Reflections on a career in nutrition science - no regrets!

Professor Judy Buttriss

My interest in nutrition began when I was just into my teens [JB1] and my youngest sister was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes. The dietitian was the person who unlocked the black box about ‘living with diabetes’ and enabled my family to come to terms with the day to day practicalities. Almost immediately I decided I wanted to become a dietitian – and took a keen interest in getting to grips with ‘carb unit counting’, which was the way diabetes was managed in those days.  My parents got a leaflet for me from the dietitian and my immediate career path was set – saving the careers officer at school a lot of effort! I studied nutrition and dietetics at University of Surrey, which provided me with an honours degree in nutrition and a diploma in dietetics.  The degree included a placement year that was split between a series of dietetic placements, principally focused on hospital dietetics as work in the community was in its infancy at that time, and a role in a different setting.  I was offered a placement at the Institute of Child Health, with my own little lab and a project measuring vitamin B6 in urine samples from children who had suffered severe burns.  I even got a paper published from the work and enjoyed the lab environment and opportunity to develop new evidence so much that I decided I wanted to go into research rather than hospital dietetics. 

Towards the end of my final year, I was offered a couple of PhD studentships at Surrey and chose one that would have led me into the world of toxicology. The studentship fell through at the final hurdle and after graduating I worked for Professor John Waterlow as a research dietitian on a maternity-cover contract at the Clinical Nutrition and Metabolism Unit in London, working alongside well-known leaders in the protein-turnover world including Joe Millward. At the time,

I assumed that the Friday seminars, when visiting lecturers from around the world were grilled and science debated over a cup of tea  –  followed by a visit to a curry house paid for by ‘Prof’ – were the norm everywhere. 

But it was only afterwards that I appreciated the value and future impact of the environment in which I had been immersed, which set the bar high in terms of setting my own professional standards, and underpinned for me the importance of peer review and basing assumptions on solid evidence.

I returned to Guildford in 1978 to undertake a PhD supervised by Prof John Dickerson and Dr Tapan Basu – my thesis was on vitamin C and drug metabolising enzymes, which was described at the time as bridging nutrition, biochemistry and toxicology.  I have many fond memories of studying nutrition in Guildford and it set me up with a fascinating career that has continued to be enjoyable, challenging and personally rewarding.

There followed several post doc grants, the first in Manchester on a copper enzyme and others with Prof Tony Diplock at Guys Hospital Medical School, on vitamin E and selenium.  Tony was another major influence on my career – he always introduced me to visiting scientists and routinely involved me in things that helped shape my development as a scientist and a networker. 

At that time, I imagined my future would be as a university academic but fate intervened. I was offered a role at the National Dairy Council as Senior Nutritionist, working alongside a multidisciplinary team with expertise in producing resources for schools and the public, advertising, marketing, public relations, as well as dairy science. I made the leap. At first it was quite scary and the pace much faster.

I learned very quickly that, when liaising with PR and marketing colleagues, there was no room for ambiguity or fudging.  There was always a risk that ‘tends to’ or ‘might’ would be interpreted as ‘does’ or ‘will’. 

In this job, lots of opportunities came my way. I learned to write in different styles and for different audiences, from health professionals to farmers, from fellow scientists to the Sun reader, and of course teachers and their pupils. I was media trained by newsreader John Humphries, learned about food legislation, experienced collaboration with people from lots of different disciplines, and represented the sector at meetings and committees in the UK and in Brussels.

 My original intention was for this job to be a short term deviation but I enjoyed the work immensely and stayed for almost 14 years.

Little did I know back in the mid 1980s that the move would lead to the career path I have pursued ever since – nutrition science communication – collating and evaluating the research of others, and presenting this in an evidence-based, relevant and user-friendly way.

By 1998 I was looking for more challenges and joined the British Nutrition Foundation, a charity established in 1967, as Science Director, and subsequently became Director General in 2007. I left the Foundation in 2021 and, throughout my time there, evidence-based nutrition science was centre stage, enabling me to combine my thirst for new knowledge, and its onward communication to others, with membership of numerous external committees and collaboration with scientists around Europe and with other likeminded individuals .  One of these collaborations paved the way for the founding of the Academy of Nutrition Sciences, a charity established in 2019 that provides a collective voice on evidence based nutrition science. I am immensely proud to be one of its first cohort of Trustees and, in my ‘retirement’, now chair the Board.

 A feature of my career has been contribution to advisory committees, including those on research funding, nutrient profiling, the eatwell guide, 5-a-day, school food standards, nutrition & health claims, and Defra’s Family Food Survey.

Of these, the Government Office of Science’s Food Research Partnership, chaired by Prof Sir John Beddington, has particularly influenced my personal development and opened my eyes to the multidisciplinary world in which nutrition sits and the environmental impact of global food systems.

It was in the 1990s that I first became involved in the governance of the Nutrition Society, as a Council Member and later was elected Honorary Secretary. During this decade,  I was also directly involved in the Society’s development of the processes for registration in public health nutrition and accreditation of training courses in nutrition, now undertaken by the Association for Nutrition.

For me, this contribution has to be one of my career highlights. Up there too are my appointment as a Visiting Professor at University of Surrey in 2019, election as an Honorary Fellow of the Nutrition Society in 2018, and appointment in 2020 to the UK Nutrition and Health Claims Committee.

I have been fortunate to experience some of the most rewarding and interesting roles in nutrition science, working with fabulous teams of people and supporting the development of others.

I have never set myself a rigid path, instead I have considered new opportunities as they arise. Often these have taken me right out of my comfort zone – such as when I started to do media interviews, or joined prestigious multidisciplinary committees.

If in doubt I have worked on the premise that ‘other people seem to think I can do this, so I probably can’. I wouldn’t change any of the career decisions I have taken or the opportunities and challenges I’ve grasped. Together, these decisions have broadened my perspective and understanding of the complex discipline that is nutrition science, and provided numerous opportunities to ‘give back’ to the profession about which I am so passionate.