Nutrition in the Health Sector

Discover how food impacts health and wellbeing with the University of Adelaide

On this four week course, you’ll deepen your knowledge of the relationship between food, diet, lifestyle, and health in the context of optimising practices in the health sector.

Examine key concepts in nutrition, from food groups to metabolism and absorption

You’ll take an in-depth look at food composition and nutrients, discovering their principal roles within the body and how this changes throughout a life cycle.

You’ll then investigate digestion, absorption, and metabolism in detail and their effects on energy levels and balance.

Optimise health and wellbeing practices

Blending theory with practice, you’ll link the concepts and theories explored with real-life scenarios, such as informing dietary guidelines and making nutrition calculations.

You’ll learn how to conduct nutrition assessments to help build a complete picture of a person’s health. You’ll investigate health inequities and nutritional challenges, and how these can be addressed.

Contextualising your knowledge by examining practices and guidance from around the world, you’ll learn how to gather evidence based nutrition data and assess its value.

Explore how optimum nutrition can reduce the risk of chronic disease

You’ll investigate health dietary patterns and identify how a poor diet contributes to increased risks of different diseases.

Exploring techniques such as recipe modification, you’ll gain skills in linking healthy eating guidelines, dietary intake, food supply, and disease, as well as developing approaches to guide patients towards healthy food choices.

Equipped with a range of useful techniques and approaches, you’ll finish this course able to deliver practical guidance and advice that will positively impact the health and wellbeing of your patients in the context of your healthcare setting.

This course is designed for health professionals, nutritionists, and food scientists who wish to further their knowledge of nutrition and health eating guidelines in the context of healthcare provision.

It will also benefit those working more broadly in the health sector, food industry, or as food service professionals and educators.

• Food composition and nutrients
• Getting started
• Introduction to Week 1
• Food composition and nutrients
• Food group systems and dietary requirements
• Life cycle nutrition
• Energy requirements and nutrient calculations
• Bringing it all together
• Digestion, absorption and metabolism
• Introduction to Week 2
• What happens to our food after eating?
• Energy and metabolism
• Energy balance
• Bringing it all together
• Nutrition assessment & optimising health and wellbeing
• Introduction to Week 3
• Fundamentals of nutrition assessment & optimising health and wellbeing
• Health inequities and nutritional challenges
• Evidence-based nutrition data
• Bringing it all together
• Decreasing risk of chronic disease
• Introduction to Week 4
• Introducing chronic disease (non-communicable diseases) and minimising risk
• Leading chronic conditions and dietary management strategies
• Recipe modification, identifying fad diets and healthy dietary patterns
• Bringing it all together
• What's next?