How to Write a Thesis in Nutrition

Writing a thesis in nutrition is necessary for getting a degree but many students face problems when working on this challenging project. They just lack experience and need good advice on how to get started and better organize their work. If you are one of them, keep reading this article where you’ll find an easy step-by-step guide on how to write a successful thesis in nutrition that will help gain confidence in your abilities to cope with your task. If you are looking for tips on how to complete other college papers, check other articles on our website where you’ll find full guides to all writing assignments out there.

What Is a Thesis in Nutrition?

A thesis in nutrition is a lengthy piece of writing that provides details about an independent original research conducted by a student. You must work on your original topic under the supervision of a faculty committee. The process of working on thesis includes several important steps.

• You have to write a research proposal where you give a review of a current literature, identify the gap in it, and provide details to justify your methods and research design.
• You must do an independent research within a specific timeframe and collect, analyze, summarize, and present your data as it is required by conventions.
• You must write the final thesis where you present your findings and discuss them.
• You must defend the results of your original research to your supervisory committee.

If you consider the concept of original research daunting, there is no need to fall into despair. If you don’t plan to get a researcher’s job at an exclusive university, you are actually not expected to come up with a great novel idea for your thesis in nutrition. You can be absolutely original in your thesis if you make a small cumulative contribution to previous work in the field.

How to Choose a Good Research Topic for a Thesis in Nutrition

The first step in writing a thesis is choosing an interesting topic. When selecting a good topic for your thesis in nutrition, you should consider the following. Typically Master’s and Bachelor theses focus on one research objective that is a part of a broader research project. You can find information about suggested topics on the website of your educational institution. And sometimes, general projects can be adapted to interests of students. You just need to discuss if there is such an opportunity with your supervisor. If you are not quite sure in which areas of this field of study you are interested in, here are some good nutrition topic ideas for your future thesis.

• Medical Problems Linked to Abdominal Fat;
• Allergies and Food Sensitivities: Elimination Diet;
• How Big Is the Risk of Breast Cancer Caused by Alcohol Intake?
• Hunger and Food Insecurity in Developing Countries;
• Effect of High-Fat Diet on Insulin Sensitivity;
• Role of Dietary Supplements in Cancer Prevention;
• Sports Nutrition and Athletic Success;
• Health Benefits of Organic Food;
• Nutritional Approach to the Prevention and Treatment of Chronic Diseases;
• Impact of Egg Consumption on Blood Cholesterol Levels;
• Long-term Effects of High-Protein Diet on Kidney Functional;
• Healthy Food Choices and Physical Activity;
• Health Effects of Vegetarian Diets;
• Food Safety: Prevention of Foodborne Illnesses;
• Dieting as a Risk Factor for the Development of eating Disorders.

Write a Research Proposal

After you have picked a topic for your thesis in nutrition, you need to research your topic and write a research proposal based on the literature review, formulate the objectives of your study, identify a research problem, develop a research question, and describe the research design. Make sure that your research question is concise, focused, clear, and arguable. It should require synthesis and analysis of ideas in order to provide an answer.

For example, you may determine the purpose of your investigation and formulate the research problem for your thesis in nutrition like this:

The purpose of this study is to determine whether there is the correlation between intake of vitamin D and the metabolic syndrome in older adults. It is expected that there will be a difference health outcome among those people who get sufficient amount of vitamin D and those who do not meet the required intake.

When your research proposal has been approved, you need to do a research to answer your research question and prove your hypothesis. Doing the research on the chosen topic is the most important and time-consuming part of the project.

Write Chapters of Your Thesis in Nutrition

After completing your research, you’ll need to describe your study in detail, report your findings, and analyze and interpret them. There are some conventions regarding the structure of thesis so you should check your department’s guidelines and consult your supervisor about the regulations concerning your course. Let’s discuss the structure that is commonly used.

Title Page

It’s the first page of your piece of writing and it has to include the title of your thesis, your name, institution’s and department’s names, and submission date. Make sure that your title has relevant keywords and tells your audience what your study is about. Some programs have strict requirements about the format of a title page so it’s better to check.

Abstract

Abstract is a brief summary of your thesis – typically it should be no longer than 250-300 words. You will write this section last after you finish your thesis. It’s the best approach because at that time you’ll know very well what you are summarizing. It’s the first part of your thesis in nutrition that people will read so you should make sure that it looks convincing and give enough information to persuade your audience that your thesis is worth reading. Make sure your abstract

• Includes information about your topic and the purpose of your study;
• Describes research methods;
• Gives a concise summary of the key findings;
• States major conclusions.

