LSU offers 2 Nutrition and Food Sciences credentials profiled here:
- B.S., Nutrition and Food Sciences — Dietetics Concentration (accredited DPD)
- M.S., Nutrition and Food Sciences (thesis, research)
The B.S. in Nutrition and Food Sciences also runs three other concentrations under the same degree title: Nutritional Sciences/Pre-Medical, Nutrition, Health and Society, and Food Science and Technology (with a pre-medical option). None of the three carries ACEND accreditation or leads to RD eligibility; they are described briefly under the B.S. section below rather than profiled individually.
Program Tracks Overview
| Program | Est. Tuition | Est. Duration | Credit Hours |
|---|---|---|---|
| B.S., Nutrition and Food Sciences (Dietetics Concentration) | ~$49,500 total (derived) | 4 years (8 semesters) | 120 |
| M.S., Nutrition and Food Sciences | ~$21,600 total (derived) | Not clearly stated as a fixed duration; derived at roughly 3–4 years part-research pace | 30 minimum |
LSU’s defining fact is stated plainly on its own site: LSU does not currently offer a supervised practice program. A Dietetics-concentration graduate earns an ACEND verification statement and then must apply to an accredited internship elsewhere, including but not limited to Louisiana Tech’s, Nicholls State’s, or Southern University’s. LSU’s own program goals report that only about half of its graduates are admitted to a supervised-practice program within 12 months of graduation, which is a target the program has set for itself, not a guaranteed outcome.
Quick Facts
| Feature | Details |
|---|---|
| Program Types | B.S. (4 concentrations: Dietetics, Nutritional Sciences/Pre-Medical, Nutrition Health and Society, Food Science and Technology); M.S. (thesis, research) |
| Format | Campus (all programs; no online or distance option documented) |
| Credit Hours | 120 (B.S., all concentrations); 30 minimum (M.S.) |
| ACEND Accreditation | Yes, but only the Dietetics concentration. The other three B.S. concentrations and the M.S. carry no ACEND accreditation. |
| RD/RDN Eligibility | Yes for the Dietetics concentration, but only after completing supervised practice elsewhere: LSU runs no internship of its own. No for the other three concentrations. |
| Supervised Practice | None offered by LSU. Dietetics-concentration graduates who complete the knowledge requirements but not an internship may sit for the Dietetic Technician, Registered (DTR) exam instead. |
| Specializations | M.S. concentrations: Human Nutrition, Molecular Nutrition, Food Science and Technology, Food and Bioprocessing |
| Distinctive Coursework | Dietetics: Nutrition and Disease I & II, Management in Dietetics, Capstone in Nutritional Sciences |
| Research Requirement | M.S. requires a thesis (NFS 8000, minimum 6 hours), an oral research proposal, a submitted journal manuscript, a national conference presentation, and a comprehensive final oral exam |
| Entrance Exams | M.S.: GRE required, minimum 150 Verbal and 150 Quantitative. Not stated for the B.S. |
| Intake | M.S.: rolling by semester (fall, spring, summer), contingent on faculty advisor space |
| GPA Floor | M.S.: 3.0 preferred; provisional admission possible below that with GRE compensation |
| Tuition | $516/credit (derived, in-state undergraduate, Tier 2 differential rate); see Tuition section |
| Institutional Accreditation | SACSCOC |
B.S., Nutrition and Food Sciences (Dietetics Concentration)
The estimated tuition for the B.S. in Nutrition and Food Sciences, Dietetics Concentration, at LSU is approximately $49,500 in-state and $116,200 non-resident (120 credits across 8 semesters at LSU’s published Tier 2 differential rate; derived, see Tuition). The program requires 120 credit hours and is a conventional four-year, eight-semester sequence.
LSU houses nutrition inside the School of Nutrition and Food Sciences within the College of Agriculture, and runs four concentrations under one Nutrition & Food Sciences, B.S. degree title. Only Dietetics is accredited; the degree title alone does not tell you which concentration a given student is in.
Dietetics Concentration Curriculum
The sequence is tightly term-locked. LSU’s own catalog marks specific prerequisite chains as “CRITICAL” at five separate points across the degree: ENGL 1001 (semester 1) must precede CHEM 1201 (semester 2), which must precede NFS 1110 and NFS 1014 (semester 3), which must precede CHEM 2060 (semester 4), which must precede BIOL 2083 (semester 5). Missing any one of these in its assigned semester pushes the entire remaining sequence back, since later dietetics-specific courses assume the earlier ones are complete.
The dietetics-specific core builds steadily rather than front-loading or back-loading. After general chemistry, biology, and an introductory nutrition course in the first two semesters, the major-specific sequence runs Human Lifecycle Nutrition and Methods of Nutritional Assessment (semesters 3–4), then Nutrition Counseling and Education, Quantity Food Production, Food and Culture, Human Nutrition and Metabolism, Community Nutrition, and Professionalism in Dietetics (semesters 5–6), ending with Nutrition and Disease I and II, Management in Dietetics, and a Capstone in Nutritional Sciences (semesters 7–8).
