Nutrition in Lifestyle Medicine in Viet Nam: Evidence-Based Eating, Food Processing and the Vietnamese Diet

Nutrition in Lifestyle Medicine in Viet Nam: Evidence-Based Eating, Food Processing and the Vietnamese Diet

Last reviewed: September 2026

Nutrition is one of the most visible parts of Lifestyle Medicine. It is also one of the areas most easily oversimplified.

People are often told that one particular diet is the healthiest, that carbohydrates are harmful, that all processed food should be avoided, that everyone should become vegan, or that a particular “superfood” can prevent chronic disease. Other messages move in the opposite direction and suggest that nutrition matters little as long as calorie intake or body weight is controlled.

Evidence-based nutrition is more complicated than either position.

Lifestyle Medicine approaches nutrition as a clinically important behavior that can influence cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, hypertension, obesity and other chronic conditions. Good practice, however, requires more than promoting a list of “healthy foods.” It requires attention to the overall dietary pattern, nutritional adequacy, food processing, clinical context, culture, affordability and whether the person can realistically maintain the way of eating being recommended.

The 2025 Lifestyle Medicine Core Competencies reflect this breadth. They ask practitioners to assess food intake and nutrient excesses or deficiencies, understand global dietary guidance, consider both plant-predominant and non-plant-predominant dietary patterns, appraise evidence on food processing, understand culinary medicine and recognize when specialized nutrition care is needed.

For Viet Nam, the useful question is therefore not simply, “What is the Lifestyle Medicine diet?” It is:

How can the best available nutrition evidence be translated into eating patterns that are healthy, nutritionally adequate, culturally appropriate, affordable and sustainable in Vietnamese life?

There is no single universal “Lifestyle Medicine diet”

Lifestyle Medicine is sometimes associated so strongly with one dietary pattern that patients may assume there is a single prescribed menu everyone must follow.

The current Lifestyle Medicine competency framework does not support that interpretation. It explicitly requires healthcare professionals to understand the health effects of prominent dietary patterns, including both plant-predominant and non-plant-predominant patterns.

The World Health Organization takes a similarly broad approach. Its updated 2026 guidance states that healthy diets can take many forms and that their exact composition varies according to characteristics such as age, lifestyle and physical activity, as well as cultural context, locally available foods and dietary customs. It describes four core principles of healthy diets: adequacy, balance, moderation and diversity.

Nutrition science can therefore identify characteristics shared by healthier dietary patterns without requiring everyone in the world to eat exactly the same foods.

Does Lifestyle Medicine require a vegan diet?

No. A plant-predominant diet and a vegan diet are not the same thing.

“Plant-predominant” generally means that vegetables, fruit, legumes, whole grains, nuts, seeds and other plant foods make up a substantial part of the dietary pattern. It does not necessarily exclude fish, eggs, dairy, poultry or other animal-source foods.

World Health Organization guidance recognizes protein from both plant and animal sources. For many adults, shifting some protein intake toward plant sources may provide health benefits, particularly when plant protein replaces red meat. At the same time, animal-source foods can remain nutritionally important in some contexts and life stages.

Viet Nam's Mười lời khuyên dinh dưỡng hợp lý đến năm 2030, issued by the Ministry of Health under Decision No. 3594/QĐ-BYT, also takes a balanced approach. It recommends an adequate, balanced and diverse diet with an appropriate combination of animal- and plant-source foods, encourages fish, poultry and nuts, and advises moderation of red meat.

For adults, appropriately planned vegetarian and vegan dietary patterns can be nutritionally adequate and can provide health benefits. They still need to meet nutritional requirements appropriately, particularly when a person has specific clinical needs.

A person therefore does not need to become vegan in order to practice evidence-based Lifestyle Medicine. The relevant question is whether the overall dietary pattern supports health and provides adequate nutrition.

What do evidence-based healthy diets have in common?

Although healthy diets can look very different across cultures, many underlying principles are consistent.

