Lack of Pacific students enrolling in the University of Otago's dietetic programme was "very worrying" as Pacific communities had rising levels of diabetes and obesity, director of dietetics at Otago University Penny Field said.
There were only 11 Pacific students majoring in human nutrition at Otago, up from seven last year.
Ms Field said her postgraduate programme "treasures" their Pacific students and the university was actively trying to recruit more of them.
While anyone can complete a three-month course and call themselves a nutritionist, to qualify as a dietitian you must first complete undergraduate studies in nutrition and then do a masters of dietetics.
Otago is the only university offering undergraduate nutrition studies.
Once this has been completed, the postgraduate work can be undertaken at any of six learning centres in New Zealand.
"Human nutrition is a highly specialised undergraduate degree which has developed over time and Otago is the oldest and largest school of human nutrition in Australasia. It would be difficult to teach laboratory-based classes in other centres," Ms Field said.
Ms Field is aware of the urgent need for Pacific dietitians and nutritionists working in their own communities.
However, it was difficult to attract Pacific students because many were either unwilling or unable to travel so far from their families to study.
Only 6% of New Zealand's Pacific population live in the South Island.
Despite this, Ms Field believes "the pathways are getting easier to walk."
When it came to battling diet-related diseases such as diabetes, the ethnicity of a practitioner did not seem to matter, but food was a highly personal link to cultural identity and nutritionists had far more impact on eating habits if they were from the same culture as their clients, said nutritionist Paula Matawalu, who came from Auckland to do her degree at Otago.
"We like to see our own faces. It's the delivery - a Pacific way of speaking which our people respond better to."
Dietitian Mafi Funaki-Tahifote, one of only five Pacific island dietitians in the country, began her degree at Otago.
In her work for the Pacific Heart Beat Foundation in Auckland, she said people were dismayed when they found out Otago was the only university offering undergraduate human nutrition.
There was also a lack of awareness of nutrition as a career path.
To counter this, Ms Funaki-Tahifote gives talks at Auckland high schools on studying nutrition at Otago in the hope of "capturing the imaginations" of some of the pupils.
She also encourages adults attending her nutrition courses to send their children to study nutrition at Otago, having first convinced them student life is not just drunken parties and Undie 500s.
Being far away from family could be a disincentive for Pacific students, but Ms Funaki-Tahifote knew many who enjoyed Dunedin once they arrived and said Otago's Pacific Island Centre provided a lot of support. - Keira Stephenson