- NFS 1110: Introduction to Nutritional Sciences
- NFS 2112: Human Lifecycle Nutrition
- NFS 2110: Methods of Nutritional Assessment
- NFS 3110: Nutrition Counseling and Education
- NFS 3116: Community Nutrition
- NFS 3025: Professionalism in Dietetics
- NFS 4111 / NFS 4114: Nutrition and Disease I & II
- NFS 4023: Management in Dietetics
- NFS 4110: Capstone in Nutritional Sciences
More curriculum details are available here.
The Other Three Concentrations
Nutritional Sciences/Pre-Medical, Nutrition, Health and Society, and Food Science and Technology (with a pre-medical option) share the same 120-credit B.S. degree title and School but do not prepare students for a dietetics credential; LSU’s own program page states this explicitly. Food Science and Technology follows a heavier chemistry and calculus track from semester 1 (MATH 1550 Differential and Integral Calculus in place of the Dietetics track’s MATH 1023), signaling a food-industry and lab-science orientation rather than a clinical one. Choose one of these three only if the RD credential is not the goal; otherwise the Dietetics concentration is the only route that keeps that door open.
You Should Know
Completing the Dietetics concentration’s knowledge requirements without entering and completing a dietetic internship does not leave a graduate with nothing: LSU explicitly notes that such graduates are qualified to sit the Dietetic Technician, Registered (DTR) exam instead. In a state with three in-state internships and no guarantee of admission to any of them, the DTR pathway is a real fallback worth planning around rather than a consolation prize.
B.S. Admissions
Admission-specific requirements for entering the Dietetics concentration beyond standard LSU undergraduate admission were not published on the pages reviewed; confirm current declared-major and progression requirements directly with the School of Nutrition and Food Sciences.
M.S., Nutrition and Food Sciences
The estimated tuition for the M.S. in Nutrition and Food Sciences at LSU is approximately $21,600 in-state and $49,800 non-resident (30 credits at LSU’s published Tier 2 graduate differential rate; derived, see Tuition). The program requires a minimum of 30 graduate credit hours, including at least 6 hours of thesis research (NFS 8000); LSU does not publish a typical completion time in years.
The M.S. is a research degree, not a clinical or dietetics-credentialing one. It carries no ACEND accreditation and does not lead to RD eligibility on its own; it serves students headed toward food science, food industry, or nutrition research rather than clinical practice.
M.S. Research Requirements
The named core leaves comparatively little room for elective specialization against the 30-credit floor. Every M.S. student takes NFS 7022 (Current Controversies in Food and Nutrition, 3 hours), NFS 7071 (Seminar, 1 hour taken twice), a statistics course from EXST 7003/7004/7005 (4 hours), and NFS 8000 (thesis research, 6 hours minimum) for 14 hours of fixed core, leaving 15 hours or fewer for concentration coursework or electives depending on advisor requirements.
- Choose a concentration: Human Nutrition, Molecular Nutrition, Food Science and Technology, or Food and Bioprocessing
- Submit an oral and written research proposal to the advisory committee within one year of enrollment
- Submit one manuscript to a scientific journal and present research at one national meeting before graduation
- Present a public oral seminar on the thesis research, then pass a comprehensive final oral exam
More program details are available here.
You Should Know
LSU does not publish a typical time-to-degree for the M.S. The journal-submission and national-conference requirements are genuine milestones, not formalities, and both typically extend a thesis timeline beyond what the 30-credit minimum alone would suggest. Ask current students or the advisor directly what a realistic completion timeline looks like before assuming the minimum credit count maps to a fixed number of semesters.
M.S. Admissions
Admission depends on space in an individual faculty advisor’s program, not solely on meeting the published minimums.
- Minimum GRE: 150 Verbal, 150 Quantitative
- Three letters of recommendation addressing ability to pursue graduate study in food or nutrition science
- Statement of purpose (also satisfies the writing-sample requirement)
- Provisional admission possible with a GPA below 3.0 or a GRE below 1000 combined, at the school’s discretion
- Rolling review by semester (fall, spring, summer), contingent on advisor space
Tuition
LSU states plainly that, apart from fully online programs, it does not use a true per-credit-hour tuition calculation; it bills flat semester rates by credit-hour tier instead. Dividing the 12-credit full-time undergraduate total by 12 derives an effective rate of about $516 per credit in-state and about $1,211 per credit non-resident. Nutrition and Food Sciences is billed as a Tier 2 Cost Program, LSU’s differential-tuition category for higher-cost majors, not the lower standard undergraduate rate that applies to majors outside the tiered list.
Published full-time semester totals (tuition plus mandatory fees), Tier 2, Fall 2025/Spring 2026:
- Undergraduate, 12+ credits/semester, resident: $6,187.80
- Undergraduate, 12+ credits/semester, non-resident: $14,529.80
- Graduate, 9+ credits/semester, resident: $6,472.15
- Graduate, 9+ credits/semester, non-resident: $14,933.15
Estimated Totals by Credential (derived)
- B.S., Dietetics Concentration (120 credits / 8 semesters): approximately $49,502 resident, $116,238 non-resident, using the published full-time semester total × 8
- M.S., Nutrition and Food Sciences (30 credits, billed at the full-time graduate rate throughout): approximately $21,574 resident, $49,777 non-resident, using the derived per-credit rate × 30. A student who is part-time in some semesters, or funded by an assistantship, would pay materially less.
