Ep 117 - AI is coming for your clients. Here's how to make sure they choose you instead

Ep 117 - AI is coming for your clients. Here's how to make sure they choose you instead

AI is changing how people search for nutrition advice. More people are turning to tools like ChatGPT before they ever consider booking an appointment with a dietitian.

While AI can generate meal plans and answer nutrition questions in seconds, it cannot replace clinical judgement, human empathy or the trust that comes from working with a registered health professional.

This episode explores where AI falls short, why those limitations create an opportunity for dietitians, and how content marketing can position health professionals as the obvious choice in an AI-driven world.

In this episode:

• Why more people are using AI for nutrition advice before seeking professional support.
• Where ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini perform well and where they fall short.
• The clinical reasoning AI cannot replicate.
• Why AI-generated meal plans can miss important nutritional and safety considerations.
• How to use educational content to build trust and authority.
• The role of storytelling in differentiating from AI.
• Practical ways to position dietetic expertise as more valuable than generic AI advice.
• Why visibility and consistent content marketing matter more than ever.
• How trust influences buying decisions in an AI-driven world.

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Transcript

Sarah (00:45)
This might be a bit of a hard pill to swallow, but the reality is your dream clients are out there right now getting nutrition advice from an AI chatbot. They are asking AI what to eat, how to manage their symptoms, and what they should do next. They're typing things into ChatGPT like 'what food should I eat?' and 'what food should I avoid with PCOS?', 'Can you create me a meal plan for my IBS?'

'My child is a picky eater and will only eat plain pasta and toast, what shall I do?'

Or 'I've been diagnosed with coeliac disease and gone fully gluten-free, why am I still having symptoms?' And within seconds, they're getting answers: meal plans, advice on their symptoms and advice on what foods to eat and what foods to avoid. And I know what you're thinking, 'Well, the responses will be absolute rubbish because AI isn't qualified to give proper nutrition advice.'

And yes, you're absolutely right, but the reality is, unfortunately, people don't always make decisions based on what's best for them. They make decisions based on what's easiest, fastest and most accessible for them in that moment. And when someone is frustrated with their symptoms, overwhelmed by all the different advice on Google or just desperate for an answer, getting a response from a Chatbot in 30 seconds can feel incredibly appealing,

even if that advice isn't accurate or isn't right for them because it feels helpful in the moment.

Now, I'm not telling you this to scare you and I'm definitely not telling you this to say AI is replacing dietitians. It is not. This is not an episode about why we are all doomed and why AI is taking over the world. But there is definitely one thing you need to be doing if you want people to work with you instead of choosing AI and deciding that that is good enough. You need to be positioning yourself as the obvious choice over and above AI.

And one of the best ways you can do this is through your content marketing. And so, today I'm going to share with you some super practical ways to do exactly that. Because the dietitians who understand how to market themselves in an AI world are going to be having a massive advantage over the ones who don't. In this episode, firstly, I'm going to break down what AI can't do.

based on real tests that I've run asking ChatGPT and Claude and Gemini for nutrition advice. So you can see exactly where AI falls short and use that to your advantage. And then secondly, I'm giving you some real, practical things that you can start doing in your content to position yourself and your expertise as the obvious choice and a much better choice over free AI advice.

First, let's look at what AI really doesn't do well when it comes to nutritional advice. And I've actually done quite a bit of testing and tweaking on this by asking ChatGPT and Claude and Gemini for different specific types of nutrition advice, just to see what kind of responses it gives. First of all, I asked the AI chatbots to give me a few different meal plans.

For example, one for a healthy three-year-old who was a picky eater. Now it's fair to say that the AI tools are pretty good at this. It looked like a meal plan with breakfast, lunch, dinner and snacks. It even gave me suggested timings based on a three-year-old's nap times and waking hours. I could refine it based on the dietary preferences I decided to give it. And I even asked it to update the plan

based on a picture of my fridge contents. But there were a few really important things missing. One big one being: clinical reasoning. I'm a paediatric dietitian and I know that a three-year-old needs to have three portions of dairy foods across a day. They also need two sources of iron-rich foods across a day.

and they need oily fish once or twice a week. Yada yada, you catch my drift. There's a set of nutritional criteria that children need. But ChatGPT didn't know that. So, the three-year-old's meal plan wasn't what I would define as 'nutritionally balanced'. Yes, AI does pull information from good-quality research data like meta analysis and peer review journals.

but it also dips into random blog posts and what that IG influencer decided to feed her kids last Saturday.

When you create a meal plan as a registered dietitian, you're not just giving a list of foods that fit a label like low-FODMAP or gluten-free. It's not just what goes into the plan, but why these foods fit this clinical condition: the texture, the portion sizes, the timings, the recipe adaptations. There's a layer of clinical decision-making behind every single choice that you make. And of course the AI doesn't operate at that level.

It does not consider all the contributing factors such as: someone's medical history, their medications, the severity of symptoms or what has or hasn't worked for someone in the past, lifestyle factors and their own unique circumstances. It just can't apply clinical judgement. And that's why, of course, meal plans created by dietitians, even when they're designed to be used across

different people in different circumstances or disease severity levels are so much safer, more realistic and a hundred percent more effective than anything created by AI. And that's exactly what your clients are paying for. Not just a knowledge of what to eat, but the level of expertise that went into creating it and the confidence and peace of mind that has been produced by someone applying real clinical judgement.

If you've got a low-cost meal plan in your business already, and it's not selling the way you hoped it would, it's very possible that it's because people just assume that they can get the same value by just asking ChatGPT or Claude for a meal plan and get it for free. And that's exactly why you need to reframe what they're actually paying for when you talk about your meal plan. Make the differences between your meal plan and a meal plan created by AI very, very clear.

