The Dr. Jules Plant-Based Podcast
Hey, I’m Dr. Jules! I’m a medical doctor, teacher, nutritionist, naturopath, plant-based dad and 3X world championships qualified athlete. On this podcast we’ll discuss the latest in evidence-based and plant-based nutrition, including common nutrition myths, FAQs and tips on how to transition towards a healthier dietary pattern and lifestyle that creates little friction with your busy life!
The Dr. Jules Plant-Based Podcast
Why Doctors Don't Know Nutrition
Modern medicine has a blind spot – one that's costing us dearly in terms of health and longevity. Despite overwhelming scientific evidence that nutrition and exercise are the two most powerful levers for preventing and reversing chronic disease, most physicians receive minimal training in these areas. After completing a decade of rigorous medical education, I emerged with hundreds of hours of pharmacology training but barely 10 hours on nutrition. This disconnect continues to shape our healthcare system decades later.
The six pillars of lifestyle medicine – nutrition, exercise, sleep hygiene, stress management, avoidance of toxic substances, and social connection – have been proven exponentially more effective at extending healthspan than pharmaceutical interventions. Yet our medical system remains structured around treating diseases rather than preventing them. The curriculum is overloaded with clinical guidelines, new drugs, and interventional procedures, leaving little room for the fundamentals of health promotion. Without "big broccoli" to fund multi-million dollar studies and marketing campaigns, nutrition science gets sidelined in favor of more profitable interventions.
This knowledge gap creates real consequences. Patients with heart disease, diabetes, and obesity leave appointments with prescriptions but minimal practical guidance about food. Without evidence-based nutrition advice from their trusted healthcare providers, people turn to social media and fall down rabbit holes of misinformation. The good news is that change is coming. The American College of Lifestyle Medicine now offers board certification, some medical schools are incorporating cooking classes and motivational interviewing, and in 2026, our family medicine residency program will integrate comprehensive lifestyle medicine training. You can accelerate this shift by asking your doctor nutrition-specific questions, seeking out lifestyle medicine practitioners, and demonstrating through your own health improvements that food truly is medicine. Remember – genetics may load the gun, but lifestyle pulls the trigger. You don't need permission to start healing through what you eat.
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Peace, love, plants!
Dr. Jules
Hey everyone, welcome to Season 2 of the Dr Jules Plant-Based Podcast, where we discuss everything from plant-based nutrition to the main pillars of lifestyle medicine. Yo, plant-based buddies, welcome back to another episode of the podcast. Today we're going to be talking about a subject very near and dear to my heart nutrition in medicine and why doctors are learning so little about nutrition and exercise, the two biggest levers that you can pull for health and wellness and healthspan and lifespan. About 12 years ago, I went on this journey of thinking out of the box and looking outside of the medical system to try to find something more than just pharmaceuticals when it came to healing, and everything seemed to point towards lifestyle medicine. Now, if you would look at the entirety of the scientific literature and you would write down the top six things that are shown to improve lifespan, healthspan and reduce chronic disease risk, you would find the very six pillars that make up lifestyle medicine Nutrition, exercise, sleep hygiene, stress management, the avoidance of toxic substances and social connection. These six pillars of lifestyle medicine are exponentially more powerful than anything we can put inside of a pill to make you live better, for longer and to reduce chronic disease risk. Yet medical doctors learn very little about these subjects during sometimes a decade-long more journey of becoming a doctor.
Speaker 1:Now, why is this? Well, this all starts with a story. When I was in mid-school, I did my training from 2001 to 2005 in Sherbrooke, quebec. I had hundreds of hours of pharmacology, anatomy, disease, pathology we learned the Krebs cycle inside and out but nutrition maybe 10 hours, and that's being generous, and I'm not the exception. A 2019 study published in Academic Medicine found that 14% of medical schools in the US met the minimum recommended 25 hours of nutrition education, and even fewer medical schools taught anything about plant-based nutrition, evidence-based nutrition, culinary skills or behavior change psychology or coaching skills or behavior change psychology or coaching. Now, what's clear in the scientific literature is that you can have all of the knowledge in the world if you do not know how to communicate this to your patients or to coach your own patients through change, that knowledge can be close to useless or at least a lot less effective than if you were trained in lifestyle medicine these six lifestyle pillars and in behavior change psychology. Now, modern doctors were trained to diagnose and prescribe, and not to prevent and not to nourish. It's like learning how to fix a car without ever checking the fuel system. Now, lifestyle medicine is something that changed my own life and gave me my life back.