Be aware that:
- The state hub’s cited figures of $12,472 resident and $29,148 non-resident for LSU are annual (two-semester) totals; they match this profile’s Tier 2 semester figures doubled ($12,375.60 resident, $29,059.60 non-resident) closely enough to confirm the same rate class, with small variance likely from a different catalog year.
- LSU’s own tuition schedule explicitly states it does not calculate a true cost-per-credit-hour rate except for military Tuition Assistance purposes, where it posts a flat $250/hour figure. That $250 figure is a Department of Defense compliance number, not the actual assessed rate for a typical student, and should not be used to estimate cost.
- The M.S. total above assumes full-time billing throughout, which overstates cost for any semester a student is enrolled part-time or holds a graduate assistantship (which commonly reduces or waives tuition in exchange for teaching or research duties). Ask about assistantship availability before treating the sticker total as the real cost.
- Rates cited here come from LSU’s own 2025–26 undergraduate and graduate tuition and fee schedules. Verify current rates before enrolling, since LSU’s Board of Supervisors can modify tuition or fees without advance notice.
LSU is the most expensive of the two four-year accredited routes documented in Louisiana so far, running well above both Louisiana Tech’s and Nicholls State’s equivalent bachelor’s totals, largely because Nutrition and Food Sciences sits on LSU’s differential Tier 2 rate rather than the standard undergraduate rate. That premium buys breadth (four concentrations) and a research-oriented graduate program, not a shorter or cheaper path to the RD credential.
Why Choose This Nutrition Program?
Best suited for students who want either the broadest concentration menu among Louisiana’s nutrition programs or a genuine research master’s, and who are prepared to leave the state (or apply to Louisiana Tech or Nicholls) for supervised practice.
Choose LSU’s Dietetics concentration if you want the DPD at a flagship research university. The accreditation, the coursework, and the eventual eligibility pathway are all real, but the internship is not: LSU states outright that it runs no supervised-practice program, and its own goal is that only about half of graduates land one within 12 months. Plan on a national internship search from day one, not as a fallback.
Choose one of the other three concentrations if the RD credential is not your goal. Nutritional Sciences/Pre-Medical, Nutrition Health and Society, and Food Science and Technology share faculty, facilities, and a degree title with Dietetics but serve pre-health, research, and food-industry audiences instead. Food Science and Technology’s calculus-first sequence signals a genuinely different academic track from semester one.
Choose the M.S. if you want funded, faculty-directed research. Four concentrations spanning human, molecular, and food science, a real thesis with a journal-submission and conference-presentation requirement, and rolling three-semester admission make this a research degree in substance, not just in name. It is not a clinical or dietetics-leadership degree.
The honest drawback: LSU is the priciest of the three Louisiana schools built so far, charges differential Tier 2 tuition specifically because Nutrition and Food Sciences is on that list, and offers no in-state internship guarantee to offset the cost. A Dietetics-concentration graduate who does not secure a supervised-practice placement still has a real fallback in the DTR exam, but that is a different, lower credential than the RD.
Accreditation
Louisiana State University is institutionally accredited by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges (SACSCOC), which governs the university’s authority to award degrees, the transferability of its credits, admission to its graduate programs, and eligibility for federal financial aid. This institutional accreditation covers every program described here, across all four B.S. concentrations and the M.S.
Programmatic accreditation is narrower and comes from the Accreditation Council for Education in Nutrition and Dietetics (ACEND), the only accreditor relevant to RD eligibility. ACEND accredits exactly one program at LSU: the Didactic Program in Dietetics, delivered through the Dietetics concentration of the B.S. in Nutrition and Food Sciences. LSU runs no ACEND-accredited supervised-practice program of its own.
Three credentials profiled or named here fall outside that ACEND scope: the Nutritional Sciences/Pre-Medical, Nutrition Health and Society, and Food Science and Technology concentrations, and the M.S. in Nutrition and Food Sciences. This is standard for pre-professional, food-science, and research-track programs and is not a deficiency; ACEND accredits didactic and supervised-practice dietetics programs specifically, not every nutrition-adjacent credential a school of nutrition and food sciences offers.
Graduates of the Dietetics concentration DPD may apply to ACEND-accredited supervised-practice programs at other institutions, since LSU offers none itself. On completing supervised practice together with a graduate degree, meeting current Commission on Dietetic Registration requirements, graduates become eligible to sit for the CDR’s national RDN examination. Graduates who complete the DPD’s knowledge requirements without entering an internship may instead sit for the Dietetic Technician, Registered (DTR) exam. Graduates of the other three concentrations or the M.S. alone are not RD-eligible on those credentials.
Compare More Nutrition Programs in Louisiana
- Louisiana Nutrition Programs & Online Degrees
- Louisiana Tech University - Ruston
- Nicholls State University - Thibodaux
- Southern University and A&M College - Baton Rouge