— November 6, 2026 · Nutrition Research Is 4% of the National Institutes of Health Budget, Down From 4.9% in 2019

Table of Contents

1. The Numbers at a Glance
2. What the Report Is
3. The Funding Table, 2019 to 2023
4. How the Share Fell While the Dollars Rose
5. Set Beside Drug-Industry Research Spending
6. The Cost of Diet-Related Disease
7. Nutrition in Medical Training
8. Calls for a Stronger Federal Nutrition Research Effort
9. How to Read the Figures
10. Sources and Primary Documents
11. Key Research Papers
12. Connections
13. Featured Videos

The Numbers at a Glance

• $2.23 billion — National Institutes of Health spending on nutrition research and training in fiscal year 2023, of $48.37 billion in total obligations.
• 4.07 percent — the share as the report counts it (inflation-adjusted nutrition dollars divided by the actual total); 4.90 percent in 2019.
• 4.6 percent — the share with both numbers in the same year’s dollars; 4.9 percent in 2019.
• +1.9 percent — real growth in nutrition funding from 2019 to 2023 after the Biomedical Research and Development Price Index; the agency’s total grew 22.7 percent.
• $96.0 billion — total research and development spending reported by the member companies of the United States drug-industry association for 2023 ($104.3 billion for 2024). Nutrition’s $2.23 billion is 2.3 percent of the 2023 figure.
• $50.4 billion a year — the cost of heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes attributable to poor diet in the United States, in a 2019 modelling study.
• 19.6 hours — the average amount of nutrition instruction across an entire United States medical degree in the last national survey; only 27 percent of schools met the 25-hour minimum set by the National Academy of Sciences.

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What the Report Is

The NIH Nutrition Research Report 2022–2023 is compiled by the National Institutes of Health’s Office of Nutrition Research, part of the Division of Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives in the Office of the Director. It summarises nutrition research supported by 24 of the agency’s institutes and centers and by the Office of the Director during fiscal years 2022 and 2023. The executive summary was posted in November 2024; the detailed report is on the office’s website.

Its dollar figures have two sources, both named in the report’s footnotes. Nutrition spending comes from the agency’s public RePORT database, using the “Nutrition” research, condition and disease category. The totals come from the NIH Budget Office’s actual obligations by institute and center; for fiscal years 2022 and 2023 they include the new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health.

The report’s own words on the trend:

“As a percentage of total NIH spending, nutrition research funding has been stable at approximately 5 percent since FY15. … While the total amount of NIH funding for nutrition research and training has increased from FY19 to FY23 (in current dollars not adjusted for inflation), the percentage of NIH expenditures for nutrition research and training has decreased from 4.90 percent to 4.07 percent, respectively.”

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The Funding Table, 2019 to 2023

The report’s table, “Actual Obligations for NIH Nutrition Research and Training in Current and Constant Dollars and as a Percentage of Total NIH Obligations, FY19–FY23,” is given in thousands of dollars. It is reproduced here in billions, with one column added: the share with both numbers in the same year’s dollars, computed from the same table.

Exact figures from the report, in thousands of dollars, latest year first: nutrition research and training in current dollars $2,230,647 (2023), $2,102,819 (2022), $2,065,040 (2021), $2,047,194 (2020), $1,931,268 (2019); in constant 2019 dollars $1,967,431, $1,928,285, $1,980,373, $2,012,392, $1,931,268; total NIH obligations $48,371,641, $45,327,368, $42,738,079, $41,524,839, $39,420,151. Constant dollars are based on the Biomedical Research and Development Price Index with fiscal year 2019 equal to 100 percent.

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How the Share Fell While the Dollars Rose

Three things happened at once between 2019 and 2023. Nutrition funding rose from $1.93 billion to $2.23 billion, an increase of 15.5 percent. Research prices, measured by the agency’s Biomedical Research and Development Price Index, rose 13.4 percent, so in real terms nutrition funding grew 1.9 percent — from $1.93 billion to $1.97 billion in 2019 dollars, with a dip to $1.93 billion in 2022. And the agency’s total obligations rose from $39.42 billion to $48.37 billion, an increase of 22.7 percent.

A budget line that grows more slowly than the whole loses share. In current dollars the share went from 4.90 percent to 4.61 percent. The report’s own column, which divides the inflation-adjusted nutrition figure by the unadjusted total, shows a steeper fall to 4.07 percent; the two measures agree in 2019, when the price index equals 100, and drift apart as prices rise. The report’s summary sentence — dollars up, share down — holds on either reading.