Speaker 1:So I am highly biased when I talk about the benefits of lifestyle interventions, but we know that nutrition and exercise are the two biggest levers that you can pull to reduce your rate of chronic disease before it happens. Studies show that between 60 and 80 percent of health care costs are spent directly or indirectly managing chronic disease lifestyle diseases that are brought upon by our own daily habits. The Danish twin study showed that, in general, our health and longevity is probably a 20% explanation from genetics and an 80% from lifestyle. So lifestyle is exponentially more important. When it comes to chronic disease cardiovascular disease, strokes, heart attacks, cancer of all types, autoimmunity allergies, heart attacks, cancer of all types, autoimmunity allergies, neurodegenerative disease lifestyle is exponentially more important than genetics. Genetics may load the gun, but lifestyle pulls the trigger.
Speaker 1:So if by now, you're asking yourself why don't they just add nutrition education in the medical curriculum, I agree. Why don't we just do it? Well, the curriculum is already overwhelmed, and the pace of change of new pharmaceuticals, new imaging technologies, new diagnosis, new treatments that's simply overwhelming the curriculum. And now that guidelines are often based in findings from randomized controlled trials, and since randomized controlled trials cost a lot of money to run, and so the only corporations that can afford to run multi-million dollar trials are pharmaceutical companies. So how did we get here, where doctors are so detached from lifestyle medicine that sometimes your fellow influencer online or wellness coach actually probably knows more about lifestyle medicine than your own doctor? Now don't get me wrong A lot of the doctors that I work with practice something that is very close to lifestyle medicine without even knowing it. But the doctors who do this are typically the doctors who have themselves adopted healthy lifestyle habits, and studies do show that doctors who don't eat healthy diets, who don't exercise, who drink or smoke are much less likely to counsel their own patients about lifestyle choices and the impact that they can have on chronic disease risks.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about all of the key reasons that might explain why nutrition is left out of the medical curriculum. Number one medical culture is now disease-focused, and our system was built around treating acute illness and not promoting long-term wellness. I get paid per patient and I have no problem with that, but the problem is that we don't have any useful, easy codes that we can bill to get paid for counseling. So, human nature being human nature. I'm not going to spend an hour with someone to make $50 so that half of that can then be removed and lost or paid in income tax and make $20 an hour after 15 years of training and being a lifelong learner. So we need to incentivize doctors to practice prevention, to coach, to communicate, to educate, to accompany, to cheerlead patients towards healthier lifestyle habits.
Speaker 1:Now the second reason why nutrition is left out is well, we all know about big pharma, but unfortunately there's no big broccoli and there's a lot more funding and lobbying behind pills than behind fruits and veggies. And it's simple when you have these millions of dollars, you're able to run commercials who hasn't seen a commercial of Ozempic on television? And you're able to run high-quality randomized control trials that simply aren't accessible to researchers studying lifestyle medicine. Now the third reason that nutrition is not in the medical curriculum is that nutrition science is complex and evolving. Now registered dietitians are the real heroes of nutrition and I'm not pretending that we're trying to make doctors into registered dietitians. The modules on nutrition during the lifestyle medicine curriculum and certification training is based on understanding macros, micros, diet culture, relationship of people, people's relationships with food and how that may impact health. Understanding energy balance. Understanding how nutrition impacts chronic disease Now we're not calculating the amount of potassium to put in an IV drip in someone who has a gastrostomy tube, but we are understanding how dietary patterns impact chronic disease risk, from cardiovascular disease to cancer risk.
