Video Transcript

Host Question: What prerequisites are required to sit for the dietitians certification exam.

Answer: You need to finish your 1,200 hours of your internship and as of 2024, you’ll have to have your masters in dietetics to be able to sit, not exam.

Answer: In your bachelor’s degree, you have to take certain classes that everyone across the United States takes. All dietitians take the same classes. So at the University you go to, they will have a nutrition dietetics degree program, and you just need to take those classes. I did a certificate program after my bachelor’s degree and they just had a list of classes and I had to go through and checks and boxes. So that’s step one before you sit for the exam, step two is applying, getting into and completing your dietetic internship. All of this information will be like on the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics on their website. It’ll list all the different internships that you can apply to how much it costs. The timeline, what the emphasis is. All that information will be there for you. Then you spend a little while studying and you take the exam. The exam takes about two hours. It’s 120 questions. It’s very stressful, but very passable.

Answer: You need to show either a completion of a bachelor’s degree in a nutrition area or you just complete a list of courses. A DPD list of courses is what it’s called, and then sit for the exam. It’s just a one hour the exam. And then if you live in a state where you also need to get licensed and you’re going to be counseling patients that live in that state. You will then need to figure out licensure. So sometimes that can be just payment. Sometimes that can be payment and a test. But that’s one extra thing that you would need to consider as well. But otherwise, it’s just one test.

Answer: In the United States, “Nutritionists: isn’t really a very regulated term or label, unlike registered dietitian, where you have to go through the whole process of clinicals and taking and passing an exam. So a nutritionist is pretty open to anyone who wants to call themself nutritionist, which can be problematic because then you have people who aren’t necessarily qualified trying to sell themselves as a nutritionist. But I also think it’s a good thing because then it leaves it a little more open. We get a lot more variety in the nutrition field and people taking it alternative routes of education and learning, I think that’s important too.