It was highlighted in a BBC programme recently, Clean Eating’s Dirty Secrets (in which NOT PLANT BASED author Eve appeared), that there is a huge problem within the UK regarding the muddling of health professional status.
A number of bloggers and influential people have promoted themselves as nutritionists, a term that sounds pretty legit to the average disordered eater, like myself. But dig a little deeper and you learn that anyone can become a nutritionist through an online course in just a handful of days. That’s a scary thought considering their audiences tend to be vulnerable people who have a tendency to eat in destructive ways.
I asked dietitian Ursula Philpot, who specialises in eating disorders, to clear up what all these different titles mean and to explain who we really should be trusting.
Ursula says: “The problem in the UK is that nutritionist is not a protected title and neither is the word dietetics, however dietician is. You cannot call yourself a dietician unless you have had a minimum of four years at university, be registered with the Health and Care Professions Council and you have to go to an annual periodic review where they look at whether you’ve updated yourself properly – so you can be assured that you’re getting something pretty rigorous in terms of how they give advice.
“Nutritionists are not trained in the clinical aspect of nutrition and don’t undertake any clinical placements, so they’re not trained to interpret things like blood results, and medical notes or reg flags. For example, they may fail to pick up low iron due to bone marrow failure rather than a diet deficiency in starvation. They may also miss complex presentations such as autism and or polycystic ovarian syndrome with disordered eating. Unfortunately to become a nutritionist in this country you can do an online course which takes six days.”
For people whose eating affects their mental and physical health, Ursula says that they need to find a dietitian. For others seeking help from a nutritionist, it is important to ensure that they are registered with the Association for Nutrition and that they are a full member.
She says: “People will say oh ‘I’m a member of this, I’m a member of that’ and it looks fancy, but it means nothing.”
Just to add to the confusion, Ursula says that there are people who call themselves nutrition therapists and are “self-styled nutritionists” who go on particular courses (some even linked to universities) but they are entirely self-regulated so, again, they do no clinical placements and they don’t work for the NHS. These people are not suitable to work for those with eating disorders.
Ursula says: “It’s all very worrying. There has been a recent course run by the National Centre for Eating Disorders in London and anyone who is anyone in eating disorders will tell you that that is something that someone has set up themselves, run by a nutrition therapist. Things look good on paper but when you pull them apart, they’re not.”
The trouble is that when vulnerable people seek help from nutritionists or nutritional therapists, they often will come away with big lists of more foods to avoid, which can be incredibly dangerous for someone who struggles with their eating, Ursula says. If you can identify that you have a problem with eating in the medical sense, it is incredibly important that you seek out the help of a dietician.