Food and Nutrition: The Truth Behind Food Headlines

Rebuild your trust in nutrition science and look beyond the media headlines

Please note this course runs without facilitation

Due to conflicting messages from the media, it’s becoming harder to know what to believe when it comes to following a healthy diet and lifestyle.

On this course, you’ll compare how nutrition and health topics are handled by the media and science.

You’ll be encouraged to think critically about the information behind media headlines and come to your own conclusions about what’s good for you.

You’ll explore the psychology of why we’re easily influenced by headlines and learn about different types of biases, like confirmatory and availability bias.

You’ll also learn how to find reliable information online and identify unreliable health studies.

This course is designed for anyone who is losing trust in media headlines about how what we eat affects our health and who wants to get to the truth.

If you’re looking to expand your knowledge on this topic, you might also find of interest the following EIT Food courses on food, nutrition and science communication:

• Understanding Food Labels
• Understanding Mediterranean and Okinawa Diets
• Nutrition for Health and Sustainability
• The Human Microbiome
• Food for Thought: The Relationship Between Food, Gut and Brain

This course is designed for anyone who is losing trust in media headlines about how what we eat affects our health and who wants to get to the truth.

If you’re looking to expand your knowledge on this topic, you might also find of interest the following EIT Food courses on food, nutrition and science communication:

• Understanding Food Labels
• Understanding Mediterranean and Okinawa Diets
• Nutrition for Health and Sustainability
• The Human Microbiome
• Food for Thought: The Relationship Between Food, Gut and Brain

• Interpret why the media is so interested in reporting about food & nutrition, why the 'advice' changes so rapidly and the part we play in that, as readers.
• Explore the hierarchy of scientific evidence and judge for yourself whether you believe an example headline.
• Assess the biases you bring to what you read and gain a perspective into journalists' agendas which influence how they present scientific evidence.
• Develop an action plan for precision farming.
• Interpret scientific terms and make sense of statistics related to food and nutrition
• Identify where to find reliable information about food and nutrition and use tools that help identify unreliable studies.