The World Health Organization's 2026 guidance emphasizes vegetables, fruit, pulses, whole grains and other nutrient-dense foods, together with adequate dietary fiber and moderation of free sugars, sodium and unhealthy fats. For people older than 10 years, it recommends at least 400 grams of fruit and vegetables and at least 25 grams of naturally occurring dietary fiber per day. Free sugars should provide less than 10% of daily energy, saturated fat less than 10%, trans fat less than 1%, and adult salt intake should generally remain below 5 grams per day.

These numbers are useful reference points, but healthy eating should not become a daily mathematics exercise. A practical pattern is often easier to understand: eat a wide variety of foods, make vegetables and other minimally processed plant foods prominent, choose higher-quality carbohydrate sources more often, include appropriate protein sources, favor healthier fats, drink mainly unsweetened beverages and limit foods and drinks that deliver large amounts of sodium, free sugars or unhealthy fats with relatively little nutritional value.

Viet Nam's national nutrition recommendations broadly align with these principles. They emphasize diversity, vegetables and fruit of different colors, appropriate protein choices, moderation of red meat, limiting fried foods, fast foods, excess salt and sugar, food safety, and maintaining an appropriate body weight together with physical activity.

The overlap between international evidence and Vietnamese guidance is substantial.

There is no single “Vietnamese diet”

Food patterns vary considerably across Viet Nam. Region, age, income, urbanization, occupation and family traditions all matter. Eating patterns in Hồ Chí Minh City may differ substantially from those in the Mekong Delta, central Viet Nam or northern mountainous areas, while home cooking may differ markedly from frequent restaurant, convenience-store or food-delivery meals.

Vietnamese food culture nevertheless contains many foods that can fit comfortably within evidence-based healthy eating: vegetables, herbs, fruit, legumes, tofu and other soy foods, fish, seafood, nuts, seeds and a wide variety of soups and mixed dishes.

World Health Organization Viet Nam highlighted these strengths in September 2026, noting that Vietnamese cuisine is known for fresh ingredients and abundant fruit and vegetables. At the same time, it warned of increasing consumption of ultra-processed foods, fast foods and sugary drinks in the context of Viet Nam's growing noncommunicable disease burden.

The objective of Lifestyle Medicine should therefore not be to replace Vietnamese food culture with a foreign dietary template. It should be to preserve and strengthen healthier elements of local food patterns while responding to newer dietary risks.

Rice is not simply “good” or “bad”

Rice illustrates why nutrition becomes misleading when individual foods are separated from the rest of the diet.

Rice is a staple food for much of Viet Nam. It provides carbohydrate and energy and is deeply embedded in everyday meals. Saying that everyone should stop eating rice because carbohydrates cause diabetes is an oversimplification.

At the same time, World Health Organization guidance recommends that carbohydrate intake come primarily from foods such as whole grains, vegetables, fruit and pulses. Less-refined grains generally provide more naturally occurring fiber than highly refined grains.

For many people, the more useful questions are therefore about quantity, grain quality and what else is on the plate. A moderate portion of rice eaten with vegetables, legumes or an appropriate protein source is different from a meal dominated by a very large amount of refined starch with few vegetables and little fiber.

Depending on health status, preference and affordability, some people may benefit from replacing part of refined rice intake with brown rice, mixed grains, legumes or other higher-fiber carbohydrate sources. For someone living with diabetes, obesity or another metabolic condition, carbohydrate amount and distribution may need more individualized clinical attention.

The goal is not to declare rice unhealthy. It is to understand how rice fits into the overall dietary pattern.

Fish sauce does not need to disappear, but sodium matters

Fish sauce provides another useful example.

Its presence in a meal does not automatically make the meal unhealthy, but fish sauce can contribute substantially to sodium intake, particularly when combined with salt, soy sauce, seasoning powders, bouillon products, instant noodles and other high-sodium foods.

The World Health Organization specifically lists fish sauce, soy sauce and bouillon among high-sodium condiments that can contribute to excessive sodium intake and recommends reducing their use where appropriate.

