Earth Day is April 22

By Elizabeth Baca, M.D., M.P.A., managing director, Deloitte Consulting LLP, and Jay Bhatt, D.O., managing director, the Deloitte Center for Health Solutions, Deloitte Services LP

Physicians are often highly skilled at treating chronic conditions and responding to acute crises like strokes and heart attacks. But few physicians have expertise in the role nutrition plays in preventing such health issues in the first place. Less than 1% of total lecture hours in US medical schools is devoted to nutrition educationⁱ. When we were in medical school, nutrition was not a core topic. Given Elizabeth’s interest, she set up her own special rotation combining endocrinology, gastroenterology, and sports medicine.

Not much has changed since our days in medical school. While the National Academies of Sciences recommends at least 25 hours of instruction on nutrition, 58% of medical students received no formal training on the subject, according to a 2023 surveyⁱⁱ (see Consumers want to eat their way to better health). However, more than 50 US medical schools are revamping their curriculum to include at least 40 hours of instruction related to nutrition.ⁱⁱⁱ The new classes are set to begin this fall. At the same time, there is growing recognition that what we eat is among the most powerful drivers of human health.

It appears the tide may be turning. But closing the clinical gap is only part of the challenge. There also needs to be an understanding of what food is (at a molecular level), how it is grown, what it does to the body, and what it costs the planet. Understanding this systemic connection is the mission of the Periodic Table of Foods Initiative (PTFI). Just like the chemical periodic table categorizes the elements that make up the world, the PTFI evaluates the biomolecular composition of food alongside the sustainability of the world’s food supply.^iv

The PTFI is an initiative of The Rockefeller Foundation and its affiliated public charity (RF Catalytic Capital), which is managed by the American Heart Association and the Alliance of Bioversity International & CIAT.^V The platform provides globally standardized methods to evaluate the molecular composition of crops, animal products, processed foods, and even human samples. Because these methods are standardized and comprehensive, PTFI analyses can highlight foods as complex molecular systems that impact human health while exploring edible biodiversity across cultures and ecosystems.^vi This includes measuring specific fiber, lipid, mineral, and protein components along with thousands of bioactive compounds that can impact both human and planetary health. The foods in the PTFI database also emphasize underutilized but nutrient-dense crops such as millet, teff, and amaranth. This creates an opportunity to more deeply understand and analyze the interconnections between soil, the environment, our food, and our health.

We recently had a conversation with members of the group’s leadership about how a more complete understanding of food could benefit both human and planetary health. John de la Parra, Ph.D., director of the Food Initiative at The Rockefeller Foundation, leads the PTFI; Selena Ahmed, Ph.D., is global executive director of the PTFI and dean of Food EDU Sustainable Food Systems at the American Heart Association; Steve Watkins, Ph.D., is a founder of Verso Biosciences, a commercial company that is developing the underlying technology and data architecture of the PTFI; and Tracy Shafizadeh, Ph.D., is a nutritional scientist at Verso.

Here is an excerpt from our conversation:

Elizabeth: What sort of data is PTFI gathering, and how is it being used?

John: Primarily, our labs are collecting comprehensive, standardized chemical ‘omics data, which means we are building a database of all the chemicals that make up our food in a way that is fully cross-comparable. We are also able to collect meta-data about how foods are grown, how they’re stored, how they’re processed, and how they’re transported. For example, some of our projects collect information on regenerative and conventional agricultural practices. With that information, we can offer some perspective on the quality and nutritional content of foods based on how they were grown. With this and other demonstration projects, we can build an evidence base that examines how the chemistry of food changes based on how it was grown, stored, processed, and transported.

Elizabeth: What can be done to help improve the impact food has on human and planetary health?

Tracy: It is important to consider how central food is to human health. We need to be able to measure what's in food, evaluate how foods are metabolized, and show how food choices connect to health outcomes. And understanding the composition of food can help improve agricultural practices so that farming is more sustainable. Sometimes, what is seen as food waste can have bioactive components that can be used in creating affordable meals. We work with Alejandra Schrader, a chef who promotes sustainable, nutritious, and biodiverse food systems. She works to bridge the gap between scientific data on food composition and culinary arts.^vii

Jay: How does data and measurement help connect agriculture, food quality, sustainability, and human health?

Steve: PTFI’s standardized tools enable evidence at scale, making data generated across laboratories and regions directly comparable globally. These tools extend beyond food to human biospecimens such as blood and fecal matter, as well as to soil, creating a measurable link from soil to food to human biology. We can begin to see these systems as one connected continuum and collectively enable institutions, companies, policymakers, and communities to make more informed decisions.

Selena: In practice, this elevates food quality into a system-level metric of value and collapses long-standing silos between agriculture, food science, nutrition, and health. By combining measurable molecular composition and sustainability metadata, we shift from a world where we guess about food to one where we can guide decisions across food systems with precision. We now can generate evidence at scale on how agricultural practices—such as regenerative approaches or processing methods like fermentation—influence food quality and its interaction with human biology. At the same time, it reinforces biodiversity, from molecules to landscapes, as foundational for more resilient and healthy food systems.

Elizabeth: Can you offer an example of how that might work?

Selena: One way we are bringing this to life is through Swap It Smart, an AI-powered tool developed with partners at University of California, Davis and supported by the Bezos Earth Fund. Swap It Smart is designed to improve meal quality across multiple sustainability attributes—from the ecological footprint to affordability to taste. It can be applied across a range of real-world settings, from school and hospital meals to our own kitchens, and even airline meals. We are now beginning to pilot it with school districts and chefs, embedding it directly into menu design. By translating complex food composition and sustainability data into actionable guidance, it enables better decisions at the point of formulation, making it possible to improve health and environmental outcomes within the realities of cost, access, and consumer desirability.

Earth Day is April 22

Earth Day is a great time to recognize the close connection between the health of our bodies and the health of our planet. Integrating nutrition training into medical education is a potential step forward. It could help prepare future physicians to not only to treat disease, but to help prevent or delay some chronic health conditions. This, along with the work being done by the PTFI, could broaden our understanding of the complex system that connects soil, farming, nutrition, and human health to the health of the planet.

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Endnotes

ⁱHHS urges comprehensive nutrition education reforms, HHS press release, August 27, 2025
ⁱⁱSurvey of nutrition education among medical students, Journal of Wellness, 2023
ⁱⁱⁱMedical school commitments to increase nutrition training, HHS press release, March 5, 2026
^ivThe Periodic Table of Food Initiative, Home page
^vAlliance Bioversity International - CIAT, Home page
^viThe Periodic Table of Food Initiative, Home page
^viiAlejandra Schrader, home page

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