Human Nutrition Course Question

[Miss Pibble]

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Nutrition is recommended by most of the schools that I wish to apply to. My school doesn't offer Animal Nutrition, but does offer Nutrition as a Biology elective. I emailed a few schools and basically got the same response from all of them: "Certainly a course like this would be valuable and great to take."

Does that imply that I should take the Human Nutrition? In your experience, what do you recommend? (Cornell is my goal school.)

Also, I know that I can take Animal Nutrition online if necessary...

Thanks!

 

[Miss Pibble]

Just some background... I'm doing post-baccalaureate work and have also taken other recommended courses such as: Genetics, Cell Bio, Immunology and Embryology

 

[orca2011]

I had asked schools this question as well, and was told a human/general nutrition course wouldn't count towards the pre-requisite. Personally, I would probably lean towards just taking an online course or taking it over the summer at another school to be on the safe side. While I'm sure the human nutrition course would be interesting and somewhat relevant, I wouldn't necessarily want to take the time to take the course and not have it qualify if I could take another that would satisfy the requirement.

 

[cowgirla]

I was also told that human nutrition would not be accepted as a prereq. A few schools even told me that the animal science nutrition through the local vet tech program was not acceptable either or that prereqs could not be taken at a community college. Nutritional biochemistry was also a no-go, even though we went quite in depth into the rumen.

So, I ended up taking it online through OKSTATE

 

[Miss Pibble]

I just want to take as many of the recommended courses as possible to make my app shine, you know? The responses I've gotten from Admissions makes me think that they're suggesting I go ahead with it, but, like you said, I'm not sure I wanna waste time and money taking it. Also, I don't really have the finances to take it online right now. This Spring I'm taking Orgo, Calc and a seminar in Holistic Therapies. I have room for the Nutrition, but just don't know what to do...

Thanks for the replies 🙂

 

[Miss Pibble]

Let me clarify... I'm asking about Nutrition as a recommended course, not as a pre-req. For example, Cornell recommends Nutrition and they don't specify whether it should be human or animal.

 

[BuggerDoodle]

If it was me, I would take an animal nutrition course online instead of a human nutrition course just because it leaves the possibility of applying to schools that have animal nutrition as a prereq open. I took animal nutrition online through NC State and thought it was a great course and I could apply some of the knowledge I gained in it to humans as well.

 

[cowgirla]

If looking at a recommended course, and animal nutrition isnt an option, I would highly highly recommend a nutritional biochemistry or physiology course. Mine was geared mostly towards people and cows- about half and half, and even the "people" information was so helpful last year when we had our general physiology course and covered the GI system and metabolism. It gives you the basic understanding of nutrition rather than looking at specific foods or designing diets, and was really interesting to me.

 

[Miss Pibble]

Thanks guys 🙂 I'll look into an online course in Animal that I can afford. I still have some time as I'm not applying until next year...C/O 2018! Gosh, that feels so far away... 🙂

 

[PetPony]

Nothing relevant, but I just realized that next year will also be my year to apply. That kind of scares me that it is so close already. So much left to do still!

 

[StartingoverVet]

Not really relevant, but if anyone is thinking of applying to Penn and thinking... ah, they don't need animal nutrition so I will skip it....

I will point out that you can get exempted from nutrition at penn. That is a pretty good incentive to take it undergrad (wish I did).

 

[LetItSnow]

Let me clarify... I'm asking about Nutrition as a recommended course, not as a pre-req. For example, Cornell recommends Nutrition and they don't specify whether it should be human or animal.

If you have the money, the time, and the curiosity ... I think a human nutrition course would be a great intro to it and help you waltz through your first nutrition course in vet school by having some basic concepts down firmly before you get in there. We spent a fair bit of time talking about nutritional needs (and the problems resulting from various deficits/toxicities) for different species, but other basics like how to interpret food labels, calculating actual caloric content and where it's coming from, determine caloric need, understanding the basics of proteins/fats/carbs and other nutrients, etc... should all be the same. All that would be left when you do your vet school nutrition course would be species-specific info.

That said, I also can see where it could leave you with some things to 'unlearn', depending on how well/poorly it's taught. (Trivial example: a human nutrition course might call vitamin C an essential nutrient, which isn't true for most species most vets deal with.) If you'd find it hard to 'unlearn' things like that you might want to hold off. It's hard for me to imagine things like that being a big deal or tough to relearn, though.

I don't think UMN has a specific exemption policy on it, but our course coordinator did allow people to test out of it if they wanted. We all took a pre-test first day of class... I think you needed 80% to test out. I'm not sure what your final grade was, though ... probably whatever you got on the pre-test? And I imagine that policy could change any time.