A realistic approach does not require abandoning familiar Vietnamese flavors. It may involve gradually reducing the amount of salty condiments used during cooking and at the table, using herbs, spices, aromatics and acidity to add flavor, comparing sodium content across packaged foods and selecting lower-sodium alternatives when practical.

The target is lower overall sodium exposure, not the elimination of Vietnamese cuisine.

Sugar-sweetened beverages and fast food deserve particular attention

Dietary change in Viet Nam is not occurring only inside the home. Packaged snacks, fast foods, sugar-sweetened beverages and other convenience products are increasingly visible in modern food environments. World Health Organization Viet Nam highlighted this trend again in September 2026.

Sugar-sweetened beverages can contribute substantial amounts of free sugar and energy without adding much nutritional value. World Health Organization guidance recommends keeping free sugars below 10% of daily energy and notes that most fruit juices, even those without added sugar, contain significant amounts of free sugars that should also be limited.

The Ministry of Health's national recommendations similarly advise limiting foods high in sugar, fried foods, fast foods, sugary drinks and alcohol.

For many people, replacing regularly consumed sugary drinks with water or unsweetened beverages can therefore be a practical first change without requiring an entirely new diet.

Food processing is not simply healthy versus unhealthy

Food processing has become one of the most debated areas in modern nutrition.

The 2025 Lifestyle Medicine Core Competencies deliberately changed their food-processing competency. Instead of simply asking practitioners to describe how processing affects health, the updated competency asks them to appraise the evidence related to how the level and type of food processing affect health outcomes.

That wording matters because processing itself is not inherently harmful.

Humans have long processed food to improve safety, digestibility, storage, convenience and availability. Washing, chopping, cooking, freezing, pasteurizing, fermenting, grinding grains, canning and shelling are all forms of food processing.

Frozen vegetables can remain nutritious. Canned foods can be useful when sodium or added sugar is appropriate. Pasteurized milk is processed. Tofu is processed. Plain yogurt is processed. Rolled oats are processed.

The Core Competencies themselves recognize that some processing techniques may preserve nutritional quality or improve access to nutritious food.

For this reason, “processed food is bad” is not an evidence-based nutrition principle.

What are ultra-processed foods?

The term ultra-processed food, often abbreviated as UPF, is most commonly associated with the NOVA classification system.

NOVA broadly categorizes foods into unprocessed or minimally processed foods, processed culinary ingredients, processed foods and ultra-processed foods. Ultra-processed products are generally industrial formulations made through multiple processes and often include refined components, flavors, colors, emulsifiers or other additives.

NOVA has become highly influential in nutrition research, but it is not a perfect classification system. The Lifestyle Medicine Core Competencies explicitly acknowledge that several systems for categorizing food processing exist and that each has strengths and weaknesses.

Foods classified within the same processing category may still differ considerably in nutritional composition and health relevance. Processing level should therefore be considered alongside characteristics such as nutrient density, fiber, sodium, free sugar, fat quality, energy density, portion size and the role a food plays in the overall dietary pattern.

What does the evidence on ultra-processed food actually show?

The evidence linking high intake of ultra-processed food with adverse health outcomes has become substantial, but it needs to be described accurately.

A 2024 BMJ umbrella review examined 45 pooled analyses involving nearly 9.9 million participants. Higher exposure to ultra-processed food was associated with multiple adverse health outcomes, particularly cardiometabolic disease, mortality and common mental health outcomes. However, most of the underlying evidence was observational. Under the GRADE framework, 22 pooled analyses were rated low quality and 19 very low quality, while four were rated moderate.

This means the associations deserve serious attention, but observational associations should not automatically be interpreted as proof that every product classified as ultra-processed directly causes disease.

Experimental evidence also exists. In a controlled inpatient randomized crossover trial involving 20 adults, Hall and colleagues provided ultra-processed and unprocessed diets that were designed to be similar in several conventional nutritional characteristics. Participants consumed about 508 additional kilocalories per day during the ultra-processed phase, gained approximately 0.9 kg during that period and lost approximately 0.9 kg during the unprocessed phase.

