Nutrition Today: Nutrition/Health Communications: Teaching Sourcing, Vetting, Discerning

Abstract

Nutrition and food science and other health science communicators have faced a number of significant challenges over the past several decades, as the information landscape has evolved. The growth of Web-based science communication sources and, especially, social media’s impact on information dissemination have thoroughly transformed what was once strictly the purview of science and health journals. To meet the changing challenges, the present authors have published a series of articles presenting guidance for communicators in navigating the evolving information environment. In response to a number of questions from colleagues about how to seek and evaluate sound scientific information and to address the growing online repository of dubious food and health recommendations, the authors are addressing in the present article some modern themes. In particular, the article focuses on communicators’ evolving needs: where to go for accurate science-based information—how to guide the public to sound health and nutrition information and also how consumers might vet information sites online and how the public can be encouraged to develop new critical science-consumption skills and practical skepticism in the face of competing “information” claims.