Nutrition and Dietetics University Courses

University courses on nutrition and diet are by no means a simple course where you can get full marks by memorizing dietary pagodas and counting calories, as many people think. It is essentially a cross-application course that spans life sciences, clinical medicine, public health, food science and even socioeconomics. The core goal has never been to cultivate certificate holders who can only endorse, but practitioners who can adapt nutrition knowledge to real scenarios for different groups of people.

Can you believe it? Last month, I helped a familiar teacher from the School of Public Health organize the homework for the freshman class "Public Nutrition". The last question, which accounted for 60% of the score, was not about the calculation formula of macronutrients at all. It asked students to set up stalls in the urban village in front of the school for self-employed vegetable sellers, delivery boys and children. The tenants have their BMI measured and a seven-day family meal menu is given to each person. The daily food and beverage budget per person is required not to exceed 15 yuan, and the needs of different people must be met - for example, an uncle with gout needs to control purine, a pregnant sister needs to take folic acid supplements, and a brother who runs the grocery list every day needs to be full without making him sleepy. In the received homework, many students initially listed milk and eggs. Then they turned around and found out that their homes didn’t even have a refrigerator. They then changed the list to braised dried beans and seasonal green leafy vegetables with a long shelf life. In the end, the assignments that received excellent comments were all those whose plans even considered such details as "whether ingredients can be purchased at small supermarkets in urban villages" and "whether there is more than 10 minutes of free time for cooking."

Interestingly, even for courses with the same name of "Nutrition", the content offered by different colleges can be very different. The nutrition courses offered by medical universities basically follow the clinical direction. The cases in the class are all nutritional support programs for inpatients. Even the infusion rate of nutrient solutions for tube feeding and the protein intake thresholds for different stages of kidney disease must be adjusted to one decimal place. Students must memorize complete nutrient metabolism pathways, and the exam difficulty is no less difficult than basic courses in clinical medicine. The similar course offered by the Agricultural University is completely different. I went to a friend from the Forestry Department of the Agricultural University to take a class. The teacher directly carried half a sack of different varieties of potatoes and grains to the classroom, steamed them on site for everyone to taste, and then measured the blood sugar fluctuations after eating different ingredients. The homework after class was to design three low GI meals for the school cafeteria. The cost was required to be less than 6 yuan, the students were willing to buy it, and it had to meet the requirements of the dietary guidelines. The final selected plan was actually sold at the cafeteria window for a semester.

Teachers on both sides will "choke" each other when chatting privately. Typical school differences within the industry: the clinical school feels that the public nutrition course is too "soft" and does not even require memorization of biochemical indicators. It teaches common knowledge that everyone can search for, and there are no technical barriers.； The public health camp, in turn, complains that the clinical camp is not grounded. The menu for a migrant worker with a monthly salary of 3,000 yuan requires 200g of salmon and 300g of blueberries every day. How can ordinary people have the spending power and cooking time? In the end, there was no standard answer. After all, the application scenarios of the two sides are originally different. One is for nutritional intervention in pathological conditions, and the other is for the promotion of healthy diet for the general population. There is no distinction between high and low.

Nowadays, many comprehensive colleges and universities have made nutrition and diet courses a public elective for the whole school. The popularity of taking the courses is no less than that of "water courses" such as movie appreciation and historical interesting talk. Many people come with the purpose of "learning to lose weight" and "learn to supplement food". In the first class, the teacher will probably throw cold water on them: Don't believe in "eating certain foods to whiten your skin" or "eating certain foods to fight cancer". If it is such a good thing, the medical aesthetics and oncology departments have been closed long ago. The last time I was in class, I met a girl who raised her hand and asked if drinking collagen peptides can fight aging. The teacher did not directly say that it was useless. He first drew half of the amino acid metabolism path on the blackboard, and finally added with a smile: Of course, if you think it tastes good, you can enjoy it, and you can afford it. It has lower sugar than milk tea.

I have a buddy who studies software engineering. He initially took this course purely to collect credits. After taking it, he made a "special recipe for staying up late during finals week" for himself and his brothers in the dormitory. He replaced all the instant noodles and energy drinks that he always had with instant oatmeal, hard-boiled eggs, cherry tomatoes and sugar-free soy milk. That's it. Changes, the four of them stayed up until 2 o'clock every day in their dormitory that semester, and no one suffered from gastroenteritis or oral ulcers like in previous years. He now specifically added "nutritional meals that can independently adapt to high-intensity work scenarios" on his resume when looking for a job. During the interview, the HR of the Internet company even asked a few more questions.

In fact, to put it bluntly, nutrition and diet college courses never teach sophisticated metaphysics, but how to apply "eating well" to each different person - whether you want to provide nutritional support to post-operative patients, or prepare cost-effective menus for workers who go to construction sites every day, or even just make some late-night meals for yourself and your roommates that will not upset your stomach. Being able to use it is the most practical meaning of this course.