The trial is important, but it does not identify which specific feature of ultra-processing caused the difference. Although the diets were designed to match calories, macronutrients, sugar, sodium, fiber and overall energy density, they still differed in characteristics including non-beverage energy density, food structure, eating rate, fiber type and other compositional features.

The appropriate conclusion is therefore not that a single ingredient or industrial process has been proven responsible. It is that dietary patterns that differ substantially in processing can produce different eating behavior and energy intake even when several conventional nutrient measures appear similar.

World Health Organization guidance on ultra-processed foods is still being developed

The scientific discussion about ultra-processed foods is not finished.

The World Health Organization began formal development of a guideline on ultra-processed food consumption in 2025 and established a Guideline Development Group later that year. As of September 2026, the final guideline has not yet been published.

This is another reason for careful communication.

A responsible Lifestyle Medicine message is not:

“Anything ultra-processed is poison.”

A more defensible conclusion is that diets heavily dominated by ultra-processed products are associated with poorer health outcomes, that reducing reliance on nutritionally poor ultra-processed products is reasonable, and that recommendations should still consider nutritional composition, evidence quality, affordability and the patient's overall dietary pattern.

Minimally processed food should be the foundation, not an obsession

World Health Organization guidance describes a variety of minimally processed and unprocessed foods low in unhealthy fats, free sugars and sodium as the foundation of a healthy diet.

“Foundation” is different from “exclusive.”

A family does not need to remove every packaged, canned or frozen product from the kitchen. Frozen vegetables may make a nutritious dinner easier to prepare. Canned beans can make legumes more accessible. Pasteurization improves food safety. Shelf-stable products can be important where refrigeration or shopping frequency is limited.

The presence of packaging is not a reliable measure of nutritional quality.

Lifestyle Medicine should help people make better choices within the food environment they actually live in rather than create an unrealistic standard of dietary purity.

Food labels can help, but they do not tell the whole story

Nutrition labels are useful when comparing similar products.

Sodium may be particularly relevant when comparing sauces, seasoning products, instant foods or processed meats. Sugars matter in beverages and snack foods, while fiber can help identify some higher-quality carbohydrate options. Saturated and trans fats may also be relevant depending on the product.

The Ministry of Health's Mười lời khuyên dinh dưỡng hợp lý đến năm 2030 specifically advises people to read nutrition information on food labels before purchasing and using foods.

Labels still require interpretation. A product marketed as “high protein,” “zero sugar,” “natural” or “plant-based” is not automatically healthy, and no single nutrient determines the quality of an entire food or diet.

Food literacy is therefore more useful than searching for one perfect number on a package.

Nutrition should become more individualized when disease is present

General healthy-eating education and individualized clinical nutrition care are not always the same thing.

Someone with chronic kidney disease may require different advice from someone with hypertension. A person using insulin may need different planning from an otherwise healthy adult. Older adults may need greater attention to protein, energy intake and unintended weight loss. Pregnancy, gastrointestinal disease, food allergy, malnutrition and eating disorders create additional considerations.

The Ministry of Health's Decision No. 1982/QĐ-BYT of July 1, 2026 provides a particularly useful Vietnamese framework. It requires nutrition assessment to consider dietary habits, economic circumstances, cultural and environmental factors, comorbid conditions, medication use, food allergies and access to food. Recommendations are expected to be adapted to the person's economic and family circumstances and actual ability to obtain food.

Importantly, the guidance does not end with a one-time recommendation. It includes follow-up, reassessment of nutritional status and behavior, evaluation of barriers and confidence, and adjustment of the intervention when needed.

This closely connects nutrition care with behavior-change practice. A nutritionally perfect plan that the patient cannot implement is not an effective intervention.

Nutrition needs may also change with modern obesity treatment

New pharmacological treatments provide another example of why nutrition needs to be individualized.

People using glucagon-like peptide-1-based therapies for obesity may consume substantially less food because appetite is reduced. In this setting, the clinical question is not simply how to reduce calories further. Attention may be needed to nutritional adequacy, protein intake, gastrointestinal symptoms, hydration, physical function and preservation of muscle and bone. A 2025 multidisciplinary advisory from the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, American Society for Nutrition, Obesity Medicine Association and The Obesity Society specifically addresses these priorities.

