What are some reliable and free basic online nutrition courses?

Question

I took several human-nutrition-focused courses in my past education, and I'd like to provide a corpus of resources covering fundamental human nutritional information, as, for example, what are calories/carbohydrates, or how are different fats used by the body, or proper hydration, etc.

Basic stuff for a smart consumer (domestic or wild) to make the right nutritional food choices. I've seen a lot of OCW and slideshows for the topic, but nothing that's quite right vis-a-vis covering the core ideas. Just wanted to ask in the spirit of this question what this community has found that does the topic justice, so I can share with others.

Answer 1

Good question, and this is not a complete answer, as I cannot think specifically of a free course. I will update this if I find one. But a very good resource that I feel provides a great foundation for what balanced nutrition is, with a lot of good explanations (that you don't have to be a scientist to understand), is a Harvard public health website. One of the primary researchers involved did a Skype lecture with us, during which he presented the research behind their information, and we felt it was quite solid: https://www.hsph.harvard.edu/nutritionsource/healthy-eating-plate/

Answer 2

The best directory of online courses that I know of is class-central.com. It includes and compares edx.org and Coursera. The more general subject "Nutrition & Wellness" lists 99 courses. Only a few will fit all of your requirements. I have not tried them but they are often university backed and from other subjects I know class-central's rating system is useful.

Answer 3

There are several online learning platforms that offer free and/or paid courses (in some platforms the courses are usually free of charge, and you can pay to get an official completion certificate). Personally, I have used so far only Khan Academy (which is completely free to use and does not offer graduation certificates) and Coursera (which offers the material for free, but the certificate is paid), but I did not see that they offer such a course.

However, edx.org, with which I have had no experience, seems to offer a course that might be suitable for your needs (free to use, pay for a certificate, according to the course webpage). Check it out here.

There may be other online learning platforms as well. If you haven't done that already, browse through this Google search.

Edit: come to think of it, this course by Coursera may also be of use to you (see the syllabus for more details).