What is a "registered dietician" compared to a "nutritionist"?
There is a lot of controversy about what a nutritionist is, but let me just start by saying a nutritionist is anyone who puts a sign up outside their door and says, “I'm a nutritionist”; that is the overall definition. However, a true nutritionist, for example a registered dietician, has to have at least four years of university and then a year of an internship. Many of us have more than that, but that's the baseline to become a dietician. A “clinical nutritionist” has to go through two years of schooling and then becomes certified. That's a “certified clinical nutritionist.” So, there are different levels. For example, in Japan, this was interesting to me, they only have to have two years of university in order to become a dietician. So, it's different globally. However, in North America you have to have a baseline of four years plus an internship to be a registered dietician. A registered dietician goes through massive training to become a nutritionist; you can go between the two words “registered dietician” and ”nutritionist”, but if you're a nutritionist who doesn't have the RD status, you can only call yourself a nutritionist. There are many self-proclaimed nutritionists out there. You can go to someone with that kind of education (and many of them have spent years studying) but do they have the clinical basis? Do they understand how nutrition works on a cellular level? That's something you have to ask. I always tell people, “Ask a lot of questions. Find out how much education the person has. Find out what they know about the clinical aspects of nutrition and how it works with the metabolic systems.”