Speaker 1:Now, the fourth key factor is the lack of clinician role models. Now, if your teachers don't know how to cook or to eat well themselves, they're not passing that knowledge down to future doctors. Now, cooking used to be a skill that was handed down from generation to generation and now that cycle has been broken within the last generation or two, where we rely completely on our education system to teach our kids about food and gardens and tending after plants that are growing, and knife skills and cooking skills and appliance skills. But our school is failing our kids as well in dad department. So I've encountered teenagers that aren't even able to name the ingredients on a pizza. We need to bring cooking whole foods back in schools, but we need to have it back in households first.
Speaker 1:Now the fifth key factor explaining why we don't have nutrition in medicine is simple it's time constraints. Even if doctors wanted to learn, the current curriculum is jam-packed, but we're trying to bypass that because in July 2026, the contract is officially signed. Students that are becoming family doctors and doing their training at our family medicine unit in Dieppe will have the chance to opt in to a lifestyle medicine curriculum. The American College of Lifestyle Medicine has a medical curriculum that can be integrated over 100 hours of training in the six lifestyle pillars, including culinary skills and coaching available to doctors who want to take their knowledge of lifestyle medicine to the next level. I am the course director and major leader and advocate for lifestyle medicine in my neck of the woods and I'm extremely proud. It is the biggest thing I've ever done in my career. I can't wait Now.
Speaker 1:The fact that doctors are not well-versed in nutrition does create real-life consequences for patients, and that gap in knowledge can really impact patient outcomes. We have patients walking into clinics with diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and they often leave with a prescription but no nutrition plan. And they often leave with a prescription but no nutrition plan. And when they do ask about food, they hear things like watch your carbs or just eat in moderation or try a Mediterranean diet. We actually had a doctor promoting keto diet to his cardiovascular patients, when we know that the scientific literature is overwhelmingly showing that these types of diets are typically high in cholesterol, high in animal saturated fat in animal protein, pro-inflammatory and accelerating the deposits of atherosclerosis. Plaques of cholesterol blocking your arteries grow quicker on these diets.
Speaker 1:Now the misguided nutrition education that doctors give to their patients. That has real life meaning. But what does it even mean to someone shopping at Costco with three kids, no time and no idea what fiber is. Without practical, evidence-based guidance, people are left to Google it and they fall into that YouTube rabbit hole or TikTok trends, and that's a recipe for confusion and misinformation. Studies show that about 80% of people or more get their news from a tablet or an iPhone. People aren't reading scientific articles or newspapers anymore and they get their nutrition guidance on the same apps where they get their entertainment. But now, good news, things are starting to shift. Lifestyle medicine is gaining traction. In 2017, the American College of Lifestyle Medicine certified its first board exam for physicians.
Speaker 1:We have plant-based nutrition programs going mainstream from groups like PCRM, doctors for Nutrition, guelph University, the T Colin Campbell Center for Disease and Nutrition. Education Studies are showing up in major journals and even hospitals are offering whole food plant-based options. Now the 2019 Canadian Food Guide went plant-based when it started, recommending most of our calories come from real whole plants. They removed the meat in substitute food group. They removed the dairy food group. Replaced it with 50% of your plate fruits and veggies, 25% whole grains and 25% focus on protein, which has special emphasis on plant protein.
Speaker 1:Now, on the bright side, medical curriculums are evolving and some med schools are even including cooking classes, motivational interviewing and even food as medicine rotations. But student-driven change is huge and the newer, younger generations of doctors recognize that big pharma isn't going to dig us out of this chronic disease epidemic. Med students themselves are demanding for better training. Groups like NutriTank or Plant-Based Health Professionals UK are leading the charge. But we're not there yet. Most practicing physicians still don't get ongoing education on nutrition. But it's coming soon. There's a light at the end of the tunnel Now.
