Dietician vs Nutritionist - Difference and Comparison

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	Dietician	Nutritionist
Types:	8	2
Definition:	A dietician is a qualified health professional who helps promote good health through proper nutritional habits.	A Nutritionist is a health specialist who devotes professional activity to food and nutritional science, prevent diseases related to nutrient deficiencies, and the use of nutrient manipulation to enhance the clinical response to human diet.
Functions:	Promoting over all health through right nutritional intake of food.	Has good knowledge of nutrients of food and advises on their relation to good health.
Education:	Minimum qualification is a degree in dietetics, food and nutrition etc.	May or may not have any formal education in this field.
Legal status:	Legally considered an expert on nutrition	Not legally accepted as an expert

A Nutritionist and a Dietician are health professionals who are experts in nutritional science and assist people in making decisions regarding their health and nutrition. Though they're often confused for being the same profession, but they differ in many respects. They both have different qualifications, different legal status as practitioners and differ in their scope of expertise.

1 About
2 Functions
3 Qualification
4 Legal status
5 Types
6 Scope of practice
7 References

[edit] About

A Nutritionist is a health specialist who devotes professional activity to food and nutritional science, preventive nutrition, diseases related to nutrient deficiencies, and the use of nutrient manipulation to enhance the clinical response to human diseases. A Dietician is an expert in food and nutrition. Dieticians help promote good health through proper eating. They also supervise the preparation and service of food, develop modified diets, participate in research, and educate individuals and groups on good nutritional habits .

[edit] Functions

While a dietician is mostly involved in curing diseases with dietary solutions, a nutritionist mostly consults on dietary problems and overall well being and is not considered legally qualified for treating health conditions (diseases).

A Dietician is often involved in finding and curing dietary and other food related problems with a person. A dietician's job relates with the over all health of a person starting with the right intake of food. They help in forming nutritional plans for patients and prevent illnesses by promoting healthy eating habits.

A Nutritionist has good knowledge of the nutrients of food and their relation with the health of a patient. They may also consult on dietary matters relating to over all well being.

[edit] Qualification

Nutritionists have varying levels of education from someone with little or no education to an individual who has obtained a bachelor's, master's, or doctoral degree. Dieticians need at least a bachelor’s degree in dietetics, foods and nutrition, food service systems management or a related area. The term Registered Dietician(RD) is used in the US and any RD needs a degree in nutrition or dietetics, a six to 12-month internship at a healthcare facility, foodservice company or nonprofit agency approved by the American Dietetic Association and successful completion of a national exam given by the Commission on Dietetic Registration.

[edit] Legal status

A Dietician holding a Bachelor's degree in dietetics or related areas is legally regarded as the expert in nutrition and dietary related matters. On the other hand, a Nutritionist may or may not have any educational qualification and is not a legally protected term in most parts of the world.

[edit] Types

The types of Nutritionists are: Nutrition Scientistsand Public Health Nutritionists. The former are those individuals who use the scientific method to study nutrients, both as individual compounds and as they interact in food and nutrition while the latter are specialists who aid in diagnosing the nutritional problems of communities and in finding solutions to those problems.

The different types of Dieticians include:

Clinical Dieticians: They work in hospitals and other health care facilities to provide medical nutrition therapy to patients according to the disease processes, provide individual dietary consultations to patients and their family members and also conduct group education for other health workers, patients and the public.

Community dietitians: They work with wellness programs and international health organizations.

Foodservice dietitians: They are responsible for large-scale food planning and service.

Gerontological dietitians: They are specialists in nutrition and aging. They are Board certified in Gerontological Nutrition with the American Dietetic Association.

Research dietitians: They are mostly involved with dietary related research in the clinical aspect of nutrition in disease states, public aspect on primary, secondary and sometimes tertiary health prevention and foodservice aspect in issues involving the food prepared for patients.

Administrative Dieticians: They are managers or head of their departments and have a number of dietitians in the department.

Business dietitians: These serve as resource people for the media. Dietitians' expertise in nutrition is often taped for TV, radio, and newspapers -- either as an expert guest opinion, regular columnist or guest, or for resource, restaurant, or recipe development and critique.

Consultant dietitians: These work under private practice.

[edit] Scope of practice

There is a growing need of health professionals in today's health conscious world. Dieticians are in great demand as everyone wants to stay in shape and dieticians can help them do so by planning their diet and prescribing the right food for them. Nutritionists, though not considered legal health professionals, are also sought out as they have in depth knowledge about nutrients of food and can guide accordingly. But a dietician's profession arguably has a wider scope as it involves consulting, curing and preventing diseases.