Careers in nutrition journalism

April 8, 12:15 PMSacramento Nutrition ExaminerAnne Hart

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If you'd like to become a nutrition journalist, several universities offer a degree in nutrition communications. Forty years ago, the major demurred to the title of Home Economics Journalism, thereby discouraging males who wanted to cover food journalism.

Today, the major covers a broader field of communications with different names such as the (entirely online)   Master of Public Health in Nutrition  degree that may be earned entirely online at the University of Massachusetts Online.

You'd be proud to earn an undergraduate degree in Human Ecology  at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, majoring in Family and Consumer Journalism. If you're thinking about what it's like to write for publications in the field of consumer journalism, start your reading with the International Food Information Council (IFIC) publication, the Media Guide. 

For a possibly, more secure position as a registered dietician or in teaching dietetics to healthcare professioinals at the university level, with writing about nutrition for mass media publishers or for clinical trial ghostwriting reports on the side, then, you'd major in nutrition and minor in journalism or science/technical writing.

What are the sixteen most important topics in nutrition media?They are the following events and issues you hear or read about daily: world hunger, lack of disclosure, food misinformation, zero food safety, prions in animal protein, transfats, food allergies, childhood diabetes/type2 and type 1, childhood and adult obesity, artificial sweeteners' health problem issues, contaminated tap water, reversals of studies on food benefits, metabolic syndrome, media reliance on experts with no nutrition training, reporting of differences of opinion within the scientific community, and tailoring your food, skin care products, and medicines to your genes.