This is one example of why disease-specific nutrition cannot be replaced by generic social-media meal plans.

Culinary medicine can help turn nutrition knowledge into meals

Nutrition recommendations fail when they cannot survive contact with a real kitchen.

Someone may understand that vegetables, legumes and whole grains are beneficial and still have little idea how to turn those principles into affordable meals that their family will eat regularly.

Culinary medicine attempts to bridge this gap by connecting nutrition science with food selection, cooking skills and practical meal preparation. The Lifestyle Medicine Core Competencies specifically include culinary medicine and its role in supporting sustainable healthy eating behavior.

In Viet Nam, this does not require replacing local dishes with imported recipes. It may mean modifying familiar meals by adding more vegetables or legumes, selecting appropriate protein sources, using less salty seasoning, changing cooking techniques or adjusting portion size while preserving flavors that remain acceptable to the household.

Food needs to be nutritionally sound, but it also needs to be affordable, practical and culturally meaningful.

Nutrition advice should consider affordability and access

An evidence-based recommendation that someone cannot afford or obtain is unlikely to be useful.

Food cost, availability, cooking facilities, working hours, household responsibilities and cooking skills all affect eating behavior. Decision No. 1982/QĐ-BYT explicitly requires nutrition advice to be adapted to economic conditions, family circumstances and food access.

This matters when nutrition advice becomes unnecessarily dependent on imported berries, specialty grains, expensive supplements or branded “health foods.”

Vietnamese food environments already contain many nutrient-dense choices that can form part of healthy dietary patterns: seasonal vegetables and fruit, legumes, tofu and other soy foods, fish, eggs, nuts, seeds and locally available grains.

Healthy eating should not become luxury consumption.

Supplements are not a substitute for a healthy dietary pattern

Lifestyle Medicine nutrition should generally begin with food rather than with a collection of supplements.

Vitamin and mineral supplements have important roles in specific situations, including documented deficiency, pregnancy, particular life stages and some clinical conditions. The Ministry of Health's national nutrition recommendations, for example, include appropriate iron, folic acid or multiple-micronutrient supplementation in pregnancy.

Supplements can correct specific deficiencies or meet particular clinical needs, but they do not substitute for the broader nutritional and behavioral characteristics of a healthy dietary pattern.

Someone cannot reliably compensate for a diet dominated by sugary beverages, high-sodium foods and nutritionally poor ultra-processed products simply by adding vitamins.

More supplementation is not automatically better nutrition.

Healthy eating also needs to be safe

Nutrition discussions sometimes focus so heavily on nutrients that food safety is forgotten.

The World Health Organization identifies safety as a fundamental feature of a healthy diet: food should be free from microbial and chemical contamination. Viet Nam's national nutrition recommendations similarly include safe selection, preparation and storage of food among their central recommendations.

Food safety is particularly important for people who are pregnant, very young, older or immunocompromised, but it matters for everyone.

A diet cannot be described as healthy if the foods supplying it are unsafe.

Who can provide nutrition care in Viet Nam?

Nutrition education can legitimately occur in many settings, including public-health programs, schools, workplaces and community activities.

Clinical nutrition care is different.

Article 26 of Viet Nam's Law on Medical Examination and Treatment recognizes the professional title of clinical nutrition (dinh dưỡng lâm sàng) among the professional titles requiring a practising licence. Circular No. 32/2023/TT-BYT specifies the professional scope of clinical nutrition practitioners in Appendix XV; the Circular has subsequently been amended, including by Circular No. 25/2026/TT-BYT.

Terms used internationally or commercially, including “dietitian,” “nutritionist,” “nutrition coach” and “nutrition consultant,” should therefore not automatically be treated as legally equivalent to the Vietnamese statutory professional title dinh dưỡng lâm sàng.

This does not mean those labels are inherently unlawful. The legal position depends on the person's qualifications, practising licence where required, professional scope and, importantly, what the person actually does.

