Nutrition and Dietetics Professionals Sustainable Food Systems Knowledge Seeking Behaviour

ABSTRACT

Sustainable food system (SFS) competence is a new and recognized knowledge area for nutrition and dietetics professionals (NDP). This research seeks to describe the SFS knowledge seeking behavior of NDP. Secondary data analysis of 231 anonymous self-assessments collected between September 2020 to December 2021 indicate a high proportion (41%) of self-assessed “beginners” in this topic at a mixture of career stages. There was a preference for learning about topics that already have significant public attention globally. More advanced practitioners sought more applied information. These results are informative for updating education and professional development tools for NDP.

KEYWORDS:

• Sustainable food systems
• dietetic education
• sustainability
• dietitian
• nutritionist

SUSTAINABLE DEVELOPMENT GOALS:

• SDG 3: Good health and well-being

Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge Haley Jenkins and Chaiti Seth for their invaluable background work on the ideation, design and set up of the data collection tools.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Author Contributions

LC contributed to design, data collection, analysis and led the manuscript writing process; RP led data analysis and contributed to writing; EC contributed to design, and contributed to writing.

Research and Publication Ethics

The study was conducted in accordance with the Declaration of Helsinki. The Research Ethics Board at Acadia University confirmed that no prior ethics approval was required based on the study design.

Additional information

Funding

Financial support for the website which hosts data collection came from the International Confederation of Dietetics Associations, and we also gratefully acknowledge the Harrison McCain Emerging Scholars Fund for student support and training.