What is the difference between a Dietician, and a Nutritionalist?
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SQUEEKY2 (
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October 13th, 2019
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@SQUEEKY2 My best guess is that a dietitian is working with people, marginalized and not, and helping them have better diets; while a nutritionist is pure research into diet and health to inform the dietitian for the nutritional guidelines, to inform the masses.
^ I did too. While trying to explain it, I decided I might need to verify that I understood what I was saying…good thing I did!!! :]
Dietician is an actual title, requiring actual qualification.
Anyone can call themselves a “nutritionist”.
It is like the difference between a doctorate and calling yourself a “scholar”.
Ragi is correct. I am married to a dietitian. They go through rigorous training, have a degree, do an internship, and have a certification. They have to keep up their certification by continuing education. They are experts in both outpatient nutrition and inpatient nutrition (my wife, retired, was an outpatient expert in prenatal nutrition. I work with inpatient dietitians who are experts in artificial nutrition).
If you call a dietitian a “nutritionist” they will get really annoyed because nutritionist is anybody who fancies themselves an expert and gives themselves a label.
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