Being a Dietitian is one tough gig !

Being a dietitian is a real tough job if you think about it. Years of education, maybe running up massive debts at university, and getting much harder to get a job when you are qualified. With the cutbacks in the NHS and privatisation on the horizon, it’s going to get even harder to earn a living as a dietitian. But imagine you are one of the lucky ones and get a job, you soon realise you’re on a good hiding to nothing. Sticking to the guidelines and rule book and following your training, your patients or clients  show no signs of improvement. You stumble upon a diabetes forum, and you realise dietitians are rated well down the pecking order, and well below bent estate agents and dodgy second hand car dealers. Some people positively hate dietitians and regard them as Beelzebub reincarnated. If your luck is really out, you may land on this blog. Now I don’t hate dietitians, but I genuinely believe most are about as much use as a rubber beak on a woodpecker.

So what do you do ? keep your head down, keep paying your subs to the BDA, knowing as long as you spout the eat starchy carbs with every meal and drop that saturated fat mantra you will be safe, or do you go against the grain. Do you put the health and wellbeing of your patient above all else. A tough decision that I debated with a newly qualified dietitian some years ago. He agreed with low carb diets for people with diabetes and other health problems. When I said what will you do when you meet your first diabetic, what will you advise. His answer “I guess I will have to cross that bridge when I come to it”. What a way to start your career I thought, rather him than me. I have never been able to do a job that I did not believe 100 percent in. I could never sell a rubbish product or service. Imagine the failure rate in any other profession that dietitians manage to achieve, it is unthinkable.

Then you have the profession being dragged down by skulduggerous activities and payola. So bad has the situation become in the US, dietitians have formed a breakaway group called Dietitians for professional integrity. They realise that tie-ups with  junk food companies such as Coca-Cola and Kellogg’s et al have tainted their profession and they want out. Who can blame them ?

The fact is, almost every food, health and dietary advice agency has the giant vampire squid of big pharma and junk food wrapped around its head. Organisations and individuals have been bought and paid for, they have taken the thirty pieces of silver and cannot be trusted. Time after time I hear of a new name promoting a balanced diet and so often junk food or big pharma are pulling the strings.

All is not lost, there are beacons of hope shining, honest and ethical professionals are out there, Dietitians for professional integrity have proved this is so, and so has my good friend Franziska Spritzler. These people must be applauded and encouraged at every opportunity, they have the courage to stand up for what they believe in, they put the patient first. In the 1960s, the Hippocratic Oath was changed to "utmost respect for human life from its beginning" Maybe they should have included, sell no junk. 

Link to Dietitians for professional integrity here.

Link to Franziska Spritzler RD CDE here.

Eddie