Cindy Fuller wrote:
> In article >,
> "graham" > wrote:
>
>> "sf" > wrote in message
>> ...
>
>>> Oh, so they're the chiropractors of that industry? I just assumed
>>> they were all college grads with a science background, had to pass a
>>> test to be licensed, had adhere to standards and follow good
>>> practice guidelines. Silly me. I have a self-contained HMO, so I
>>> don't have to think about those kinds of details.
>>>
>> You have to be careful with these titles these days. Some
>> "nutritionists" are in fact re-labelled, genuine dieticians, trained
>> in established universities. However, a helluva lot aren't and they
>> are "certified" by mail-order "colleges" and peddle all sorts of
>> unscientific garbage.
>
> Registered dietitians have at least a bachelor's degree, complete an
> internship or supervised practice, and pass a national exam. For
> specialties such as diabetes, pediatrics, kidney disease, and
> nutrition support of ICU or burn patients, additional training and
> certification are needed. In many states they may need to be licensed
> or certified. The standard undergraduate curriculum in dietetics
> requires more chemistry than that for nursing students and is roughly
> equivalent to that required for admission to medical school. Graham
> is correct that anyone can pass him/herself off as a nutritionist,
> even the 16-year-old pimply part-timer at the GNC.
>
> As far as the "influence" goes, the curriculum is not dictated by big
> food. Nobody came into my office when I was teaching and said that I
> should teach that high-fructose corn syrup was healthy. On the
> contrary: I told students that the first thing they needed to do to
> lose weight was to lose the sodas and sweet drinks. I also took a
> very jaundiced view of supplements and herbal "remedies", mostly
> because of the lax regulation and potential interactions with drugs.
> I gave students the tools to think critically about the issues of
> nutrition and draw their own conclusions. (One of my student projects
> was to review a diet book and discuss it in class. Some of the books
> were real quackers.)
>
> Finally, the amount of money "thrown" at dietitians' meetings is chump
> change compared with medical societies. This is where the real
> influence peddling is done. There's a reason that the cholesterol
> reduction guidelines consist of statin drugs first, lifestyle
> alterations later.

That's true. Anyone can be a nutritionist. The term is meaningless.