For many of us, January marks the start of diets and a new health regime following the festive season - but for many people, perhaps the key to success would be having the knowledge to make informed decisions about what we eat.
A free online course designed to demystify the complex messages we hear about diet, health and lifestyle, designed and delivered by a nutrition expert from the University of Aberdeen Rowett Institute is open for online enrolment now and starts on January 16.
The Nutrition and Wellbeing course is known as a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course), which is hosted by FutureLearn, and can be taken by anyone as long as they have access to a computer.
The video-based course is hosted by the University’s world-leading nutrition experts and aims to present the scientific basics of nutrition and an outline of current nutrition concepts and controversies.
So far, thousands of people have taken part in the course, which first run in 2015.
The course is delivered by Dr Alexandra Johnstone whose work formed the basis of Marks & Spencer’s ‘balanced for you’ food range.
Dr Johnstone said: “The start of a new year is when many people vow to become healthier, start a diet and exercise more but often these resolutions are quickly forgotten. This course allows people to gain more of an insight into health and nutrition and therefore it might make it easier to stick to a new regime.
“Learning a new skill or undertaking a course is also a popular resolution so by signing up to the MOOC, individuals could be tackling a couple of resolutions at the same time!”
Participants are expected to put in up to three hours of study per week, with the weeks made up of different activities based around the subject of study via a video, article, discussion, test, quiz or assignment. The course takes four weeks to complete.
For more information and to sign up, please visit https://www.futurelearn.com/courses/nutrition-wellbeing