Nutrition education: higher education.

Good or poor nutrition education begins in early life. Often reinforced by misguided parental threats and entreaties, the preschool child, within the framework of personal preference, usually displays uncritical acceptance of family eating patterns. When he first enters school he regards his own eating habits, whether the emphasis is on pie and chips, meat and two vegetables or on vegan fare, as the norm. His attitudes are influenced to a greater or lesser extent by formal and informal educational techniques at school. Thus students reaching higher education already possess well-established eating patterns, some knowledge of the significance of foods and often a sense of complacency in that, from personal experience, 'everyone knows about foods and what they do'! Some, probably less complacent as a result, will already have encountered nutritional problems such as obesity. In Scotland, higher education falls within four sectors: local authority colleges, colleges of education, central institutions and the universities. Nutrition education in the last is considered separately. This paper relates only to the first three sectors in general and to colleges offering certain vocational courses in particular. These include courses in home economics, and national diploma courses in catering, life sciences (nursing) and dietetics. The student following national diploma and home economics courses is concerned primarily with nutrition in the healthy individual, although sufficient knowledge of therapeutic nutrition is required to allow the provision of advice of a general nature and the recognition of the need for specialist assistance. The student nurse and student dietitian are concerned with both normal and therapeutic nutrition. As future practitioners and educators, for all these students, a study of nutrition makes an important contribution to professiond training. Educational programmes should aim to provide sound theoretical knowledge combined with realistic attitudes and awareness of factors influencing food choice and food acceptance. Some factors which seem to the authors to be of importance in devising learning programmes are considered. For too long nutrition has been defined as a study of the digestion, absorption and utilization of nutrients. Such an academic study of the principles of nutrition may well provide a satisfying intellectual challenge, particularly for the student whose background knowledge of science is sound. But for the practitioner and educator, such a study is, in isolation, unsatisfactory. Without application of nutritional principles in practical and realistic situations, it could even be suggested that parsley and watercress are good dietary sources of ascorbic acid and