Nutritionist course

Lala80

I'm thinking of completing a nutritionist course and have come across an on-line Level 5 Diploma nutritionist course on fitness industry training website. They have assured me that the course is recognised in Ireland and also the NHS complete accredited courses with them.
I'm just wondering has anyone in Ireland completed a course with them and how did they find the course?? Thanks

BBeebies

Lala80, I'd be wary of buying into this course (if you haven't already). Things that seem "too-good-to-be-true" often are.

I recently stumbled across this "Level 5 Registered Nutritionist" diploma course also. Fitness Industry Training are currently offering this "College for Nutrition" course for only £179 (instead £699). Great deal, right? However, when you scratch the surface of these websites, they start to look a little "scammy".

On its website, the CfN claims to: be "The World's Largest Nutrition College", have been "Founded in 1998", "Write and develop courses for over 2500 students each year" and have "over 1000 Registered Nutritionists" on their database. Their website displays a lovely red-brick university-style building. They have offices in "London, Cape Town, Dubai and Toronto". Once you qualify with them, you can join their register and add the letters CfNRegNutr after your name. All sounds super!

Except if you do a quick search, you can find that the College for Nutrition's London address is actually a simple mail-forwarding city office address (not a lovely red-brick university building after all) used by thousands of other companies also. Their oversees addresses? All owned by a company called Regus who offer worldwide "Virtual Office Packages" (so, another mail-forwarding style service). And it was incorporated (as a PLC) only in April 2014. Fitness Industry Training claims on its website to have been founded in 2004, however, these too were only incorporated in January 2014 (with the same London business address and by the same guy as CfN). So, they're essentially the same thing.

This NHS website states that the Association for Nutrition is "the professional body for nutritionists and has the list of nutritionists who have received an approved level of training." The AfN website lists some accredited courses and ways of becoming a recognised registered nutritionist, nearly ALL of which involve completing a full Bachelors or Masters degree. Needless to say, the quicker CfN route is NOT one of these ways, so if they have told you they are NHS accredited they are plain out lying.

In fact, CfN's own website even goes so far as to try to discredit the AfN with a Warning about them on their homepage. And if you search Wikipedia for "nutritionist", under the United Kingdom section, one particular paragraph has been changed as recently as 2 weeks ago to overwrite references to the Association for Nutrition with the College for Nutrition. Some sneaky underhand tactics at play there.

All in all, if you want a proper, respected qualification, I would AVOID CfN (and similar "colleges") and focus on a proper BSc. qualification based on the information given on the NHS/AfN websites (or Irish equivalents).

If you're not ready for a full-on degree yet, check out ALISON, Coursera, Open2Study and Futurelearn, all of which offer short courses for free (though you do often have to buy your hard-copy certificate for a nominal fee). They'll at least give you an idea of the subject matter so you can see if you like it enough to pursue it as a full career.

Hope this helps your decision, and hope you've not already parted with some hard-earned cash over this!

B x