Nutrition and Food Systems

While large populations face hunger and undernutrition, overweight and diet-related chronic diseases have taken on pandemic proportions. In addition, human diets have a significant impact on natural resources and the climate. More than ever, food systems changes are required to improve human diets, promote planetary health, and achieve sustainable development.

Key Facts

After completing thisMSc Nutrition and Food Systems program from Ghent University , you will:

• Have a strong academic background in human nutrition. The program contains all necessary courses for you to work as a nutritionist,

• Understand how human diets and nutrition are driven by food systems, from the production, post-harvest handling, transformation, storage, marketing of food up to the behaviour of consumers,

• Be capable of identifying nutritional problems, their underlying causes and develop, manage, and evaluate relevant interventions,

• Be able to critically evaluate nutrition research findings and be competent to develop evidence-based recommendations, and

• Be able to collaborate, communicate and creatively apply these competencies across the disciplines for sustainable food systems change

You can specialise even more during the second year. The third semester has no mandatory coursework and provides an internship opportunity to gain professional experiences.

You canchoose from a broad range of elective MSc courses at UGent or at another university, if these meet the program learning objectives. The final semester contains the Master’s dissertation and alongside courses that prepare students for employment.

Courses include:

• Applied Statistics

• Human Nutrition

• Food Chemistry

• Sustainable Agriculture: a Global Perspective

• Nutrition Disorders

• Food Marketing and Consumer Behaviour

• Functional Foods