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IMPORTANCEMany countries now restrict advertisements for unhealthy foods. However, movies depict foods and beverages with nutritional quality that is unknown, unregulated, and underappreciated as a source of dietary influence.OBJECTIVE To compare nutritional content depicted in top-grossing US movies with established nutrition rating systems, dietary recommendations, and US individuals' actual consumption. DESIGN AND SETTINGIn this qualitative study, a content analysis was performed from April 2019 to May 2020 of the 250 top-grossing US movies released from 1994 to 2018.MAIN OUTCOMES AND MEASURES The proportion of movies with less healthy nutrition ratings using the Nutrient Profile Index, the proportion of movies with medium or high food nutrition ratings according to the United Kingdom's "traffic light" guidelines (in which green is low and indicates the healthiest foods; amber, medium; and red is high and indicates the least healthy foods), and how the movie-depicted nutritional content compared with US Food and Drug Administration-recommended daily levels and US individuals' actual consumption according to National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey 2015-2016 data. Secondary outcomes compared branded and nonbranded items and tested whether outcomes changed over time or for movies targeting youths.RESULTS Across 9198 foods and 5748 beverages, snacks and sweets (2173 [23.6%]) and alcoholic beverages (2303 [40.1%]) were most commonly depicted. Alcohol comprised 23 of 127 beverages (18.1%) in G-rated movies, 268 of 992 beverages (27.0%) in PG-rated movies, 1503 of 3592 beverages (41.8%) in PG-13-rated movies, and 509 of 1037 beverages (49.1%) in R-rated movies. Overall, 178 of 245 movies (72.7%) earned less healthy Nutrient Profile Index food ratings and 222 of 246 movies (90.2%) earned less healthy beverage ratings, which would be unhealthy enough to fail legal limits for advertising to youths in the United Kingdom. Among foods, most movies depicted medium or high (amber or red traffic light) levels of sugar (229 of 245 [93.5%]), saturated fat (208 of 245 [84.9%]), total fat (228 of 245 [93.1%]), and, to a lesser extent, sodium (123 of 245 [50.2%]). Only 1721 foods and beverages (11.5%) were visibly branded, but branded items received less healthy nutrition ratings than nonbranded items. Overall, movies failed recommended levels of saturated fat per 2000 kcal by 25.0% (95% CI, 20.6%-29.9%), sodium per 2000 kcal by 3.9% (95% CI, 0.2%-7.9%), and fiber per 2000 kcal by 45.1% (95% CI, 42.9%-47.0%). Movies also depicted 16.5% (95% CI, 12.3%-21.0%) higher total sugar content per 2000 kcal and 313% (95% CI, 298%-329%) higher alcohol content per 2000 kcal than US individuals consume. Neither food nor beverage nutrition scores improved over time or among movies targeting youths.CONCLUSIONS AND RELEVANCE This study suggests that popular US movies depict an unhealthy diet that fails national dietary recommendations, akin to US individuals' actual diets. Depicting unhealthy consumption in media is a sociocultural probl...

The concept of truth is at the core of science, journalism, law, and many other pillars of modern society. Yet, given the imprecision of natural language, deciding what information should count as true is no easy task, even with access to the ground truth. How do people decide whether a given claim of fact qualifies as true or false? Across two studies (N = 1181; 16,248 observations), participants saw claims of fact alongside the ground truth about those claims. Participants classified each claim as true or false. Although participants knew precisely how accurate the claims were, participants classified claims as false more often when they judged the information source to be intending to deceive (versus inform) their audience, and classified claims as true more often when they judged the information source to be intending to provide an approximate (versus precise) account. These results suggest that, even if people have access to the same set of facts, they might disagree about the truth of claims if they attribute discrepant intentions to information sources. Such findings may shed light on the robust and persistent disagreements over claims of fact that have arisen in the “post-truth era”.

Recent public discourse in the U.S. has seen vigorous debate over the truth of claims of fact on important topics including climate change and vaccine safety. Would these and other disagreements about the truth evaporate if people believed the same set of facts? Across three studies (N = 2,061; 18,008 observations), participants were shown both true (Study 1) and false (Study 2, 3) claims of fact alongside the ground truth about those claims. We varied the intent of the information source across claims, either implicitly (Study 1) or explicitly (Study 2, 3), and participants were tasked with classifying whether they would consider each claim to be true or false in light of the ground truth. Although the claims themselves did not change and participants knew precisely how the claims differed from the ground truth, participants classified the claims as false more often when they deemed the information sources to have intentions to deceive their audience. Additionally, participants were more likely to classify a claim as true when they judged the information source to be trying to provide an approximate account, rather than a precise account. In sum, our findings suggest that people are sensitive to the intentions of information sources when classifying claims as true or false. Additionally, we argue that, in light of the Post-Truth Era’s eponymous disagreements over truth, our findings reveal an avenue through which such disagreements could arise, even when people believe the same set of facts.

Phillips and colleagues argue that knowledge representations are more fundamental than belief representations because they better facilitate social learning. We suggest that existing theory of mind paradigms may be ill-equipped to adequately evaluate this claim. Future study should explore learning in situations where there is uncertainty about one's own and others’ knowledge, which better mirror real-world social learning contexts.