Food doctors

Rajiv Kapoor

The ongoing National Nutrition Week (September 1 to September 7) highlights the importance of a healthy lifestyle and is an effort to enhance the nutritional practice awareness among people through training, timely education, seminars, different competitions, road shows etc to make a healthy nation. A growing awareness in this field has also brought the focus on the need for trained professionals who can educate more and more people across the country. Over the past decade the need for dietitians and nutritionists has increased substantially with sedentary lifestyle, high consumption of fast food and other food related health disorders at an all-time high. Here’s a look at the career prospects in this field:

Scope and Role

India being the world capital for diabetes and cardiac diseases, the role of nutritionists, who work towards creating a preventive lifestyle, is critical. A nutritionist can help at both at preventive and curative stages of these diseases. There are types of illnesses, diseases and injuries that prevent people from getting the right nourishment from the foods that they consume during their medication period or recovery . Most of the time, this is due to types of foods being eaten and the inability of the individual’s body to process it and in other cases, there may be illnesses whose symptoms and side effects can be reduced by certain types of food, and it is the job of the nutritionist to maximise these benefits.

As a form of disease management, nutrition is still a largely developing field. Although food has been used in traditional medicinal practices across the world and other types of alternative therapies for thousands of years, it is only recently that it has begun to gain the medical spotlight and become part of long-term health care plans. And because nutritionist degrees are typically only offered at the bachelor’s level or higher, there is a strong educational base to this type of work, which only serves to increase its reputation and standing in the medical community.

Job scape

Nutritionists can be employed by various industries apart from hospitals and healthcare clinics:

• Fitness centres employ nutritionists to boost the regular exercises and other fitness methods for the clientele
• Food processing industries employ nutritionists as consultants to ensure good quality food with best nourishment values
• State sponsored or private food testing labs employ nutritionist to perform regular nourishment checks on shelf sold food items
• Restaurant chains and other food serving establishment employ nutritionists to maintain good serving standards
• Research organisations and medical institutes for various nutrition related clinical trials
• Various sports teams and clubs hire nutritionist to maintain fitness levels of team members

Salary packages

Depending on the industry, education background and speciality a fresh graduate can get Rs15,00 to Rs20,000 per month, while those with an experience of four to five years can get anywhere between Rs25,000 and Rs40,000. More experienced nutritionist can earn Rs50,000 to Rs 1 lakh depending upon role/speciality.

Courses

• Full time graduate/post graduate programmes
• Bachelor’s degree
• Master’s degree
• Post Graduate Diploma
• Post-Doctoral

Short term programmes

• Bariatric nutritionist
• Renal nutritionist
• Critical care Nutritionist
• Sport Nutritionist
• Diabetic Educator

Institute watch

There many institutes and universities that offer bachelor’s and master’s degree across the country, some of the prominent ones are:

• Lady Irwin College, Delhi
• Punjab Agricultural University, Ludhiana
• Vanasthali College, Uttarakhand
• Hisar Agriculture University, Hisar
• Institute of Home Economics, Delhi
• Agriculture University, Pantnagar
• B.M.N college of Home Sciences, Mumbai
• M.M.M college of Heath sciences, Chennai

— The writer is Chief People’s Officer, Fortis Hospital, New Delhi