Why Food and Nutrition May Become the Most Important University Courses of the Future
By: Lim Ju Boo - lin ru wu (林 如 武)
I promised I shall continue to write on this issue that concerns future generations of students to come.
For generations, medicine has been regarded as one of the most prestigious and desirable university courses in the world. Parents proudly encourage their children to become doctors because medicine is associated with status, stable employment, respect and financial security. Students themselves often choose medicine believing that doctors will always remain highly demanded and better rewarded than graduates from most other disciplines.
However, over the years since the 1970's this is no longer true. Studying medicine today is no more lucrative as during my time. Why is this so? Read the reasons in the three links below later in order not be distracted here for the moment:
1. "Which area of healthcare is more important: "Nutrition or Medicine"
https://scientificlogic.blogspot.com/2024/03/which-area-in-health-care-is-most.html
2. The Clinician vs Clinical Scientist vs Medical Scientist
https://scientificlogic.blogspot.com/search?q=too+many+clinics
3. Choosing a Right Course for a Career Pathway - Which One?
https://scientificlogic.blogspot.com/2024/11/choosing-right-course-for-career.html
As a graduate in many disciplines of studies - from medicine, nutrition, chemistry, zoology, physiology, food technology, and in food quality control across five various universities that took me nearly 18 years, I have increasingly come to realize that the future needs of humanity may slowly shift in another direction, namely, towards food science, food technology and nutrition.
This is not because medicine is unimportant. Medicine will always remain a noble and essential profession. Humanity will always need doctors, surgeons and medical scientists to diagnose diseases, relieve suffering and save lives.
Yet when we calmly reflect upon the fundamental requirements of human existence, we begin to see that food and nutrition may ultimately become even more crucial for the long-term survival of civilization itself. I have emphasize this in my last write-up on:
The Most in Demand University Courses for The Future
Once again, every human being depends daily upon only three absolutely essential necessities for life:
1. Air
2. Water
3. Food
Without any one of these, life cannot continue.
Medicine, on the other hand, is not consumed daily by healthy individuals to sustain life. People take medicines mainly when they become ill. Even then, recovery still depends heavily upon adequate food and nutrition. A patient cannot survive on drugs alone without water, proteins, carbohydrates, vitamins, minerals and energy to nourish the body.
In reality, food itself is often the first and greatest medicine.
A starving child cannot recover merely from tablets or injections. A severely malnourished person cannot regain strength without nourishment. Even the best medications may fail when the body lacks the nutritional foundation required for healing and immunity.
At present, society may not fully appreciate the enormous importance of food science and nutrition because food is still relatively abundant in many countries. Supermarkets remain full, restaurants continue to operate and food supplies still appear secure.
But beneath this appearance of abundance lies a growing global challenge.
The world population continues to increase rapidly year after year. At the same time, agricultural land is steadily shrinking as forests and farmland are converted into housing estates, highways, factories, industrial zones and expanding cities. Climate change, droughts, floods, water shortages and environmental degradation increasingly threaten global food production systems.
Human civilization may one day discover that producing enough safe and nutritious food for billions of people is far more difficult than manufacturing medicines.
That future moment may become one of humanity’s greatest turning points.
When food shortages begin to emerge, the consequences are severe:
1. Hunger increases
2. Malnutrition spreads
3. Disease resistance weakens
4. Social unrest develops
5. Economic instability grows
6. Political tensions rise
7. Mortality increases
Under such circumstances, medicines alone cannot solve the problem because food itself becomes the primary medicine needed for survival.
History repeatedly shows that civilizations often collapse not only because of wars or diseases, but also because of famine and failure of food supplies.
Even today, whenever major disasters occur — whether earthquakes, floods, wars or droughts — what are the first emergency supplies sent to affected populations?
The priorities are almost always:
1. Food
2. Water
3. Shelter
4. Clothing
Only afterward come medicines and medical equipment.
This clearly demonstrates the true hierarchy of human survival needs.
Modern food and nutrition sciences are also no longer “minor” academic disciplines as many people once believed. These fields have evolved into highly sophisticated and rapidly expanding sciences involving:
1. Human nutrition
2. Clinical nutrition
3. Dietetics
4. Food microbiology
5. Food biotechnology
6. Food toxicology
7. Food engineering
8. Food safety
9. Functional foods
10. Nutraceuticals
11. Public health nutrition
12. Agricultural technology
13. Sustainable food production
14. Molecular nutrition
15. Food legislation and regulation
Food safety itself has become one of the world’s greatest public health concerns. Contaminated food can affect entire populations within days. Problems involving food poisoning, microbial contamination, pesticides, heavy metals, antibiotic residues, toxic chemicals and microplastics have made food regulation increasingly important worldwide.
