A therapeutic nutrition program is designed to teach students how to use nutrition to treat disease. Between lectures and research, students may learn about biomedicine, naturopathic principles, food as medicine and disease management.

The PhD is a doctoral degree, specifically called a "doctor of philosophy" degree. This is misleading because PhD holders are not necessarily philosophers (unless they earned their degree in philosophy!). That said, PhD recipients are able to engage in thought experiments, reason about problems, and solve problems in sophisticated ways.