Nutrition

About your course This interesting and engaging degree programme enables you to understand the rapidly-changing challenges facing nutrition for healthcare and promotion, health-focused food production and nutrition-related research. After graduation, you could work as a qualified nutritionist, helping people improve their eating habits and lead healthier lives. You’ll also find a range of career opportunities in primary care, public health, and product development in the multi-billion-pound food industry.

Staff have a high level of experience researching chronic diseases, such as heart disease, cancer, obesity and diabetes all influenced by the diet we consume, helping to bring the curriculum to life. There is a need for expert nutritionists to provide well informed and sound scientifically-based advice. This Nutrition programme has been designed to develop essential knowledge and understanding, as well as intellectual, practical and transferable skills a nutritionist would require to practice.

The BSc Nutrition curriculum focuses on the delivery of the five core competencies defined by the UK Voluntary Register of Nutritionists (UKVRN) set out by the Association for Nutrition (AfN). This includes Nutritional Science, Food Chain, Social and Behavioural Science, Health and Well-being and Professional Conduct.

During this degree, you will explore the principles of human nutrition and metabolism, and how these underpin the relationship between diet and health. You will study nutrition through the life cycle, appetite and eating behaviour, the nutritional considerations of the various socio-cultural factors affecting food choice and nutrition for exercise.

You will examine other food-related areas, such as how nutritional knowledge can support the development, promotion and regulation of nutrition for health-related food products, functional foods and new food products. You will also gain an understanding of important aspects of food science, politics and policy.

You can choose to take an optional full-time paid placement year, giving you valuable experience, helping you build professional connections, and boosting your career skills.