Dietitian assisting programs teach people to assist registered dietitians in planning, preparing, and serving meals to individuals with specific dietary needs. Students learn about health and nutrition. They learn to use equipment and prepare food. They also study safety and sanitary standards and learn how to keep records.

Have you ever watched the cooking show "Iron Chef"? The chefs on this show are given an ingredient to showcase. They then have just a couple of hours to build a whole menu around this ingredient. If you've watched the show, you may have enjoyed the great bok choy battle or the king crab crusade.

As a dietitian assistant, you probably won't ever need to create recipes for a crab tart or braised bok choy with oyster mushrooms. But part of the job does include planning recipes and menus for people with specific dietary needs. And that challenge can be just as fun and exciting.

As a dietitian assistant, you might help a dietitian plan meals for a nursing home. To do this, you would need to learn about safe food-handling procedures. You would also need to know how to use equipment to help make large quantities of food. Or, you might work with an individual who has high blood pressure and needs to start eating a low-sodium diet. In that case, you would need to know which foods are naturally low in sodium and how to prepare meals without a lot of salt.

If you were to work in a cafeteria or kitchen in an institution, a registered dietitian might create specific menus and guidelines. At that point, you would help make sure the kitchen prepares that menu. So you would be assisting the dietitian at the same time that you would be managing a kitchen crew.

About 10 community and technical schools offer programs in dietitian assisting. Most of these schools offer diplomas and certificates, which usually take about one year of full-time study after high school. A few of the schools offer associate degrees, which typically take one to two years of study. The schools sometimes offer these programs within their home economics, nutrition, or culinary management departments.

A few distance education programs in dietitian assisting are also available.