Course Description:
The seminar “The Science of Fat and Sugar” concentrates on the recent advances in the field of nutrition science and the applicable guidance for health care professionals. As stated in a recent authoritative review
(DiMaria-Ghalili et al.,2014) “nutrition is a critical component of acute and chronic disease management, as well as health and wellness across the health care professions, each profession must reevaluate its
individual nutrition-related professional competencies before the establishment of meaningful interprofessional collaborative nutrition competencies.”
It is important to emphasize that the scope of practice of health care professionals includes not only curative and palliative care but also health promotion, disease prevention, and coordination of care.
There are numerous important discoveries and observed phenomena that are relevant to social workers, case managers, psychologists, nutritionists, and nutritional counselors.One of the important changes in the
current 5th edition of DSM is the inclusion of new entities in the chapter on Feeding and Eating Disorders: especially the avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder. Given the popularity of restrictive diets among the
general population of the USA, and an even higher occurrence of restrictive dieting in the overweight/obese categories, it would be highly desirable that providers of nursing home, assisted living, nursing,
psychosocial and counseling care were able to supply scientifically sound information, including that on low-fat and low-carbohydrate type diets. This will allow for better rapport with the patient, better diagnostic
approaches in regard of the cited and other feeding and eating disorders and provide avenues for personalized care and treatment of such patients (Willis, 2015).
