 In failing in a test of basic knowledge on diet and coronary heart disease, doctors are failing their patients. The current study clearly shows that there is an undeniable misalignment of health professionals' actual and perceived lifestyle modification knowledge. Simply put, doctors say they are knowledgeable, but the majority of them are not. The range of knowledge demonstrated in this study indicates that misinformation and misconceptions regarding lifestyle modification are rife among health professionals. These results are particularly disturbing since the study-tested health professionals applied knowledge of lifestyle modification, directly providing an indication of the information that they dispense to their chronic diseases of lifestyle patients. These perceptions lead to misplaced complacency among health professionals and explain why they do not view lack of knowledge as a barrier to counseling. Even more disturbing is the fact that they are confident in providing lifestyle modification counseling to patients, which begs the question, are patients really benefiting from the current counseling sessions? When the doctors were asked why they don't counsel their patients more often on diet, exercise, smoking cessation, they denied their main problem was lack of knowledge, nor inadequate counseling skills on their part. No, lack of time was certainly identified as a problem, but reason number one, they blame the patients.