This explains why many national and international organizations place enormous emphasis upon food safety and food regulation.
In many disaster situations and humanitarian crises, food security becomes even more important than medical sophistication. A hungry population cannot remain stable regardless of how advanced its hospitals may be.
Furthermore, modern scientific research increasingly shows that many chronic diseases are strongly related to diet and lifestyle. Conditions such as obesity, hypertension, cardiovascular disease, Type 2 diabetes and certain cancers are often linked to nutritional habits.
Future healthcare may therefore focus increasingly upon prevention through nutrition rather than merely treating diseases after they develop.
In this sense, nutritionists and food scientists may become as important as doctors in safeguarding humanity’s health.
Historically, nutrition itself is actually a relatively young university discipline. Before the 1960s, very few universities offered formal undergraduate or postgraduate programs in nutrition. One of the pioneering institutions was Queen Elizabeth College under the University of London, where Professor Dr John Yudkin helped establish nutrition as an important academic field in the Western world.
Professor John Yudkin, BSc (Lond), BA (Cambridge), MBBChir (Cambridge), MD (Cambridge), FRCP, FRIC, PhD (Cambridge), was a Professor of Physiology at the University of London from 1945 till 1954, and became a Professor of Nutrition at Queen Elizabeth College, University of London from 1954 till 1971.
He was a very eminent scientist - a chemist, a biochemist, a clinician, a highly qualified physician with an FRCP and a higher postgraduate MD, a physiologist, and above all these professions he held, he was most well-known as a world most renown nutritionist. I was very fortunate to study directly under him as the first and only Malaysian postgraduate student at that time in Queen Elizabeth College. It was he who cultivated my interest in clinical physiology and nutrition. His knowledge in the clinical diagnosis of nutritional deficiency disease was first-class.
Today, through his influence in nutrition and the prestige of the University of London, universities throughout the world — including those in Malaysia — offer extensive programs in food science, food technology, nutrition and dietetics. The rapid growth of these courses reflects the increasing global recognition that food and nutrition are fundamental sciences essential for humanity’s future survival.
Contrary to the misconception that food science and nutrition graduates have poor career prospects, graduates in these fields are now heavily involved in:
1. Food manufacturing industries
2. Pharmaceutical companies
3. Research institutions
4. Public health agencies
5. Hospitals
6. Universities
7. Food safety laboratories
8. Agricultural industries
9.Biotechnology companies
10. Nutritional product industries
11. Government regulatory authorities
12. International food organizations
In fact, many graduates in these disciplines are fully employed almost immediately after graduation because the global demand for food production, food safety and nutritional expertise continues to expand steadily. So far, I have not heard of any nutritionist unemployed.
The food industry itself remains one of the largest economic sectors in the world. Every single day, billions of people purchase food to sustain themselves and their families. People visit food markets and grocery stores regularly, often daily or weekly. They do not visit hospitals or buy medicines every day unless they are ill.
Food therefore drives not only human survival, but also much of the global economy itself.
Perhaps future students and parents should begin to reconsider what careers may truly become most important in the coming decades.
The future world may not merely ask:
“How do we cure disease?”
It may increasingly ask:
“How do we feed humanity safely, nutritiously and sustainably?”
The student who studies food science, food technology or nutrition today may one day help prevent famine, improve global health, ensure food safety, strengthen food security and sustain millions of human lives.
That responsibility is no less noble than medicine. So we can clearly see the vast branches of nutrition and food sciences and each of them sub-divided into their specialized areas exactly just like in medicine.
We can clearly see a student studying a 4-year general course in nutrition or in food science is not about "what food to eat, and what not to eat". It is a highly specialised technical area divided into so many branches with only some examples I have listed above. An undergraduate student in nutrition has to attend 8 hours of lectures a day in multi-disciplinary scientific and medical subjects including economics, sociology, human behaviour, statistics, epidemiology, including practical for 4 solid years before qualifying as a nutritionist. Nutrition is not a 20 minutes talk about what to eat, and not what to eat.
Indeed, as humanity faces growing population pressures and environmental challenges, food and nutrition may eventually emerge as among the most important university disciplines for the future survival of civilization itself.
The practice of nutrition is a formal, regulated profession in Malaysia. Under the Allied Health Professions Act 2016 (Act 774). Nutritionists and dietitians are recognized health professionals, and practitioners must be formally registered with the Malaysian Allied Health Professions Council (MAHPC) to practice legally.
