The Role of Dietitian and Catering Manager in Public Catering and Opportunities for Training in Hungary

Abstract Prescribed and supported by the state, public catering in Hungary fulfils a common social need; its aim is to meet the nutritional requirements of consumers in terms of both quantity and quality. Public catering is legally regulated and is also important from the perspective of health policy. As the smallest unit of common catering, family meals differ from public catering in several respects. One fundamental difference is that public catering rests on scientific foundations: it is planned, organized, and controlled by a qualified manager. This manager may be a trained dietitian or a catering manager, according to the National Qualifications Register. The training for these two roles is interlinked and goes back more than a century.