Health food blogger: friend or foe?

Abstract

Objectives: The Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) have recently updated nutritional guidelines for a reduced sugar intake. With the increased popularity of online health-food bloggers and 'refined-sugar free' recipes, this review looked to analyse recipes from popular online bloggers to validate the veracity of their 'sugar-free' and 'healthy' claims and assess their adherence to recently implemented nutritional guidelines. Method: Four bloggers were randomly selected from the Amazon top 10 booklist and their online blogs were consulted for a selection of recipes which were then nutritionally analysed with relation to their sugar and fat content. Results: 80% of the recipes analysed contained more fat than a Mars Ò bar and 70% contained more fat than a popular online cake recipe, whilst 25% of the recipes contained over half of the recommended daily sugar intake as advised by the SACN and the WHO. None of the bloggers analysed used evidence-based approaches for the advice on their blogs. Conclusion: Bloggers offer an invaluable platform to disseminate dietary advice to the public, however the recipes in this analysis were not healthy alternatives. The challenge is for government and health organisations to utilise this platform to promote alternative healthy eating options that align to current national and international guidance.

The Use of Fitness Influencers’ Websites by Young Adult Women: A Cross-Sectional Study

“…Rounsefell et al analyzed 26 original studies and found that social media engagement or exposure could be related to greater body dissatisfaction, dieting or restricting food, overeating, and choosing healthy foods among healthy young adults aged 18–30 [ 68 ]. Other authors pointed out that the advice given by so-called healthy food bloggers was not evidence-based and in the recipes analyzed by the authors, the fat content seemed to be increased to make up for the reduced sugar content [ 69 ]. Furthermore, some authors reported that messages posted on social media sites can promote health-damaging behavior, e.g., promoting anorexia [ 70 ].…”

Beware predatory journals

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