15/03/2021
Who here knows what a dietitian does?
Before I showed an interest in this career path way, I can honestly say that I did not know what a Dietitian does.
Some of the common stereotypes we get are that we only help people lose weight, or we are the food police and we frequently get mistaken for nutritionists.
So what is the difference between a nutritionist and dietitian?
“A nutritionist may be a tertiary qualified profession that has the expertise to provide a range of evidence based nutrition services related to nutrition, public health nutrition, policy and research, and community health. It’s important to note that the term ‘nutritionist’ is not regulated. Therefore can be used by dietitians, nutrition scientists and nutrition graduates - and also those with very limited qualifications in nutrition.
Dietitians are also qualified to provide this range of evidence based nutrition services, but in addition, dietitians have the expertise to provide individual dietary counselling, medical nutrition therapy, group dietary therapy and food service management. A dietitian has undertaken a course of study that included substantial theory and supervised and assessed professional practice in clinical nutrition, medical nutrition therapy and food service management.” - Dietitians Australia
As a clinical Dietitian we can certainly work with individuals to help them lose weight or to simply eat healthier, but we can also provide medical nutrition therapy to a range of different clinical conditions/practice areas including diabetes, heart disease, biochemical abnormalities (e.g. low iron), IBS, eating disorders, pregnancy, infant and child nutrition and sports nutrition just to name a few!
