How To Become A Diet Technician: What It Is and Career Path

What is a diet technician and how to become one

Updated January 8, 2025

4 min read

A diet technician is a wellness practitioner who creates diet plans for patients to help them make healthy decisions, thus leading healthy lifestyles. Under the supervision of a dietitian, he/she or she conducts nutritional assessments and then makes individualized menu plans to promote healthy eating. They also hold counseling sessions with patients and families of people with special nutritional needs to guide them on how to choose and prepare healthy meals.

Diet technicians usually work in hospitals, rehabilitation centers, nursing homes, community health agencies, assisted living facilities, outpatient clinics, schools, correctional facilities, or in private practice. A successful diet technician should have nutrition knowledge, communication skills, interpersonal skills, analytical skills, attention to detail, and understanding.

Diet technicians typically work 40 hours a week. Depending on the patient's schedules, they may work through the weekends and even in the late evenings.

ScoreDiet TechnicianUS Average

Salary

2.6

Avg. Salary $33,164

Avg. Salary $59,228

Stability Level

6.7

Growth Rate 2%

Growth Rate 0.3%

Diversity

9.7

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 0.58%

Asian 5.85%

Black or African American 14.47%

Hispanic or Latino 12.28%

Unknown 4.68%

White 62.13%

Gender

female 86.55%

male 13.45%

Age - 40

Race

American Indian and Alaska Native 3.00%

Asian 7.00%

Black or African American 14.00%

Hispanic or Latino 19.00%

White 57.00%

Gender

female 47.00%

male 53.00%

Age - 40

Stress Level

6.7

Stress level is high

7.1 - high

Complexity Level

6.5

Complexity Level is challenging

7 - challenging

Work Life Balance

7.8

Work Life balance is good

6.4 - fair

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Key steps to become a diet technician

Explore diet technician education requirements

Most common diet technician degrees

Bachelor's

65.9 %

Associate

18.3 %

Master's

6.7 %

Start to develop specific diet technician skills

Skills	Percentages
Patients	28.97%
Patient Care	10.07%
Food Service	8.94%
Allergies	5.12%
Nutrition Education	4.59%

Complete relevant diet technician training and internships

Accountants spend an average of Less than 1 month on post-employment, on-the-job training. New diet technicians learn the skills and techniques required for their job and employer during this time. The chart below shows how long it takes to gain competency as a diet technician based on U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics data and data from real diet technician resumes.

Gain additional diet technician certifications

Diet technician certifications can show employers you have a baseline of knowledge expected for the position. Certifications can also make you a more competitive candidate. Even if employers don't require a specific diet technician certification, having one may help you stand out relative to other applicants.

The most common certifications for diet technicians include Dietetic Technician, Registered (DTR) and Certified Nutrition Specialist (CNS).

More About Certifications

Research diet technician duties and responsibilities

Interview patients, determine dietary requirements and record dietary plans in medical charts using precise medical terminology.
Provide education to patients and family members of patients with medically restrict diets to promote optimal nutritional intake.
Determine WIC eligibility by identifying risk factors.
Conduct research and create PowerPoint presentations for wellness programs.

Prepare your diet technician resume

When your background is strong enough, you can start writing your diet technician resume.

You can use Zippia's AI resume builder to make the resume writing process easier while also making sure that you include key information that hiring managers expect to see on a diet technician resume. You'll find resume tips and examples of skills, responsibilities, and summaries, all provided by Zippi, your career sidekick.

Choose From 10+ Customizable Diet Technician Resume templates

Build a professional Diet Technician resume in minutes. Browse through our resume examples to identify the best way to word your resume. Then choose from 10+ resume templates to create your Diet Technician resume.

Apply for diet technician jobs

Now it's time to start searching for a diet technician job. Consider the tips below for a successful job search:

Browse job boards for relevant postings
Consult your professional network
Reach out to companies you're interested in working for directly
Watch out for job scams

How do diet technicians rate their job?

-/5

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Diet Technician reviews

A zippia user wrote a review on Feb 2020

Pros

The interaction with patients, and learning the dynamics of the hospital clinical team.

Cons

No respect- took tons of gen, orgo, bio, food, and polymer chem, all bio series, anatomy/physio, genetics, nut genomics, molecular bio, microbio, bacteriology, clinical nutrition, maternal nut, community nut, food service management and more (treated like I know nothing, and ostracized by the nurses, the charge nurse, nurse attendants, and MDs. Its like they think I learned only how to carry a meal tray and know how to temp check, the unit fridge and trays.Treated like a food service worker or a volunteer who is always asked to do errand). Low wage-$15-$22/hr( I worked all through college. Starting at a wage of $2.50/hr, all the way to $34.00/hr. After graduating with a degree in Clinical Nutrition and a minor in Genetics. For all of that practical knowledge to be paid nothing is not worth it!!! Also in the interview for getting the job-showing that you've worked for 5+ years is not a good idea... bc the hr at the hospitals I've worked at were really concerned with how much leadership experience I had and felt that I wouldn't be happy starting at $11/hr. (Getting a BS still means getting minimum wage for nutrition). I wasn't happy, but I stuck it out until I got to $19/hr. no benefits-Its very rare to get 1.0 FTE/FT at a hospital. I started PT which at a hospital is 24hrs a wk, and they would always have me work 'extra hours' which equaled full time and was more than 32hrs which was considered FT at the hospitals I worked for, but they were unwilling to give me benefits- which was very sucky though I did get time and a half, but I really wanted benefits. There is a pattern in the nutrition field, where there are a lot of pt and per diem jobs, but not so many ft jobs unless you want to work at a correction facility.(Correction pays well, but has a ton of competition. bilingual (mostly Spanish)- you see in job posters that they want you to be bilingual in Spanish- and for all the people who know Spanish on a conversational level- that's not gonna cut it. A lot of good jobs (good benefits, good pay, good work life balance) require one to be bilingual in Spanish-if its not your native tongue and you don't have the language gene, you should probably start learning it by age 2yrs. I was lucky in that I knew 2 other languages besides American English and bargained/persuaded my way into the clinical DTR jobs. But I've been to WIC where they say language is not a problem, yada yada yada and then they only take people who are native speakers. So knowing the 'corre