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Set Beside Drug-Industry Research Spending

The Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, the drug industry’s trade association in the United States, publishes an annual survey of its member companies’ research and development spending. Table 1 of the 2025 survey gives $96.0 billion for 2023 ($71.4 billion spent in the United States and $24.6 billion abroad) and $104.3 billion for 2024 ($75.9 billion domestic). Against the 2023 figure, the National Institutes of Health’s $2.23 billion on nutrition is 2.3 percent, and the agency’s entire $48.37 billion budget is about half of what the member companies report.

The two figures are not like-for-like. Industry research and development is dominated by clinical trials of patentable products, which the agency mostly does not fund; nutrition research is also funded outside the agency, by the United States Department of Agriculture, foundations, universities and food companies. The comparison shows scale, not a budget that could be moved from one column to the other.

One structural fact sits underneath it. A food or an eating pattern cannot be patented, so there is no exclusive product whose sales could repay a large trial. That is why nutrition trials depend largely on public and charitable money, and why a 2020 review of federal nutrition research in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition found that more than ten federal departments and agencies invest in it “with relatively flat investments over several decades.”

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The Cost of Diet-Related Disease

A 2019 study in PLoS Medicine used a validated microsimulation model and national dietary survey data to estimate the cost of heart disease, stroke and type 2 diabetes attributable to suboptimal intake of ten food groups in adults aged 35 to 85. The result was $301 per person per year, or $50.4 billion a year for the United States — 18.2 percent of all cardiometabolic disease costs — of which 84.3 percent ($42.6 billion) was acute care. The largest per-person costs were attributed to low consumption of nuts and seeds ($81) and of seafood omega-3 fats ($76).

A 2014 paper in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition states the wider point plainly: nutrition is a recognised determinant in three of the top four causes of death in the United States — diseases of the heart, cancers and cerebrovascular disease. The 2020 federal nutrition research review opens with the sentence “More Americans are sick than are healthy, largely from rising diet-related illnesses,” and lists the strains this places on productivity, health care costs, government budgets and military readiness.

Set those costs beside the funding line: $50.4 billion a year in diet-attributable cardiometabolic costs alone, against $2.23 billion a year in nutrition research at the agency that funds most of the country’s medical science.

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Nutrition in Medical Training

The last national survey of required nutrition teaching in United States medical schools, published in Academic Medicine in 2010, asked all 127 accredited schools; 109 answered. Students received an average of 19.6 contact hours of nutrition instruction across their entire medical education (range 0 to 70 hours), down from 22.3 hours in 2004. Only 28 of 105 schools (27 percent) met the minimum of 25 hours set by the National Academy of Sciences, down from 38 percent in 2004, and only 25 percent required a dedicated nutrition course.

A 2019 systematic review in The Lancet Planetary Health, covering 24 studies from the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Africa and Australasia, concluded that “nutrition is insufficiently incorporated into medical education, regardless of country, setting, or year of medical education,” and that the deficits affect graduates’ knowledge, skills and confidence to give nutrition care.

The American Heart Association’s 2018 science advisory on medical nutrition education describes the consequence in practice: physicians are willing to counsel on diet and are seen as credible sources, yet “engage patients in diet counseling at less than desirable rates and cite insufficient knowledge and training as barriers,” which the advisory ties to “large and persistent gaps in medical nutrition education and training in the United States.” The 2014 American Journal of Clinical Nutrition paper reaches the same conclusion for health professionals generally: many “are not adequately trained to address lifestyle recommendations that include nutrition and physical activity behaviors.”

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Calls for a Stronger Federal Nutrition Research Effort

The 2020 review in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, written by a group that included two former United States Secretaries of Agriculture, a former Senator and a former Commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration, examined the federal nutrition research landscape through government documents and meetings with more than 50 federal staff. It found coordination “suboptimal, documented by multiple governmental reports over 50 years,” and identified two complementary strategies: a new authority for cross-government coordination of nutrition research, and “strengthened authority, investment, and coordination for nutrition research within the NIH.”

The agency’s own response is the 2020–2030 Strategic Plan for NIH Nutrition Research, which the report describes as its first agency-wide nutrition research plan, built around a vision of precision nutrition and four strategic goals beginning with foundational discovery. Among the activities the report highlights for 2022 to 2023 is the start of enrolment in Nutrition for Precision Health, a Common Fund study of how individuals respond to diet.

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How to Read the Figures

• The category is assigned by computer. RePORT’s research, condition and disease categories are assigned to each project by text matching, and one project can fall into several categories. “Nutrition” therefore includes everything from feeding studies to basic metabolism, and the total overlaps with categories such as obesity and diabetes.
• Training is included. The line is “nutrition research and training,” so fellowships and career awards are counted with the science.
• The denominator grew by acquisition. The totals for 2022 and 2023 include the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, created in 2022, which lowers every category’s share slightly without any change in nutrition spending.
• Two shares, one trend. The report’s 4.07 percent divides inflation-adjusted nutrition dollars by the unadjusted total; the like-for-like figure is 4.6 percent. Both have fallen each year since 2019.
• The agency is not the only funder. The United States Department of Agriculture, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others fund nutrition research too; the 2020 review counts more than ten federal departments and agencies.
• A share is not an outcome. The report records how money is divided; whether 4 percent is the right proportion is a judgement the people cited above make and this page reports.

