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Difference Between a Dietitian and a Nutritionist

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Luna Jaiswal
Difference Between a Dietitian and a Nutritionist

If you don’t know the difference between a dietitian and a nutritionist then you are not alone because it is one of the questions that asked most often online and in real life.

It’s not surprising because a lot of times people will use the words dietitian and nutritionist interchangeably and a lot of people don’t even know that there is a difference but there is, and it’s important for you to know the difference.

Especially if you’re looking for someone to get nutrition information from or you’re looking for a nutrition professional to work with, so to start off let’s talk about what a dietitian is.

So a Dietician and Dietitian in Lucknow have a specific level of education so dietitians first have to complete a degree in nutrition from an accredited program so that means that the program has a certain mix of coursework and that they have been accredited to trained dietitians.

And then they also have to go through a recurring process every few years now after a person completes that degree program the next step is 1200 hours of supervised practice so this is real-world real-life work as a dietitian getting that practical experience then after that there is an exam so just like a lot of other health professionals dietitians have to take an exam before they can become a dietitian.

Then once you pass your exam you’re a dietitian but throughout the rest of a dietitians career they also have to do continuing education something else that’s important to know is the different means that dietitians can go by so the kind of general term is dietitian, but as far as official titles dietitians can call themselves registered dietitian abbreviated as Rd or registered dietitian nutritionist which is abbreviated Rd and so they’re both the same they mean the same thing.

There’s no difference in education or anything like that; it’s just two different options for dietitians to use something else. It’s important to know is what type of work dietitians can do some people think of dietitians as just working in the wellness area or just working in hospitals or something like that but really dietitians can work in a lot of different places so some dieticians do work in hospitals or maybe like a dialysis center or work specifically with people who have diabetes.

Some dietitians work in the health and wellness and lifestyle type area some dietitians work in community nutrition or public health or eating disorders or food allergies, some work with food companies to help them develop products so there’s a lot of different areas where dietitians can work and also over the course of a career just like with a lot of other careers dieticians a lot of times They start to specialise .

So maybe they start working in one area and then as their career goes on they get extra training education or certifications in that area or maybe just by the nature of working in that area for so long they really start to specialize and develop an expertise in that specific area.

So now that you know what a dietitian is, let’s talk about what a nutritionist is. The truth is basically anyone can call themselves a nutritionist; it doesn’t refer to a specific type of education or a specific level of education.

Now there is some variation on this from state to state in India. Some states do define who can call themselves a nutritionist. Some have laws around who can work in different types of nutrition settings and then some states don’t have any laws at all so there isn’t one definition for a Nutritionist in Lucknow.

It’s just kind of this open word it’s not clearly defined and that means a lot of people use it with various levels of education so someone who calls themselves a nutritionist could be a registered dietician, because registered dietitians are nutritionists it could also be someone who maybe got the degree part to become a dietician but they didn’t then for whatever reason didn’t go through the other steps so now they just call themselves a nutritionist.

It can also be someone in another field maybe they’re a nurse or a doctor or personal trainer and they decided to get a nutrition degree because you know they didn’t want to become a dietician they didn’t want to just do nutrition work but they do get nutrition questions and you know their everyday job and so they thought you know having that extra degree having some extra training might be helpful for them.

It could also be someone who works in nutrition but just wanted to get a degree in a very specific area and didn’t want to do all the stuff that was required to be a dietitian.

Then it can also be someone who took some sort of like private course or certification so there really isn’t like a big regulating body it’s just this private company that offers its course those can vary and the quality of the information and also the length of the course and then it can also be someone who has no nutrition training whatsoever who maybe you know went on a diet and lost weight and so now they call themselves a nutritionist.

And try to help other people or maybe someone who is interested in nutrition as a hobby has read a few books and how they call themselves a nutritionist and all of this means that when someone tells you they are a nutritionist you really have no idea about their level of training your level of education.

They might be a dietician they might have no training at all or any of those different variations in the middle that I talked about you just don’t know.

I think a good phrase to help you remember all of this is that every dietitian is a nutritionist but not every nutritionist is a dietician. So I hope you found this information helpful.

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Luna Jaiswal
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