Dietetics (ACEND), and the more than 112,000 nutrition and dietetics professionals we represent are ready to turn this momentum into action.

Future physicians need a stronger grounding in nutrition’s role in health and disease. They do not need to become nutrition specialists, and they should not be asked to replace registered dietitian nutritionists (RDNs). They need to recognize when nutrition is affecting a patient’s health, know when specialized nutrition care is needed, and understand when to collaborate with or refer to an RDN.

Medical schools do not have to start from scratch. Across the country, nutrition and dietetics programs already have the faculty, curricula, and hands-on learning models to help strengthen medical education. ACEND’s recent survey of accredited nutrition and dietetics programs found that many are already partnering with medical schools and other health professions programs. These partnerships include classroom instruction, clinical experiences, and team-based training.

Nutrition education in medical schools is not a new idea. Successful approaches already exist, including RDN-led instruction, case-based learning, physician-RDN co-teaching, teaching kitchens, interprofessional education, and microcredential pathways.

The Academy and ACEND are actively working to connect these resources with medical schools and ensure RDN expertise is embedded from the start. ACEND has also developed a Nutrition in Medical Education Microcredential that medical schools can adopt at the program level, organized around three areas: foundational nutrition knowledge; nutrition assessment and diagnosis; and collaboration, referral, and patient management.

Teaching future physicians and current healthcare providers that nutrition matters is only the first step. They also need the confidence, relationships, and referral pathways to put that knowledge into practice.

No single model will fit every institution. What matters is that medical education does not treat nutrition as a checkbox or leave RDN expertise out of the equation.

RDNs are trained to translate nutrition science into personalized, evidence-based care. Through medical nutrition therapy, for example, they assess a patient’s nutrition needs and develop a plan that can help prevent, manage or treat disease. That expertise belongs at the center of nutrition care.

This is the next step for A Seat at Every Table: strengthening the connection between medical and nutrition education so future physicians know when to involve RDNs as essential members of the healthcare team.

If we want nutrition truly integrated into healthcare, we must do more than teach it. We must build the connections that put that knowledge into practice.

That is how we move from awareness to action, and from action to better patient care.

Tamara Randall, MS, RDN, LD, CDCES, FAND, is 2026-2027 President, Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Board of Directors.