AMA Journal of Ethics

Physicians can improve diets of patients who live in food deserts by providing nutrition materials, training in food preparation, and promoting nutritious food availability in communities where they practice.

Farmworkers can become ill due to toxic exposure in their work environments. Recommending specific restrictions, educating patients on protection strategies, and partnering with agribusiness owners and allied health workers can drive development of alternatives to agricultural practices with health risks.

Millennium Development Goals on nutrition and health seek to end hunger and significantly reduce malnutrition and premature death by 2025. Health systems and health professionals have important roles in meeting these goals.

Clinicians should contribute to healthful, equitable, sustainable food procurement initiatives consistent with their institutions' health-promotion missions.

Six cohorts of first-year medical students have been shown to have negative attitudes about obesity that are consistent over time. Attitudes can be improved, however, by using popular media and an ethics framework to discuss personal experiences and beliefs about obesity.

Focusing on social processes contributing to marginalization can help clinicians and policy makers mitigate food insecurity risk through improved patient-centered care.

Sociocultural and economic factors drive transition from plant-based to animal-based protein sources in rapidly developing and urbanizing countries of South Asia and Southeast Asia. Better understanding the health impact of this transition requires integrating epidemiological and social science research methods.