Speaker 1:If your doctor doesn't bring up nutrition, don't be afraid to bring it up yourself Now, regardless if it's nutrition or pharmaceuticals or new treatments or new therapies or new technologies. When a patient asks me a question that I can't answer, I do my research and I go find out what I can learn about this subject. So be respectful, but you can ask specific questions about nutrition to your doctor in hopes of stimulating them to go get that information right. Maybe this will encourage them to dive deeper into nutrition and lifestyle medicine. Now, specific questions that you could ask that could be very useful are things like are there any dietary patterns that you'd recommend for lowering inflammation? Now, do you know of any scientific evidence, and what does it say about plant-based diets for my condition? Now you can also do your own research, but be careful. Online, you want to make sure to find reputable sources like plantbaseddoctorjulescom, nutritionfactsorg, the Plantrition Project, peer-reviewed studies on PubMed websites like PCRM, and don't hesitate to seek out lifestyle medicine-informed practitioners, naturopaths, registered dietitians and there are really good coaches out there. Now I'd also encourage you to try to find a doctor that's passionate about lifestyle medicine, that speaks your language and talks about nutrition and exercise as first-line treatments for chronic diseases. There's a growing network of plant-based doctors, dieticians and coaches out there. Start by going to the American College of Lifestyle Medicine website.
Speaker 1:If you're trying to change, don't wait for perfect guidance. Just eat more plants, cook more at home, add beans, hydrate, sleep, breathe, move, meditate, manage stress and be a role model. Sometimes the best way to teach a doctor is to be the case study, and when they see your blood pressure drop or your cholesterol improve, they notice. And if your doctor asks you what have you been doing lately, be proud to tell him that you exercise and you eat more plants and support better education.
Speaker 1:I always say to my followers, my readers, my patients if you see a post of mine online, go engage with it. Either like it, comment, share. I know sometimes people like to navigate behind the scenes, flying under the radar. They don't want to notice that they're interacting with content. But if you like content and you tell me that you like it, the algorithm will serve it up to you much more often. But most importantly is that when people engage and interact with my content, it makes it more visible to more people. People are more likely to see it when they scroll online and that's why my content is now being followed by more than 10,000 people and we're going to the 50,000 podcast downloads soon. This is because of you, who listens and who shares and who talks about it and who tags people in my comments. Supporting my content is the best way of promoting lifestyle medicine. If you're involved in lifestyle medicine or you're just passionate, make sure to share, like, subscribe, donate, support programs or talk about plant-based medical initiatives, or seek out that content online. Seek out that content online.
Speaker 1:Now, what I want people to take away today is that most doctors still aren't trained in nutrition, and that's a problem. And it's not because they don't care. It's because the system wasn't built for prevention. But things are changing slowly, but we can't wait any longer. Changing slowly, but we can't wait any longer. In 2026, we're going to have a lifestyle medicine curriculum integrated into our family medicine residency training and I cannot wait to see the new doctors flourish when they see all the amazing things that they're going to learn things that they're going to learn.
Speaker 1:But, as a patient, remember that you have the power. Ask better questions, seek out informed providers and be the change. Prove to your doctor that you can lower your blood pressure, blood sugar, blood cholesterol. You can improve all metabolic parameters with lifestyle medicine. And remember food and exercise are amongst the most powerful tools that we have for healing. You don't need permission to start using it Right on.
Speaker 1:Thanks so much for listening. I hope that this episode hit home and that you become more educated to better advocate for your own health. It's not that your doctor doesn't want to learn about lifestyle medicine. It's that the curriculum is overloaded with clinical guidelines and the system is simply not set up to incentivize doctors to practice prevention. But that's going to change and I'm hoping to be a big part of it locally, where I work and teach. Thank you for making my message more discoverable to more people. That has opened up a million doors for me and has helped me fuel this passion of integrating lifestyle medicine into our medical curriculum. Right on, you have an awesome day. Take care. Thanks for listening. Hope to see you in the next episode, Peace. Hey, everyone, go check out my website plantbaseddoctorjulescom to find free downloadable resources and remember that you can find me on Facebook and Instagram at Dr Jules Cormier, and on YouTube at Plant Based Dr Jules.
