Anyone can call themselves a nutritionist

How we work

Why we spell out what we hold

British law protects certain professional titles. "Dietitian" and "physiotherapist" are restricted to people registered with the Health and Care Professions Council, and using them without that registration is a criminal offence. "Nutritionist" and "personal trainer" are not protected at all. Anyone may use either, with any level of training or none, and nothing about the word signals competence. Most clients assume the opposite, which is precisely why the distinction is worth stating.

The consequence is not academic. A dietitian is trained and regulated to treat diagnosed conditions with therapeutic diets; a nutritionist, however good, is not working under that framework. A physiotherapist can assess a pelvic floor or an injury clinically; a trainer cannot. When those boundaries get blurred, the person who carries the risk is the client, who believed she was getting clinical care and was not.

So we work the other way round. Screening comes before training and it looks for the things that belong with a doctor. Where something clinical appears, we refer and wait rather than adapting around it. We make no claim about weight loss, because the advertising code requires claims to be substantiated and no honest practitioner can substantiate a number for a particular person. And we tell you which qualifications we actually hold, so the comparison you make between practitioners is a real one.