What should any doctor (PCP or a specialist) know about nutrition?

So many times I hear doctors (oncologists) give incorrect advice to patients as to what they should be eating without considering their diagnoses (e.g. Not mentioning to colon cancer patients that they shouldn’t eat certain foods that will inflame their digestive systems)...in that they don’t give them any nutritional advice because they simply have no idea what good nutrition is (this isn’t something that much attention is paid to, in medical school). As a patient navigator that interacts with all levels of professionals, I often have discussions with nutritionists on staff that can’t understand why the doctors are so misinformed, don’t care or what have you…

I often find myself wondering the same thing…when my entire family became vegan, many people said ‘ask your doctor’ which I did, for shits and giggles, (all of them, actually) and aside from the basic ‘you need protein’, they couldn’t advise me as to what I would be needing to supplement or what is essential for myself and the kids to consume…I didn’t depend on them, thankfully, to help me through this process and had a nutritionist that I worked with to plan our transition but I believe that physicians in this country have no clue about proper nutrition. I don’t mean that they don’t know about the dangers of meat or dairy or soy one way or another but that they just don’t know, in general, about nutrition and don’t advise their patients correctly…with the levels of heart disease, obesity, diabetes and cancer where they’re at right now, shouldn’t the conversation be to some degree about what we nourish ourselves with?

How do you feel about your doctor’s knowledge of nutrition? Perhaps it’s the doctors I encounter that are lacking in this department and all of you were able to get your questions answered? Or am I out of line to think that this is something physicians should know about?