Does your doctor shrug her shoulders when you ask what foods you should be eating? Does he give you a meal plan along with your prescription? Physicians, like the rest of us, don't often rhapsodize on subjects in which they aren't well-versed. Unfortunately, nutrition frequently falls into that category.

A new program at Southwestern Medical School will try to reverse that trend with future generations of primary-care physicians. The Center for Human Nutrition at UT Southwestern has received a $750,000 five-year grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) to improve nutrition education at Southwestern Medical School.

Cardiovascular Nutrition in Medical Education, an integration of nutrition education throughout the medical-school curriculum will begin this summer. Only nine other medical schools in the nation were selected to receive funding for "innovative nutrition education."

"Physicians sometimes put too much stock in medications and don't take lifestyle modification into account," said Jo Ann Carson, director of clinical dietetics at Southwestern Allied Health Sciences School and the new director of the NIH program. "Sure a drug might lower a patient's cholesterol level, but so will lowering the saturated fat in his or her diet. We hope to foster physicians who recognize that lifestyle changes are an important part of treatment, rather than medications alone."

The curriculum will center on guidelines from the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute, which was the governing body for the National cholesterol Education Panel that established recommended cholesterol levels.Initially the new program will integrate nutrition education into primary-care rotations -- pediatrics, ambulatory care, women's health and family medicine -- for third- and four-year students.

"Those are the areas in which family-practice physicians are most likely to discuss lifestyle changes -- a clinic setting instead of an inpatient setting," Ms. Carson said. Next year, plans are to incorporate the nutrition guidelines into first- and second-year courses, such as pathology or biochemistry. By year three they will be incorporated into primary-care residencies. "Students at UT Southwestern have said that physicians spend the least amount of time talking about the things they know the least about," Ms. Carson said. "If we can help them have more of an understanding of nutrition's impact on health, they are more likely to address it with patients and refer patients who need significant nutrition guidance to registered dietitians."

The program also represents a step toward fulfilling a goal of the Department of Health and Human Services' "Healthy People 2000" program -- to increase to at least 75 percent the proportion of primary-care physicians who provide nutrition assessment and counseling and/or referral to qualified nutritionists.