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What was earlier referred to as home science is now a well designed food and nutrition management program. With this, the scope of the course has also increased multiple folds. It’s no longer restricted to studying how to ensure good health of your family or how to cook food in order to retain all its essential nutrients or how to effectively run a food establishment of your own.

The program opens doors to numerous attractive career options for graduates in forever growing healthcare and food service industry. Food and nutrition management graduates can work with hospitals, nursing homes, extended care facilities, senior residences, high volume catering services, airline food services, industrial cafeterias, food manufacturers, community agencies, public health nutrition and international food organizations.

Nowadays even schools, colleges and other childcare organizations have requirements for food and nutrition experts. Employers are keen in hiring graduates with well rounded knowledge and strong interpersonal skills, who could apply their knowledge of normal and clinical nutrition and business skills in a variety of settings.

About Food Service Program

You need to have a diploma in food and nutrition, in order to begin with a career in food service or manufacturing industry. A food service program prepares you to pursue challenging careers as managers in healthcare, fitness and food industry. You gain knowledge and skills related to
Sanitation, safety and hygiene
Kitchen production
Food services
Nutrition
Food properties analysis
Food service management
Aging and society
Purchasing for food services industry
Medical nutrition therapy
Supervision practices
HRM in food services
Recipe development and costing
Labour cost control
Healthcare menu planning

The course also familiarizes you with financial management and marketing and merchandising for food services operations. You also learn about practical aspects of quantity food preparation and service.

In addition to attending theory classes, you are also required to conduct various experiments from time to time to learn the physical properties of food.

Once you complete this two-year diploma course, you can either begin with private practice or choose to work with food manufacturing and service companies. You are expected to operate in accordance with the code of ethics set by the Canadian Society of Nutrition Management.

You will be equipped to pursue challenging careers in the fields of
Food and nutrition counselling for weight management, healthy eating, diabetics management, eating disorders
Food service
Food and nutrition management at spas, hotels, schools, culinary schools, etc
Food and nutrition consultancy for cookbooks, newspapers, magazines and other educational programs
Sales and marketing
Public relations for hospitals, food businesses, fitness centers, etc
Research and development
Community service
Healthcare reforms with NGOs or government organizations
Menu planning at hotels, restaurants, nursing homes, seniors’ residences
Procurement of goods and services with food businesses
Food production procedures standardization
Food distribution

Of late, fitness has become the buzz word. Food and nutrition planning cannot be separated from physical fitness and mental well being. You are what you eat. Besides, the career options associated with nutrition planning have made it one of the most sought after areas.

The key to better cooking at home is efficiency at your kitchen. Planning, preparation and organization are all part of any successful chef’s arsenal in creating the top-most meals whether at home or at a busy hotel restaurant.

Better, hotter and fresher dishes will be easier when you put an effort to manage your time at the kitchen. Preparing even the most extravagant dishes can be easy as long as you have made a plan from start to finish. Lower stress and more confidence is the results of a time managed kitchen.

Managing my Kitchen time?

Having a plan will make any master chef or cook at home wannabe more confident the dishes they prepare. Memorizing the meals in your head can be easy if you are just preparing one meal. But if you are simultaneously cooking two, three or more dishes using just your head might produce a kitchen disaster.

The plan starts out hours before the cooking time. If you can spend 5 minutes to skin and chop up onions that you will be using for the week, you can save tons of time when it’s actually time to cook them. You can prepare several items this way. Eggs, vegetables, garlic, onions, garnishing can all be sliced or cooked beforehand. In fact some hotels pre-cook their poached eggs the night before breakfast buffet. That is the only way they can keep up with hundreds of guests for breakfast.

Pre-cooking meat is an open secret in many a posh restaurant. You may think that your steak has been freshly grilled but in fact it was half cooked hours before your order. Fresh lobster? Think again, that crustacean was sitting on the pot long before you sat down on your reserved seat.

It is absolutely essential to save as much time as you can in doing the things that aren’t related to the act of cooking itself. You can measure your sugar, salt, pepper, paprika or any spice and put them in little plastic containers ready to be used instantly when they are needed. Gourmet dishes can be prepared at lightning speed with this method.

Doing the dishes can be done in fast-forward mode. It just takes four fills of your sink. The first one being the pre-rinse stage to get rid of all the leftovers. The second stage will have the dishes pass through a soapy water fill and wipe briskly with a sponge. And the last two to rinse. Try it and save tons of time.

Preparing for any situation if the real key to time management in the kitchen. If you know that you may run out of hot water for your chop suey and you have a few quarts ready to pout you will definitely save time. Writing down all the ingredients and steps with the meal your currently doing will boost your confidence and productivity.

All great cooks have several arsenals in their kitchen. And the kitchen timer is the prime weapon. Not one cook in the world can cook several dishes together without a trusty kitchen timer. In fact a cook can use as many as 5 at a time. One for eggs, one for that chicken soup. One for baking and one for timing that icing mix. Several more high end kitchen timers can time all of those in one digital timer device.

A kitchen timer will mean no second guessing if you beef is already tender enough or if your toast has been down the oven long enough (French toasts need an oven to be done well, another secret from a chef).
Make sure you have a kitchen timer right on a convenient place on your kitchen. Free from anything that would obstruct its view and would cause it to fall. Along planning, preparation and the other techniques mentioned in this article, time management in the kitchen can be easy for anyone learn.