Dietetics / Biomedical science?

I do biomed, and I love the course, and the practicals aren't too difficult here in Newcastle, at least not in the first year. In the entire year, I've only had about 24 or so, which isn't that many. They usually involve "pipette A into B, and queue up for a spectrophotometer". They're a lot easier than people make out.

The thing is, it's not really that related to nutrition except in a few cases; gut physiology and an optional lecture on micronutrients being the key exceptions. We look a lot more at how food molecules and drugs are metabolised, not how much to eat. If you want to do dietetics as a job but biomed as a course, remember that you can work in labs where, although you're not working on experimental treatments, you can try out new things on volunteers. I remember one person emailing us for volunteers to try out a seaweed-based food for a week or two.

If you're interested in nutrition, food, public health, healthcare, and the more clinical areas of dietetics - you might well enjoy it. Luckily you're going to shadow soon! My experience as a dietetics student has been very rewarding thus far, especially in the clinical area.

My housemate was doing biomedical science and I would say if you're looking for patient contact, go for dietetics. I think my course is of a good quality - and I expect they all meet a certain standard - and should place an emphasis on helping you develop your communication skills (as I specifically asked about at interview).

Patient contact - and the possibility of directly having a positive effect on someone's health, and potentially quality of life - is one of the things that truly makes it all worth it, in my opinion. So, if you're of that line of thinking, I would absolutely go for dietetics.

What's your career plan?

At the moment, I have no actual plan, more of a group of jobs I might like to get. These include brewing and cheese-making (microbiology-specific), or going into some kind of research either in universities or biotech companies.

I'm not really into food on it's own however, the science related to food and how it prevents diseases seems very interesting! I like to make a difference to patients life.

My communication is fairly good however, I think due to my loud/ fast speech I do get the "pardon".

The only thing I'd like to know is what other careers does nutrition and dietetics lead to, and how do you specalise in an area once your qualified

Yes, well you don't necessarily need to be into just food on it's own, but it does help to be enthusiastic about it! Dietitians do tend to be foodies. But the main thing is to be able to learn about food and diet's consequences in the human body - and then eventually you will learn to translate the scientific knowledge to your patients in a way they will understand, while also having to motivate them at times.

Not to worry about fast speech. In time you would probably acquire a sort of 'dietitian voice' - slowing down, speaking clearly, but in an appropriate tone.

When it comes to careers, obviously the first thing that comes to mind is being a dietitian in the hospital or in the community but there are actually several avenues you could take with a dietetics degree; industry (including food and oral nutrition supplements e.g. Ensure), public health, sports nutrition, media, education, research...