General education about healthier eating is different from clinically assessing a patient with chronic kidney disease, diabetes or severe malnutrition and developing disease-specific treatment on the basis of that assessment.

An international Lifestyle Medicine, nutrition or coaching certificate may demonstrate additional education. It does not by itself create a Vietnamese healthcare practising licence or expand someone's authorized professional scope.

Viet Nam now has a stronger legal framework for nutrition in prevention

The legal context changed substantially in 2026.

The Law on Disease Prevention No. 114/2025/QH15 took effect on July 1, 2026 and provides a national legal framework for prevention that includes nutrition and noncommunicable disease. The Government and Ministry of Health subsequently issued implementing instruments, including Decree No. 165/2026/NĐ-CP and Circular No. 15/2026/TT-BYT.

Most directly relevant to this article, Decision No. 1982/QĐ-BYT, issued on July 1, 2026, provides professional guidance on nutrition measures for disease prevention, including nutrition screening, assessment, counseling, follow-up and referral to disease-specific professional guidance where appropriate.

This does not create a new Lifestyle Medicine specialty or a new independent nutrition profession.

It does, however, give nutrition a clearer place within Viet Nam's current disease-prevention framework.

What should evidence-based Lifestyle Medicine nutrition look like in Viet Nam?

A strong approach begins with the person rather than with the diet label.

The clinician or appropriately qualified nutrition professional needs to understand what the person actually eats, where most sodium, sugar and energy come from, whether important nutrients may be insufficient, which medical conditions and medications are relevant, how food is prepared, what the household eats, what foods are affordable and available, and what the person is realistically prepared to change.

The plan can then focus on a small number of meaningful priorities.

For one person, reducing sugar-sweetened beverages may be the highest-value first step. For someone with hypertension, sodium reduction may deserve priority. A person with type 2 diabetes may need greater attention to carbohydrate amount, quality and distribution. Someone receiving pharmacological obesity treatment may need particular attention to nutrient density, protein and preservation of physical function. An older adult losing weight unintentionally may need more energy and protein rather than further dietary restriction.

The appropriate diet is therefore not defined only by what is removed. It is defined by whether the whole dietary pattern provides adequate nutrition and helps achieve the person's health goals safely and sustainably.

The Vietnamese diet does not need to become a foreign diet

Evidence-based nutrition in Viet Nam does not require Vietnamese people to eat as though they live somewhere else.

Mediterranean dietary research can provide useful principles. DASH-style eating can provide useful principles. Plant-predominant dietary research can provide useful principles. Those principles can still be expressed through Vietnamese foods.

A meal built around vegetables and herbs, legumes or tofu, fish or another appropriate protein source, a suitable portion of rice or another grain and modest use of high-sodium condiments can fit comfortably within contemporary nutrition science.

What matters most is the dietary pattern over time.

The Ministry of Health's national advice is notably practical: eat adequate, balanced and diverse foods; combine animal- and plant-source foods appropriately; eat vegetables and fruit of different colors; use fish, poultry and nuts; moderate red meat; limit fried foods, fast foods, excess salt, sugar, sugary drinks and alcohol; maintain food safety; and combine appropriate body weight with physical activity.

These recommendations are broadly consistent with many of the core principles of evidence-based Lifestyle Medicine nutrition.

The opportunity for Lifestyle Medicine is therefore not to replace Vietnamese nutrition guidance, but to help translate and implement its evidence-based principles more consistently in clinical practice and everyday life.

Nutrition in Lifestyle Medicine is about better patterns, not perfect food

Nutrition science will continue to evolve. Evidence about ultra-processed foods will become more precise. Dietary guidance will be updated. Research will continue to clarify which patterns work best for particular diseases and populations.

That uncertainty should not prevent action on what is already reasonably well established.

Vegetables, fruit, legumes, whole grains and other nutrient-dense foods deserve a prominent place in the diet. Excess sodium, free sugar, unhealthy fats and heavy reliance on nutritionally poor ultra-processed products should be reduced. Diets should be adequate, diverse, balanced and safe. Nutrition should become more individualized when disease, age or other circumstances require it.

