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Research nutritionist: Jo Pearce

This Case Study belongs to Dietitian.

Jo completed a degree in microbiology followed by an MSc in Public Health Nutrition. She now works as a research nutritionist for the School Food Trust.

After graduation and a brief spell of temping, I worked for two months as an assistant dietitian at Canterbury and Kent hospital. Following this I got a post at the Centre for Pregnancy Nutrition at Sheffield University where I spent half the week working as a community nutritionist in SureStart centres and the other half of the week as a research assistant collecting nutritional data from women and young children in Sheffield. This experience gained me a research nutritionist post at the School Food Trust.

An accredited BSc/MSc was essential for my current position. I use a lot of what I have learned from my degree in my current job.

My job is very varied. As part of a research and nutrition team, I support local authorities and schools to meet Government legislation for the food provided by schools. This could be by producing case studies or guidance, providing technical support to other teams within the organisation and answering queries from caterers, parents, children etc. I also code and analyse nutritional intake data collected from school children and data on the food provided in schools to monitor the nutritional quality of school food. We produce a lot of reports for our website and other materials which are sent to schools and parents. A lot of days are spent visiting schools to look at the food that they provide and I also attend events to speak about school food and provide information to delegates.

As time progresses I can build on my experience in various aspects of nutrition work and research. I would like to continue to work on researching and evaluating the impact of public health nutrition interventions in the UK or abroad.

I really enjoy working with children, caterers and as part of a team. Making a difference to the quality of food that is provided to children at school is also very rewarding.

I would say that dealing with opposition to the work that we do is the most challenging part of the job.

The advice I would give to anyone who wishes to enter this career is to choose an accredited course to gain registration as a nutritionist/public health nutritionist. There is a lot of competition after graduation but gaining experience, even if voluntary, will help to get started.

Case Study sourced by AGCAS editors of , 01 June 2010.