Because if it's been written by a registered dietitian, they're not just paying for a bog-standard list of meals that they can eat, pulled together from a prompt. They're paying for a plan with clinical thinking that makes it safe, realistic for them to apply in their real life and actually proven to work and get them results. Those are the things that you need to be communicating much more clearly

in how you position and sell not just your meal plans, actually, but everything you offer in your business, too.

The second thing my testing showed was just how often these AI chatbots give us misleading, clinically-wrong or dangerously-oversimplified nutrition information. And what makes it more concerning is how confident it sounds when it's doing it. There was actually a study published in the BMJ that looked at five of the biggest AI chatbots and tested them across 250 health-related questions, including nutrition advice.

And almost 50% of the answers were flagged as problematic in some way by the researchers. And this is exactly the kind of thing that you want to be educating people on, in your content, because it's a great way to position yourself as an authority figure. In your content, start sharing specific examples of where AI has got it wrong, or examples of where it oversimplifies things based on real examples in your niche.

The third thing that really stood out to me in my testing was that there's basically no clinical safety checks built into these systems when it comes to nutrition advice. I ran a few hypothetical scenarios where I described situations that in a clinical setting would immediately raise a red flag. The thing that stood out most to me was describing a disordered eating pattern.

Despite that context, it would still happily give out very restrictive dietary advice. That is a real concern. As dietitians, we are constantly assessing risk. So, if someone has clear signs of disordered eating, the priority is no longer just dietary advice to match their specific goal. It becomes about safety and ensuring we're not

unintentionally reinforcing harm. Again, this is the sort of thing that

helps people understand the value of working with a real clinician instead of relying on an AI chatbot. And this is something you could also be educating your audience on, in your content as well.

I think the most important word in this entire conversation is trust. Because when you really strip it back, trust is actually the reason people will ultimately choose to pay anyone for anything. And this is especially important right now because people are taking longer to buy than they used to, not because they don't need the help, but because they need to trust the person helping them. Something AI can't do very well is build trust. And this is actually where your biggest advantage lies.

In your content, it is so important to think about the people you're helping and really showing that you understand not just what they're struggling with, but what's keeping them up at night and what they're worrying about at 2.38 a.m. Like the parent of a fussy eater, lying in bed awake worrying, 'How is my child actually gonna manage for three days away on their school trip?' Or 'Is it actually me who's making things worse?'

Or someone newly diagnosed with coeliac disease mentally replaying everything they ate that day, worrying they've accidentally 'glutened' themselves without realising it. Or the person who's been told, 'Good news, everything looks normal, it's just IBS' by the NHS, but still feels exhausted, bloated, in pain and completely dismissed. When you can speak to that level, not just the surface symptoms, but the emotional weight behind it, that's what builds trust.

Because when they've been bouncing between Google, social media and AI tools for answers, what cuts through isn't more information. It's a sense that a real expert actually understands them. It's not just about showing that you know nutrition. It's about showing that you understand them as a human being and their thoughts and their feelings.

Another really great way to build trust and put yourself in a completely different league to all that free generic ChatGPT advice is to tell stories. Tell stories that AI can't tell. For instance, share real moments from your work, share the journey of that client who came to you after six years of struggling with their IBS, constant bloating and constant flare ups. And within just six weeks have significantly reduced bloating

and felt confident eating a much wider range of foods again. Share that point A to point B journey of how they got there. I promise you're not giving away your trade secrets and proprietary information. You're hinting at what they can experience on the inside.

And it doesn't always have to be just client stories either. You can talk about your lived experience too, if it's relevant. If you've walked in your ideal client's shoes, especially when it directly connects to the people that you're helping.

For example, in my children's nutrition work, in my content, I would often talk about my own experiences with my autistic daughter, Maisie, being a really fussy eater. I could truly understand how the parents I was helping felt, because I'd been there myself. I wasn't just speaking from a professional perspective. I genuinely understood it on a personal level too. And that was a massive content advantage.

AI chatbots can only give information, tips and advice. They can't build the kind of trust that comes from sharing real client outcomes or personal lived experiences. So, this is something you absolutely need to be doing in your content. Now, as much as it's important to be doing all of this to make sure you're positioning yourself as the obvious choice over AI,

The big thing it all comes down to is visibility and making sure you're actually showing up enough for people to see you in the first place. Because in all honesty, the dietitians who are not getting clients are the ones who simply aren't being seen. Visibility is just a numbers game. What this really comes down to is showing up consistently and intentionally in the places that your dream clients are already spending their time.

Not just posting occasionally when you've got something to say, but being present enough that when your people do reach a point of needing help, you're already familiar to them, a household name, the obvious choice. Because people rarely go from, 'I have a problem', to 'I'm ready to invest' in one step. They'll probably ask AI, ha ha, and then they'll read a few blog posts and then try a different AI, maybe Gemini this time, and then they sit in their frustration.

and they'll come back to it again, later. What you need to be doing is being consistently there at each stage and repeatedly showing up, speaking directly to what they're dealing with.

And that's what builds familiarity, and familiarity is what turns into trust. And trust is what makes you the obvious choice when they finally decide that AI isn't enough. Here's what I want you to take away from today's episode. The dietitians who understand how to position themselves in an AI world will absolutely outperform the ones who don't. And the dietitians with consistent inquiries and fully booked practices

are the ones who are building trust in ways that AI simply can't, like by sharing real, specific client journeys and wins, and by showing that they deeply understand their people, not just nutrition.

But these successful dietitians are also not just relying on people stumbling across them. They're showing up consistently in the places that their dream clients are already looking for answers. So, really the question isn't whether AI is coming for your dream clients. The real question is when those dream clients start using AI for nutritional advice and then eventually come to realise it's not enough, will they find and choose you?

I hope so. Bye for now.