University courses should teach more about need for vegetables

University physiology courses should teach Australia’s medical professionals more about the need for vegetables in the diet, says a Bond University academic.

Medical professionals need to know more about the benefits of vegetables, says Bond University’s Christian Moro.

University physiology courses should teach Australia’s medical professionals more about the need for vegetables in the diet, according to Bond University academic Christian Moro.

In a new paper Associate Professor Moro says that 95 per cent of Westerners eat less than the recommended daily veggie intake, which risks obesity, malnutrition and other nutritional deficiencies.

It is not only Western countries where there is a vegetable deficiency. Globally, data from 136 countries showed that 88 per cent were below the World Health Organisation recommendations for daily vegetable intake, the paper said.

In the paper, titled Don’t forget the veggies! Identifying and addressing a lack of vegetable education in physiology, he writes that there is “insufficient coverage of nutrition in most medical curriculums, meaning that students may be ill-equipped to address this once they transition to clinical practice”.

“It is vital that health professional programs, particularly medicine, include curriculum content relating to the importance and the benefits of consuming sufficient dietary vegetables,” he wrote in the paper which is published in the American Physiological Society journal, Advances in Physiology Education.

Professor Moro said in the paper that physiology was the ideal discipline to take in vegetable health information for students, because it fitted in with topics related to metabolism, body fat, exercise and health, and cardiovascular physiology.

“A further benefit is that physiology is foundational in most health professional courses, including medicine, nursing, and physiotherapy,” the paper said.

“With this knowledge, a range of health professionals other than dietitians can be involved in health promotion and patient health literacy.”