What is a Nutritionist?
In today’s overwhelming “health” media, everyone and their mother has an opinion on what we should eat. From social media influencers to personal trainers, problematic and underqualified nutrition advice is everywhere. But when it comes to truly impactful guidance, discerning between legitimate credentials and conceptual knowledge versus unregulated trends and shame-based sales pitches is crucial. As a nutritionist, anthropologist, health + wellness coach, movement specialist, philosopher, and educator, I understand food, nutrition, and our relationship with it in far more ways than most.
Food should nourish us mind, body, and soul. Advice like “calories in calories out” only comes from people who don’t understand the biochemistry of nutrients. Recommendations like “move more and eat less” are reductive and clinically misguided. Just because it is trending doesn’t mean it is valid. Nutrition is a deeply personal and cultural experience. Actually, my expertise means nothing without your experience.
As a nutritionist, painting a holistic and integrative picture of you and your life is foundational in how we move forward in our sessions together. Food impacts every bodily system we have. Bones, muscles, the brain, hormones, skin, mood… everything! So let’s talk about it. There are several common types of nutrition professionals with varying levels of education, training, credentialing, and licensure.
Nutritionists typically have a CNS credential, Registered Dietitians will have RD after their name, and, depending upon the state, each may be able to obtain an LDN. Each of these professions requires an advanced degree, supervision hours, and board exams. Coaches and counselors who focus on food and nutrition typically have completed a certificate program, but do not have to meet any of the requirements nutritionists and dietitians do, nor can they take insurance. That’s a lot of acronyms, so let’s break it down further.
Nutritionist
The CNS (Certified Nutrition Specialist) credential, administered by the Board for Certification of Nutrition Specialists (BCNS) through the American Nutrition Association (ANA), represents an advanced level of personalized nutrition practice. The requirements include a master’s or doctoral degree with coursework in medical nutrition therapy, biochemistry, physiology, clinical, and life sciences to hit some highlights. Professional training requirements include 1,000+ hours of supervised practice experience, with a significant portion being client-based clinical work. This supervised experience can be more general in focus or tailored to a specific population for specialized care. Once these supervision hours are completed, passing the CNS certification and/or LDN licensure exams are the final step in the process. After this, nutritionists must meet ongoing continuing education requirements to maintain adequate and legal clinical practice standing. Be sure to look for CNS and LDN to ensure quality clinical care.
Despite the similarities in education and training, nutritionists and dietitians perform different functions in academic and professional settings. The easiest comparison to draw is to think of RDs more in line with MDs, and CNSs are more akin to DOs. Nutritionists will often work in private practice to provide personalized nutrition therapy for chronic conditions and overall well-being. Care coordination with other healthcare professionals, like physicians, chiropractors, naturopaths, and mental health providers, is usually an ongoing effort to ensure as much integrated and functional healthcare as possible.
Dietitian
Registered Dietitians are inaccurately seen as the gold standard of medical nutrition care, when they simply operate differently from nutritionists. RDs typically work in hospitals and care facilities that rely on more standardized therapeutic diets and manage post-operative nutrition support, feeding tubes, and food safety.
The pathway to becoming a Registered Dietitian (often referred to as RDN for Registered Dietitian Nutritionist) is highly standardized and, since 2024, involves a minimum of a master’s degree in dietetics. This coursework is dictated by the Accreditation Council for Education in Nutrition and Dietetics (ACEND). This curriculum covers subjects including medical nutrition therapy, food science, biochemistry, physiology, public health, and food service management. A mandatory, supervised internship of approximately 1,000 hours, followed by passing a national examination administered by the Commission on Dietetic Registration (CDR), and continuing education are all part of the professional requirements to practice as an RD.
As you can see, there are many similarities. These are just examples of the general happenings within each field and does not mean that you won’t find an RD with cultural training or a nutritionist working in a hospital. Both have hands in research, clinical practice, and academia. Please use this as a guide to help you find the right professional for you based on your state’s laws and what your insurance covers, not as the end-all-be-all guide to the fields.
Coaches & Counselors with Certificates
As far as nutrition counselors and coaches go, they typically work in gyms and wellness centers offer very basic education on food and nutrients. These programs are less comprehensive or rigorous than obtaining a CNS or RD. ACE, NASM, and AFPA are the most common certificate programs and typically last for a few hours or over the course of a couple of months. The majority of this education reiterates MyPlate and focuses on weight loss (which is not inherently healthy) without in-depth medical nutrition therapy or biochemical understanding. There is no national credentialing, licensure, or standard, making these professionals non-protected, meaning anyone can say this is their title regardless of background. Their role is typically limited to providing general nutrition education and habits coaching for already healthy individuals. This section is a bit underwhelming in comparison, but understanding who is qualified to help with what is something more people should know about to help make an informed decision. A side note – personal trainers are not nutrition professionals and do not receive training outside of the basics in nutrition.
Who am I as a nutritionist?
I am a nutritionist working on clinical supervision hours toward my CNS and LDN. My nutrition degree is in Integrative and Functional Nutrition with specializations in Mind Body Medicine and Culinary Nutrition. I am happy to work with anyone, as my entire health and wellness career has been my specialization being specializations. My main focus in nutrition research, care, and academia involves eating disorders and body image to include the variety of psychosomatic symptoms that need both short and long-term attention. I began as a personal trainer and nutrition counselor, and worked doing this for 15 years. Throughout this time, I also worked in group exercise and community outreach, and worked my way up through departmental management, project development, and into social media and marketing. The past decade of this work ran alongside obtaining bachelor’s degrees in philosophy + religion and forensic anthropology, master’s degrees in biomedical anthropology, and the above-mentioned nutrition degree, with a PhD in applied biopsychosocial anthropology in the works. This may seem like quite the random smattering, but food and movement as an inherent part of the human experience are at the center of it all. When you see me as a nutritionist, there is not a single thing you can say that would make me judge your food choices or situation. Given how interdisciplinary my approach is, getting creative to make your sessions customized has endless possibilities. My job as a nutritionist is to blend your experience with my expertise so that we can work together to build skills and develop tools to find balance in your life and body.
– Jennifer Sare; Health, Wellness & Nutrition
