Obesity has increased threefold globally since 1975, along with the problems of food insecurity, diet-related illnesses, fad diets, and the market for weight loss supplements. “It’s easy to see how we got here,” Stephen Devries, the Executive Director of the Gaples Institute, tells Food Tank. “Ultra-processed foods are cheap [and] accessible,” he explains.
During his medical training, Devries noticed a lack of nutritional and dietary information in the medical school curriculum. To address this gap, Devries and his team founded the Gaples Institute to advance “the role of nutrition and lifestyle in medicine through education and advocacy,” or using food as medicine.
Devries tells Food Tank, “it seems counterintuitive to not prioritize nutrition” since a “poor quality diet is the leading risk factor for death in the United States.” This rise in ultra-processed food options, poor health, and overweight populations has contributed to the popularity of quick-fix diets and other fads that often lack scientific support, Devries says.
“Far too many Americans [experience] a lack of consistent access to any food or, for a much larger group, a lack of sufficient health-promoting food,” Devries tells Food Tank. “Common barriers to access include lack of availability, affordability, or transportation.”
Other topics emphasized by the Gaples Institute nutrition courses include “analysis of fad diets, health promoting-foods, evidence-based dietary patterns, motivational interviewing, social determinants of food and nutrition insecurity, and—very importantly—nutrition for clinician self-care,” says Devries.
The Gaples Institute team built a four-hour essential nutrition course for clinicians. The curriculum is updated annually “to ensure that it provides the most up-to-date and clinically relevant nutrition information possible,” Devries tells Food Tank. Last year, the section on food insecurity was broadened to also cover the newer concept of nutrition insecurity, and its underlying social determinants. The section on alcohol was also updated to include recent findings of higher health risks than previously recognized.
Devries, along with registered dietitian nutritionists, pediatricians, lipid experts, and public health experts in food and nutrition insecurity work together to shape the course. The Gaples Institute’s course is already a mandatory part of the curriculum at nine medical schools across the country, but Devries and his team are hoping to expand further. The White House recently selected the Gaples Institute nutrition course for its nationwide use in medical schools and health professional training programs.
Devries advocates for health professionals to further integrate food and medicine by screening patients for food and nutrition insecurity. These steps include providing nutritious food options at health care facilities and following up with patients to provide referrals to community food resources.
The Gaples Institute also provides courses for the public, which are guided by the same experts who teach the medical school courses and have been widely used as patient-education tools. Devries’s general advice is to “eat foods found in nature with as little processing as possible.” Currently, “more than 50 percent of calories consumed by adults come from ultra-processed foods” and incorporating simple changes can be an “enormous departure from the status quo,” he explains.
While Devries appreciates the life-saving value of pharmaceuticals, procedures, and advanced technology taught in traditional medical training, he strives to prioritize nutrition, telling Food Tank that “high-tech therapies can’t overcome the ill-effects of a poor-quality diet.”
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