Texas Creates Nutrition Education Requirements for Medical Students, Physicians, and other Healthcare Professionals

By Trevor Findley and Emily Broad Leib

On June 22, 2025, Texas Governor Greg Abbott signed Senate Bill 25 into law. This bill has gotten attention for several of its components, most notably its requirement that foods containing one of a list of 44 additives must bear a warning label. Less attention has been paid to another important aspect of this bill, which is that it is the first law in the country that would require nutrition education for healthcare professionals, including doctors, nurses, and allied health professionals.  The law ties nutrition education requirements to existing sources of funds, making access to the funds contingent on schools adding nutrition education to their curriculum requirements. Education would be required for physicians and health professionals in training, as well as acting physicians and health professionals, through a continuing education requirement.

The bill states that the new curricular requirements will apply to all medical students as well as students majoring in other fields of healthcare service, and must be in line with guidelines created by the Texas Nutrition Advisory Committee, which is a new committee created by the bill.  This Advisory Committee will be composed of seven members, appointed by the governor, and must include:

• at least one expert in metabolic health, culinary medicine, lifestyle medicine, or integrative medicine;
• one licensed physician certified in functional medicine;
• one member representing the Texas Department of Agriculture;
• one member representing a rural community;
• one member representing an urban community; and
• one pediatrician specializing in metabolic health.

The committee may not include an individual, or an individual related to somebody, who owns or controls an interest in a food, beverage, dietary supplement, or pharmaceutical manufacturing company.  The committee may also not include more than two members who are affiliated with an academic or health-related institution of higher education if it could create a conflict of interest between the committee and the institution.  All committee members must disclose all past or existing conflicts of interest with food, beverage, dietary supplement, or pharmaceutical companies, or any other affiliation that could create a conflict of interest.

The new law requires the committee to:

• examine the impact of nutrition on human health and examine the connection between ultra-processed foods, including foods containing artificial color and food additives, and the prevalence of chronic diseases and other chronic health issues;
• provide an independent review of scientific studies analyzing the effects of ultra-processed foods on human health;
• provide education on the effects of ultra-processed foods on human health;
• develop and maintain dietary and nutritional guidelines based on the consensus of available scientific studies and information concerning diet and nutrition; and
• prepare an annual report summarizing recent scientific studies and updated nutrition guidelines incorporating those studies.

The law provides that the Nutrition Advisory Committee will sunset on December 31, 2032.Along with curriculum requirements for healthcare professionals in training, the bill also requires physicians, physician’s assistants, nurses, and dietitians to engage in continuing education on nutrition. The legislation directs the boards responsible for these health professions to take steps to implement this requirement.

The leading cause of death in the U.S. is poor diet, and yet, most U.S. doctors and health professionals receive little or no education on nutrition. Because of this, studies have shown that only 14% of medical students felt medical school would equip physicians to respond to nutrition questions from their patients. One study found that despite the majority of medical students entering medical school believing in that nutrition is integral to health, upon graduation less than half maintain that belief. Yet before now, there have been no requirements that nutrition be included in education at any level of the medical profession—not at medical school, residency, fellowship, or during practice (through continuing medical education).  On June 27, the governor of Louisiana signed a bill that makes Louisiana the second state to require continuing medical education for certain medical professionals.

Requiring nutrition education in medical training is vital to ensure health professionals can provide accurate basic nutrition information, answer patients’ questions and provide them with knowledge about the importance of nutrition to health, and make referrals to nutrition professionals and relevant services and interventions, ultimately supporting better individual and population-level health. Adding nutrition education to the medical school curriculum and adding a continuing medical education requirement specific to nutrition are both in line with the multitude of recommendations put forth in Harvard Law School’s Food Law and Policy Clinic’s (FLPC) Doctoring Our Diet II: Nutrition Education for Physician’s is Overdue, which was a follow-up to an initial report, Doctoring Our Diet: Policy Tools to Include Nutrition in U.S. Medical Training.  As Texas takes the lead in meaningfully integrating nutrition education into the education and training requirements for healthcare professionals, FLPC hopes to see other states and the federal government follow their lead.

Alongside mandating nutrition education for doctors, Texas SB 25 includes a number of other provisions that will impact nutrition in the state, including: a requirement that children receive nutrition instruction in kindergarten through eighth grade; a prohibition on schools limiting a student’s recess or participation in PE because of behavior or academic performance; a requirement high schools offer an elective course in nutrition; a requirement for institutions of higher education that offer an associate or bachelors degree to offer an elective course in nutrition; and–as mentioned above—substantial changes in food labeling that will require a warning label on foods with certain food additives that states “WARNING: This product contains an ingredient that is not recommended for human consumption by the appropriate authority in Australia, Canada, the European Union, or the United Kingdom.”