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Master’s Degree in Nutrition and Health
Focus Area: Nutrition and Health
Base Area: Nutrition
Institution: Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais
Unit: School of Nursing
Start: Second semester, 2014
Scope:
The Master's Degree in Nutrition and Health aims to contribute to the progress in the production of scientific knowledge, within the humanistic perspective.
The faculty members, from different departments of the UFMG, have worked together to produce knowledge in high quality nutrition, especially from a translational approach. Research focuses on understanding nutritional problems and their determinants in animal models, individuals and populations, increasing the potential for nutritional interventions for health maintenance and recovery.

Goals:
a) Train skilled professors and researchers for:
- Identifying and developing technical and scientific solutions to the most relevant food and nutrition problems.
- Proposing and justifying the use of nutritional therapeutic approaches based on mechanistic knowledge associated with biochemical, immunological and physiological approach involved in homeostatic and/or pathological conditions.
b) Train dietitians and other professionals in the methodology of research and of education in the field of Nutritional Science.

Research Lines:
a) Clinical and Experimental Nutrition: It aims to investigate the relationship between nutrition and health by studying the genetic, biochemical, physiological, pathological and immunological pathways resulting from the effects of food components in animal models and clinical studies. 

b) Nutrition and Public Health: It aims to perform diagnostic investigation of the nutritional status of population groups and individuals, and understand the relationship between diet and the occurrence, prevention, and treatment of diseases through the interface between epidemiological studies and clinical research of groups and individuals.

Courses Description:
Nutrition in Public Health
Public health and demographic, epidemiological, and nutritional changes. Food and nutrition strategies and policies. Sources of food and nutritional data. Health promotion. Food and nutrition security. Major nutritional problems: noncommunicable diseases and disorders and deficiency diseases.

Metabolism of Nutrients
Physiological and biochemical processes associated with the digestion, absorption, and metabolism of nutrients. This course interconnects pathways associated with intermediary metabolism with focus on the hormonal and nutritional control in different contexts: postprandial and fasting.

Biostatistics
Descriptive statistics. Probability distributions (Binomial, Poisson and Normal). Statistical inference: sampling concepts, confidence intervals, hypothesis testing, type I and II errors. Statistical tests: Student's t-test for independent samples and equal variances; Student’s t-test for independent samples and different variances; Student’s t-test for paired samples; Mann-Whitney U test; Wilcoxon signed-ranks test; analysis of variance - ANOVA; Kruskal-Wallis test; chi-square test; McNemar’s test; Fisher's exact test.

Seminars on Nutrition Research Methods
Advances in food consumption research methods. Factors involved in food consumption and diet surveys. Adequacy of nutrient intake. Diet quality analysis. Biochemical doses in the measurement of nutritional status and the determination of nutrition and health. National Food and Nutrition Research. Advances in assessment of nutritional status. Nutritional assessment in specific conditions - childhood, adolescence, adults and the elderly, indigenous peoples, hospitalization, among others.

Nutritional interventions
Food and nutrition education and health promotion; Theories and models in the food and nutrition education; Transtheoretical model of behavior change stages; Health education and food and nutrition security; Individual nutritional interventions: the importance of counseling; collective nutritional interventions: the role of schools, environment, and Health System.

Metabolic changes of morbid obesity
Pathophysiological, molecular and cellular mechanisms of morbid obesity, including: steatosis and nonalcoholic steatohepatitis; gastroesophageal reflux; respiratory, nutritional, endocrine (glucose tolerance and insulinemia), cardiovascular, psychological and sleep apnea disorders, before, during and after surgical treatment of morbid obesity.

Nutrigenomics - Molecular Basis of nutritional therapy
Interaction between nutrients and genes, as well as the influence of the genetic characteristics of the individual on their nutritional needs. Genetic bases of the emergence and transmission of different features and major human diseases, emphasizing those related to food and nutrition. Basic concepts of population genetics and evolution and its relationship to food. This course interconnects nutrigenomics with the pathogenesis of chronic diseases and individual responses to dietary treatment and changes in lifestyle.

Nutrients in inflammatory modulation
Regulation of the immune response induced by nutrients. Influence of lipids, carbohydrates and bioactive compounds present in foods on the systemic and local (liver, fat, muscle, gut and spleen) inflammatory response.

Experimental models of chronic and infectious diseases
Proper handling of laboratory animals in vivarium, nutrient requirements and basic conditions for the preparation of diets and development of experimental models. Experimental models of food allergy, dyslipidemia and atherosclerosis; obesity; diabetes; sepsis; and intestinal infectious diseases.