VIET x NZAPS-O Talk Show: How to design your ideal diet
Learn what constitutes a healthy diet from professionals around the world!
On 1 March 2025, a total of 200 international and local students participated in the VIET x NZAPS-O Talk show. In case you didn’t know, NZAPS-O stands for the New Zealand Association of Pharmacy Students Otago. During the talk, speakers from New Zealand and Vietnam — including physicians and teaching professors — shared the importance of maintaining a healthy diet and offered insights from various professional perspectives.
Ivan, a participant from NUS Pharmacy, shared that it was particularly interesting and enriching when Dr Trish Zingel, a general practitioner from New Zealand — shared her perspective on a healthy diet as well as how pharmacy students like us could learn more about providing dietary advice.
What intrigued Ivan was the fact that there is no one-size-fits-all advice when it comes to adopting a healthy diet. Factors that are important to consider when giving diet advice include the patient’s gender, ethnicity and lifestyle habits, et cetera. In order to provide helpful and accurate advice, we need to holistically assess our patients then tap into our knowledge. Ivan said that “It was exciting to learn how to create our very own personalised diet to stick to.”
Ivan also shared that it was very surprising to see so many participants from Vietnam attend the event. The international participants were all highly interested and inquisitive, asking many thought-provoking questions. This helped to build a safe space where everyone could freely engage in discussion, make new friends, and learn new things.
This VIET x NZAPS-O talk was truly a meaningful one, as it provided knowledge that is useful both in our personal lives and future professional careers. What’s more, it gave us the rare opportunity to interact with fellow pharmacy students from both Vietnam and New Zealand, allowing us to learn more about pharmacy internationally, and build possibly lasting connections.
Written by: Jie Yi