At the same time, nutrition should not become ideology.

A patient should not be made to feel that one bowl of white rice has ruined their health, that every processed food is harmful, that a vegan diet is mandatory or that a supplement can compensate for a poor dietary pattern.

The strongest question in Lifestyle Medicine is not:

“Which diet is the best diet?”

It is:

“What evidence-based eating pattern can this person sustain that provides adequate nutrition, fits their clinical needs and culture, and meaningfully improves health over time?”

For Viet Nam, the answer does not need to begin with abandoning Vietnamese food.

It can begin with making the foods and dietary patterns people already know healthier, more balanced and more sustainable.

References

1. Rea BL, Cheema S, Lanza S, et al. Lifestyle Medicine Core Competencies: 2025 Update. American Journal of Lifestyle Medicine. 2026;20(3):443–451. First published online October 28, 2025. doi:10.1177/15598276251379821.

2. World Health Organization. Healthy diet. Updated January 26, 2026.

3. Ministry of Health of Viet Nam. Decision No. 3594/QĐ-BYT issuing the “Ten Recommendations for Rational Nutrition to 2030.” November 29, 2024.

4. Ministry of Health of Viet Nam. Decision No. 1982/QĐ-BYT issuing professional guidance on nutrition measures for disease prevention. July 1, 2026.

5. World Health Organization Viet Nam. Speech of Dr Angela Pratt at the KOL Workshop on Nutrition and NCDs. September 15, 2026.

6. Raj S, Guest NS, Landry MJ, Mangels AR, Pawlak R, Rozga M. Vegetarian Dietary Patterns for Adults: A Position Paper of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. 2025. doi:10.1016/j.jand.2025.02.002.

7. Lane MM, Gamage E, Du S, et al. Ultra-processed food exposure and adverse health outcomes: umbrella review of epidemiological meta-analyses. BMJ. 2024;384:e077310. doi:10.1136/bmj-2023-077310.

8. Hall KD, Ayuketah A, Brychta R, et al. Ultra-Processed Diets Cause Excess Calorie Intake and Weight Gain: An Inpatient Randomized Controlled Trial of Ad Libitum Food Intake. Cell Metabolism. 2019;30(1):67–77.e3. doi:10.1016/j.cmet.2019.05.008.

9. World Health Organization. Development of a WHO guideline on consumption of ultra-processed foods. Guideline development initiated in 2025 and ongoing as of September 2026.

10. Mozaffarian D, Agarwal M, Aggarwal M, et al. Nutritional priorities to support GLP-1 therapy for obesity: a joint advisory from the American College of Lifestyle Medicine, the American Society for Nutrition, the Obesity Medicine Association, and The Obesity Society. Obesity. 2025;33(8):1475–1503. doi:10.1002/oby.24336.

11. National Assembly of Viet Nam. Law on Disease Prevention No. 114/2025/QH15, dated December 10, 2025, effective July 1, 2026.

12. Government of Viet Nam. Decree No. 165/2026/NĐ-CP detailing and guiding implementation of certain provisions of the Law on Disease Prevention. May 15, 2026, effective July 1, 2026.

13. Ministry of Health of Viet Nam. Circular No. 15/2026/TT-BYT detailing certain provisions of the Law on Disease Prevention. May 17, 2026, effective July 1, 2026.

14. Office of the National Assembly of Viet Nam. Consolidated Document No. 26/VBHN-VPQH, Law on Medical Examination and Treatment. February 26, 2026.

15. Ministry of Health of Viet Nam. Circular No. 32/2023/TT-BYT detailing provisions of the Law on Medical Examination and Treatment and professional scopes of healthcare practitioners, including clinical nutrition, as subsequently amended.

This article is intended for professional education and general information. It does not provide individualized nutrition or medical advice. Clinical nutrition assessment, disease-specific nutrition treatment and other healthcare activities should remain within the training, competence and legally authorized professional scope of the practitioners involved. An international Lifestyle Medicine, nutrition or coaching certificate does not by itself create or expand a Vietnamese healthcare practising licence.

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