Nutrition with Professional Training

Nutrition is the scientific study of the relationship between food, diet, and health. It draws on biochemistry, physiology, and the social sciences to understand how the nutrients we consume affect the body at the cellular, metabolic, and whole-organism level, and how dietary patterns influence the risk of chronic disease, the development of children, and the health of populations. It is a discipline of growing importance as the links between diet, lifestyle, and health outcomes become better understood and as public health challenges related to nutrition, including obesity and diet-related disease, become more pressing.

This four-year full-time programme at the University of Reading includes professional training, giving you direct experience in a workplace setting as part of your studies. Reading has one of the UK's leading food and nutrition departments, with strong research connections to the food industry, public health, and clinical nutrition, and the programme benefits from this environment. You will study nutritional biochemistry, human physiology, dietetics principles, food science, public health nutrition, research methods, and the applied aspects of nutrition in clinical and community settings.

The professional training year places you in a food, health, or research organisation, giving you firsthand professional experience that contextualises and extends your academic learning.

Nutrition graduates pursue careers in public health nutrition, the food industry, nutrition research, health education, sports nutrition, and related fields. Many go on to postgraduate study in dietetics, which leads to registration as a dietitian and the ability to provide clinical nutritional therapy to patients. Others pursue master's degrees in nutrition, public health, or food science, or move into regulatory, policy, or communications roles in the food and health sectors.

The combination of scientific rigour and professional experience that Reading's programme provides is particularly valued by employers in both the private and public sectors.