Dietitian: Hardcore Health

Last week I was walking to campus and saw an acquaintance of mine on the way. "What class do you have so late?" she asked. "I'm going to a biochemistry review," I replied.  "No way! You mean your major is hardcore? I thought it was just cooking and stuff. I have so much more respect for you now." This scenario happens surprisingly often.

Most people have no idea what a dietitian does. Some people pull out the root "diet" and assume I am a diet coach or food nazi. Other people just pull out the die part and get a little worried. What most people don't catch on to is that dietetics actually has a medical and business background before getting into all the nutrition "stuff."

Before starting the dietetics program students have to take

• Essentials of Human Nutrition (basic nutrition)
• Nutrient Metabolism (the biochemistry behind nutrition)
• Essentials of Food Science (the chemistry and physics of food)
• Introductory Chemistry and Introductory Bio-organic Chemistry (so you can hopefully understand all those other chemistry related classes you take)
• Accounting 200 (because "accounting is the language of business")
• General Microbiology (so we know the importance of washing hands and about all the bacteria that grow on food)
• Human Anatomy and Physiology (a medical field basic and a necessity for future clinical classes)
• General Psychology (to better understand counseling with patients and clients)
• Principles of Statistics (to help us translate all the technical research articles we read)

After we take all the prerequisites and get accepted into the dietetics program we move onto the good "stuff."  

• Clinical Nutrition I (we learn about half of the major diseases with nutrition implications and their medical nutrition therapy) 
• Clinical Nutrition II (we learn, and then teach, the other half of the major nutrition related diseases)
• Pathophysiology (we learn about the broken physiology causes all the diseases we are learning about in clinical)

• Food Production Management (we learn how to manage a commercial kitchen)
• Food Production Management Lab (we do the dirty work in a commercial kitchen, better known as Pen Court)
• Foodservice Systems (we learn more about managing commercial kitchens effectively)
• Community Nutrition (we learn how public policy affects nutrition in the nation and about counseling different cultures) 
• Community Nutrition Fieldwork (we volunteer at community programs such as the food bank, WIC, Food and Care Coalition and Senior Centers)
• Nutrition Assessment Lab (we learn how to take blood pressure, do skin folds, take blood and urine samples, and take other anthropometric measurements) 
• Nutrition Through the Life Cycle (nutrition for specific age groups) 
• Nutritional Biochemistry (the "hardcore" nutritional chemistry class) 
• Teaching Methods (we learn how to effectively teach all we've learned)
• Management in Dietetics (we learn the basics of management) 
• Advanced Dietetics Practice (we "build a freakin' hospital" for our capstone project and learn more clinical nutrition)
• Research in Dietetics (we learn how to write those complicated research articles we've been reading all along)

Plus I took the recommended 

• Sports Nutrition (an attempt to explain why athletes do the crazy food things they do)
• International Nutrition (common nutrition problems in other countries) 

Incase you missed it, we do more than just cooking. After taking all of these classes and graduating with a bachelors of science  we apply for a dietetic internship. This is basically a 6-12 month period of supervised practice while taking even more classes. Its like a combination of going to grad school and doing residency for med school. After that is completed interns take the RD exam and become registered dietitians or RDs. From there the possibilities are almost endless because we are pretty hardcore.