Clinical nutrition is still inadequate or lacking in several U.S. medical schools resulting in future physicians who are not prepared for nutrition challenges in clinical practice. Therefore, it cannot be realistic to expect physicians to effectively address nutrition-linked diseases such as obesity, diabetes, metabolic syndrome, hospital malnutrition, and many other conditions when they are not taught the relevance of nutrition counseling during medical school. We conducted a needs assessment survey as preparatory work for an elective which aims to merge clinical nutrition with culinary arts as an active learning strategy to address this gap in nutritional training at Touro University Nevada, College of Osteopathic Medicine (TUNCOM). The needs assessment survey indicated that the most interested group was first-year medical students (66%). The most interested in this elective were medical students who plan to practice family medicine, and surprisingly, surgery. Respondents also preferred to receive clinical nutrition material online and have a culinary workshop every two weeks.