Food as Medicine (FutureLearn)

Offered by Monash University,
Food as Medicine (FutureLearn)

Explore the role of food in health. Apply nutrition science to guide you on using food as medicine for you and your family. This course introduces the concept of food as medicine. You will explore how food can be important both in preventative health and as an aid in the management of certain chronic diseases today, in the past and in the future.

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You will also learn about what’s in food that gives it the potential to improve our health and how to recognise which types of foods are essential for health and wellbeing, and how food can play an important role in treating/preventing disease.

Syllabus

Week 1: Food as medicine
Week 2: A body systems approach for food as medicine
Week 3: Interpreting the science of food as medicine

What will you achieve?
By the end of the course, you'll be able to...

  • Describe what is meant by the term ‘food as medicine’ and list a number of examples of how foods have been used as medicine in the past.
  • Identify how and which types of foods are essential for health and wellbeing, and play an important role in treating/preventing disease.
  • Identify current evidenced based, nutrition related public health guidelines and apply these to improve personal eating habits and nutritional intake.
  • Identify foods/components of food that have an effect on different body systems, weight and appetite, fertility and pregnancy, and the genome.

Who is the course for?
This course will have broad general interest appeal to everyone interested in food, nutrition and health. But it will be of particular interest to healthcare professionals who are looking to have more evidenced-based information, to assist them in providing food-based recommendations to their patients.

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