MSc Human Nutrition

Through this one-year course, you’ll develop the skills and knowledge to work as a nutritionist in both the health and food sectors.

You’ll study the theory behind nutritional sciences, exploring topics from food guidelines to biochemistry to the distribution and control of disease. You’ll also have sessions in our laboratories where you’ll complete practical evaluations.

During practical sessions, we’ll help you to understand the assessments you might conduct as a nutritionist. We use patient case studies, so you might complete a nutritional assessment for a patient with Crohn’s disease or Diabetes, or perhaps analyse a person’s diet.

Many of our students complete public health nutrition-based projects for their dissertations, focusing on areas they’re hoping to develop a career in. Recent topics include how diet and calorie intake might affect the efficacy of chemotherapy treatment and exercise barriers for young women.

Our MSc Human Nutrition course is an Association for Nutrition (AfN) accredited course. This means that when you graduate, you're eligible to apply for direct entry to the UK Voluntary Register of Nutritionists (UKVRN) Register as a Registered Associate Nutritionist (ANutr). 

Our Human Nutrition course aims to provide you with an in-depth understanding of the relationships between diet, disease and health.

It’s designed to give you the skills to analyse and critically evaluate nutrition and food science theory and practice, so that you can develop a career as a nutritionist in the health and food sectors.

On this one-year course, you’ll have days with a mix of lectures, seminars and practical sessions.

Topics you might cover in practicals include dietary assessments, clinical nutrition to help people understand health conditions such as diabetes, and how to assess nutritional status.

You’ll also learn about ethics for scientific research, research methodologies and statistical analyses, including how to appraise scientific research studies.

This is to introduce you to methods you’ll most likely use in your future career, as well as to prepare you for the independent research study you’ll conduct for your final assessment.

For your dissertation, you’ll typically submit a 2,000-word research proposal and a 16,000-word dissertation with your research findings. 

Our academic team at Manchester Met includes registered nutritionists, food scientists and a dietitian. Many conduct research projects in their area of expertise, and you’ll normally have the opportunity to volunteer to help with projects.

Recent research projects include 5:2 diet studies in managing acute disease outcomes, a community project to encourage residents to grow and eat their own food, and an assessment of diet quality among young people (29-39-year-olds) in Greece and the UK using Mediterranean diet score (MDS) and Diet quality index-international (DQi-I) indices.