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Sources and Primary Documents

Every figure in the funding table was read from the report’s own table; the added column and the growth percentages were computed from those figures. The drug-industry figures are read from Table 1 of the association’s 2025 survey; the study figures come from the papers’ abstracts.

1. National Institutes of Health, Office of Nutrition Research (November 2024). NIH Nutrition Research Report 2022–2023: Executive Summary. Division of Program Coordination, Planning, and Strategic Initiatives. — Executive summary (PDF)
2. National Institutes of Health, Office of Nutrition Research. Nutrition Research Funding Data (fiscal year 2024 chart). — Nutrition Research Funding Data
3. National Institutes of Health, RePORT. Estimates of Funding for Various Research, Condition, and Disease Categories — the “Nutrition” category used by the report. — Categorical spending
4. National Institutes of Health, Office of Nutrition Research. 2020–2030 Strategic Plan for NIH Nutrition Research. — Strategic plan
5. National Institutes of Health, Common Fund. Nutrition for Precision Health, powered by the All of Us Research Program. — Program page
6. Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (July 2025). 2025 PhRMA Annual Membership Survey, Table 1: Domestic R&D and R&D Abroad, PhRMA Member Companies: 1987–2024 (figures in millions of dollars). — Survey report (PDF)

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Key Research Papers

Each entry was checked against PubMed before it was written down; the figures quoted above come from these abstracts.

1. Adams KM, Kohlmeier M, Zeisel SH (2010). Nutrition education in U.S. medical schools: latest update of a national survey. Academic Medicine 85(9):1537-1542. — PubMed PMID: 20736683
2. Crowley J, Ball L, Hiddink GJ (2019). Nutrition in medical education: a systematic review. The Lancet Planetary Health 3(9):e379-e389. — PubMed PMID: 31538623
3. Aspry KE, Van Horn L, Carson JAS, Wylie-Rosett J, Kushner RF, Lichtenstein AH, et al. (2018). Medical Nutrition Education, Training, and Competencies to Advance Guideline-Based Diet Counseling by Physicians: A Science Advisory From the American Heart Association. Circulation 137(23):e821-e841. — PubMed PMID: 29712711
4. Kris-Etherton PM, Akabas SR, Bales CW, Bistrian B, Braun L, Edwards MS, et al. (2014). The need to advance nutrition education in the training of health care professionals and recommended research to evaluate implementation and effectiveness. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 99(5 Suppl):1153S-1166S. — PubMed PMID: 24717343
5. Jardim TV, Mozaffarian D, Abrahams-Gessel S, Sy S, Lee Y, Liu J, et al. (2019). Cardiometabolic disease costs associated with suboptimal diet in the United States: A cost analysis based on a microsimulation model. PLoS Medicine 16(12):e1002981. — PubMed PMID: 31846453
6. Fleischhacker SE, Woteki CE, Coates PM, Hubbard VS, Flaherty GE, Glickman DR, et al. (2020). Strengthening national nutrition research: rationale and options for a new coordinated federal research effort and authority. American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 112(3):721-769. — PubMed PMID: 32687145
7. Mozaffarian D, Angell SY, Lang T, Rivera JA (2018). Role of government policy in nutrition—barriers to and opportunities for healthier eating. BMJ 361:k2426. — PubMed PMID: 29898890

PubMed Topic Searches

1. PubMed: Nutrition education in medical schools
2. PubMed: Federal nutrition research funding
3. PubMed: Economic costs of diet-related disease
4. PubMed: Physician diet counselling and its barriers

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Connections

• News Archive
• The Greek Hippocratic Oath — the homepage section that sets the oath’s diet clause beside today’s funding
• Diets and Fasting — eating patterns and their research
• Mind, Body and Lifestyle — sleep, exercise, stress and other lifestyle practices
• Exercise — physical activity as medicine
• Food — the site’s whole-food section
• Nuts and Seeds — the food groups with the largest diet-attributable costs in the 2019 study
• Whole-Food Superfoods — nutrient-dense whole foods
• Fake Food — ultra-processed and imitation foods
• Nutrition and Orthomolecular Doctors — the people who built nutritional medicine
• Cardiology — heart disease, the largest diet-related cost
• Type 2 Diabetes — the diet-related disease in the cost model
• U.S. Food and Drug Administration and Regulation — the site’s section on regulatory actions

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