Abstract
It is the position of the American Dietetic Association (ADA) that food and nutrition
misinformation can have harmful effects on the health, well-being, and economic status
of consumers. Nationally credentialed dietetics professionals working in health care,
academia, public health, the media, government, and the food industry are uniquely
qualified to advocate for and promote science-based nutrition information to the public,
function as primary nutrition educators to health professionals, and actively correct
food and nutrition misinformation. Enormous scientific advances have been made in
the area of food and nutrition, leading to a fine-tuning of recommendations about
healthful eating. Consumers have become increasingly aware of the nutrition–health
link and reliant on nutrition information to base their decisions, and have assumed
partial responsibility for changing their eating behaviors. Unfortunately, these same
trends also create opportunities for food and nutrition misinformation to flourish.
News reports rarely provide enough context for consumers to interpret or apply the
advice given, and preliminary findings often attract unmerited and misleading attention.
Effective nutrition communication must be consumer-friendly and contain sufficient
context to allow consumers to consider the information and determine whether it applies
to their unique health and nutritional needs. Consistent with ADA’s organizational
vision that members “are the leading source of nutrition expertise,” ADA recognizes
its responsibility to help consumers identify food and nutrition misinformation in
the following ways: (a) ADA members should provide consumers with sound, science-based
nutrition information and help them to recognize misinformation; (b) ADA members need
to be the primary source of sound, science-based nutrition information for the media
and to inform them when misinformation is presented; and (c) ADA members should continue
to diligently work with other health care practitioners, educators, policy makers,
and food and dietary supplement industry representatives to responsibly address the
health and psychological, physiological, and economic effects of nutrition-related
misinformation.
To read this article in full you will need to make a payment
Purchase one-time access:
Academic & Personal: 24 hour online accessCorporate R&D Professionals: 24 hour online accessOne-time access price info
- For academic or personal research use, select 'Academic and Personal'
- For corporate R&D use, select 'Corporate R&D Professionals'
Subscribe:
Subscribe to Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and DieteticsAlready a print subscriber? Claim online access
Already an online subscriber? Sign in
Register: Create an account
Institutional Access: Sign in to ScienceDirect
References
- Position of the American Dietetic Association.J Am Diet Assoc. 2002; 102: 260-266
- Nutrition and You: Trends 2002: Final Report of Findings. 2002 (October . Available at: http://www.eatright.org/cps/rde/xchg/ada/hs.xsl/media_1578_ENU_HTML.htm. Accessed December 28, 2005.)
- US Surgeon General’s Report on Nutrition and Health. US Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, DC1988: 696 (PHS) Publication no. 88-50210.
- American Dietetic Association Complete Food and Nutrition Guide. 2nd ed. John Wiley, New York, NY2002
- Marketing Nutrition. University of Illinois Press, Champaign, IL2005
- Endorsement Policy Statement on Food Advertising. Federal Trade Commission, Washington, DC1994
- Are some comparative nutrition claims misleading? The role of nutrition knowledge, ad claim type and disclosure conditions.J Advertising. 2000; 29: 29-42
- Do “low-fat” nutrition labels lead to obesity?.J Marketing Res. 2006 (In press.)
- Dietary supplement use.J Nutr. 2001; 131: S1339-S1343
- Health, Information and the Use of Questionable Treatments. US Department of Health and Human Services, Washington, DC1987
- The Health Professional’s Guide to Popular Dietary Supplements. American Dietetic Association, Chicago, IL2000
- The Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act of 1994. 1994 (Pub L No. 103-417 (S 784) (codified at 42 USC §287C-11))
- De-marketing obesity.California Manage Rev. 2005; 49: 1-13
- Trends in American Eating Patterns 2002. Food Marketing Institute, Washington, DC2002
- Communicating science-based food and nutrition information.J Nutr. 2002; 132: S2481-S2482
- Mindless Eating. Bantam-Dell, New York, NY2006
- Food for Thought VI. 2005 (Available at: http://ific.nisgroup.com/research/fftres.cfm. Accessed December 21, 2005.)
- Guidelines for medical and health information sites on the Internet.JAMA. 2000; 283: 1600-1606
- Nutrition Quackery. Nutrition Dimension, Eureka, CA1998
- Nutrition communication in the 21st century.Nutrition. 2000; 16: 644-646
- Nutrition.Nutr Today. 1988; 23: 8-17
- Health quackery.J Am Diet Assoc. 1994; 94: 607-611
- Alternative medicine—or quackery?.Patient Care. 1994; 28: 80-97
- Messages for the masses.J Am Diet Assoc. 1997; 97: 733-734
- The Dietary Guideline Alliance.Reaching Consumers with Meaningful Health Messages. 1996 (Available at: http://www.fmi.org/consumer/iaay/. Accessed January 27, 2006.)
- Status report on nutrition in the news.J Am Diet Assoc. 2000; 100: 1298-1299
US Department of Health and Human Services, US Department of Agriculture. Dietary Guidelines for Americans 2005. Available at: http://www.health.gov/dietaryguidelines/dga2005/document/. Accessed December 28, 2005.
US Department of Agriculture. MyPyramid. Available at: http://www.mypyramid.gov/. Accessed January 4, 2006.
Article info
Identification
Copyright
© 2006 Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
