One of the top ranked Food Science and Nutrition schools in the country, we offer a Nutrition integrated Masters programme, that develops your understanding of the science underpinning the relationship between diet and health.Food-health issues are regarded by many as being as important as global warming. Nutrition is a fast-moving discipline that focuses on understanding the role of diet in maintaining a healthy human body and preventing disease. Nutritionists play an important role in providing evidence-based nutritional guidance.On this course, you’ll examine the scientific, social and ethical considerations that inform the nutrition profession. You’ll develop a deep understanding of the scientific basis underlying nutritional recommendations. You’ll examine nutritional issues in the context of key topical issues, such as the global obesity problem.Year 1 introduces you to the major sources of food and their history, current trends in consumption, and key industrial processing operations. You’ll study food chemistry and develop your laboratory and experimentation skills. In addition, you’ll be introduced to microbiology, human physiology and nutrition; these modules allow you to gain a practical understanding of how food affects health and wellbeing, and appreciate the role of food as a carrier of nutrients.In second year, you’ll be introduced to the concepts and methodology for studying nutrition in populations and explore how the metabolic demand for nutrients varies during the lifecycle. This allows you to understand the scientific basis of nutritional recommendations for different groups of people, from infants to the elderly. Studying food analysis, you’ll examine how the nutritional content of food is established, the additives and contaminants in food, and the need for food analysis to comply with legal requirements. The relationship between nutrition and physical activity will also be explored in the context of the global obesity problem, including the physiological, psychological and cultural barriers to dietary change. You’ll also deepen your understanding of how food components affect the chemical and microbiological safety of food.In your third year you will apply your skills to designing new foods, from concept through formulation and processing, through to sensory evaluation, packaging and marketing. Your team project, based on new product development (NPD), will explore the role of nutritionists in developing and marketing novel healthy foods to fill gaps in the present market and to meet new demands for healthy foods. You will deepen your understanding of how foods can affect health and in nutrition through topics that may include nutritional policy and practice, obesity and personal nutrition, food and cancer, and diet and cardiovascular health.In your final year you will undertake an extended individual research project; you will be given a choice of topics to investigate in the School. You will also develop problem solving skills through an interactive module in which you will assess the properties of foods on the market and how their ingredients give the food its nutritional profile as well as desirable tastes and textures, and then investigate how to improve the nutritional profile without changing the taste and texture of the food. You will also be given a choice of modules that will allow you to extend your knowledge in a field of your choice that may include nutritional epidemiology, effects of processing on nutrition, food allergy and functional foods.