Introduction

In this chapter, you have to introduce your research topic, state the objectives of your study and explain its relevance. You have to provide the necessary background information to provide a context for your investigation. You need to state your research question, formulate hypothesis, explain the scope of your work and its limitations, and give an overview of the thesis structure. It’s important to make the introduction engaging and clear so that your readers can get a good understanding of your research subject, your goals, and your research design. Many researchers prefer to work on the introduction chapter at the end when they are absolutely sure what they are introducing.

Literature Review

You can’t be sure that your research is original and contributes to your field of studies unless you do an extensive reading of a variety of scholarly sources on your topic to find out what academic knowledge already exists on your specific topic. In the literature review chapter, you need to describe the current state of research on your subject, identify the gap in the existing literature, and explain what you are planning to do to address that gap.

To do that, you need to do an extensive library research, select the most relevant sources, critically evaluate them, and try to find connections and patterns. In this chapter, you can also provide an argument to justify the need for your research.

Methods

It’s one of the most important chapters of any dissertation or thesis because it allows your readers to evaluate the credibility of your results. Besides, it allows other researchers to replicate your study. You need to describe how you performed your research in detail and try to convince your audience that it was the best approach to solving your research problem. You have to provide information about methods that were used for collecting and analyzing data, procedures, materials, and techniques. You must also tell about the limitations of your study and discuss obstacles, explain how you manage to overcome them.

Results

Now it’s time to tell about the results of your research. It’s better to structure this chapter using sub-topics, sub-questions or hypothesis. When doing a research, you may come across a number of different findings, but it’s crucial only to speak about the results that are relevant to your research question and the purpose of your study. You should find the best way to present your data – use tables, charts, and graphs to visualize important data and add value to the text of your thesis in nutrition. But you should include only those tables and graphs that present extra data and don’t repeat the information that was presented in the text of your thesis.

Discussion

Here you need to review the results of your study and analyze and evaluate them in relation to wider context. You should start this chapter with summarizing some of the most important results and explain how they contribute to the existing knowledge. You need to discuss whether your findings met your initial expectations. If you got some unexpected results, you have to explain how it could happen and why. You may also speak about the alternative interpretations of your results and discuss how the limitations of your research influenced them. Besides, you can offer recommendations for further investigation on your topic.

Conclusions

This chapter should be much shorter than the discussion chapter. You need to summarize your research, explain what it means for the field, and why it is significant. You need to give a concise answer to your research question and summarize your central argument to remind your audience about it. It’s actually the final reflection of what you did in your thesis in nutrition and how you conducted your study. This chapter can also offer specific recommendations for practice and suggestions for further research. It’s important to emphasize your contribution to the existing knowledge and remind of what you actually have added.

References

Create a list of all the sources you have cited in your thesis and include all details about them. You should use the required citation style and follow it consistently when referencing your sources. Common referencing styles are MLA and APA but your program may have specific requirements to formatting your thesis so it’s better to ask your supervisor and check all the requirements.

Edit and Proofread Your Thesis in Nutrition

Completing all chapters of your thesis is not enough. Revising, editing, and proofreading are crucial steps in the writing process that may have an impact on the success of your thesis. That’s why you should a lot of time to them. Keep in mind that you may need to write several drafts of separate chapters and revise them thoroughly before you’ll be able to focus on polishing your paper and fixing minor errors and typos.

Before you start the revision process, it’s better to get some distance from your project and look at it with fresh eyes. In this way, you’ll be able to avoid the writer’s blindness. When revising and editing your thesis in nutrition, you should consider a number of important issues concerning development of argument, overall structure of your paper, structure of separate paragraphs, clarity, and style. You should also check your citations and make sure they are formatted correctly and consistently throughout the entire paper.

The final stage of editing your document is proofreading and you should devote enough time to this step as well. Although it the content of your thesis in nutrition that matter most but some sloppy minor mistakes, inconsistencies, and typos can spoil the overall impression of your project even if you produce a quality work. You shouldn’t rely entirely on spelling and grammar checkers and check the entire thesis reading slowly sentence after sentence and paying attention to every word. When you want to check spelling, a good approach is to read the paper backwards – this may prevent you from being distracted by the content issues.

Now we have discussed the entire process of writing a thesis in nutrition and hope that this article will help you organize your work in an efficient way and easily cope with this complex project.