TikTok Science

Phil: Talking about, you know, new young people TikTok is coming under fire from a new study. Tell us about that. 

Sally: Well, the study that we're looking at here is, it's findings from Nutrition 2022 Live Online, which I think they're going to be presenting starting tomorrow at American society Nutrition. This study is showing us that after looking at TikTok videos that talk about the Mediterranean diet, specifically, that there's misinformation coming out from these that they're not necessarily giving the correct information about this important, healthy diet.

Phil: And also what they discovered. And this just reinforces everything that we try to do with retail dieticians throughout supermarkets is just over half 50, 3% of people who posted health information about the Mediterranean diet talked about their credentials in health, like they're an RD or something like that. And even of that 53%,actually less than half of the posts, continued, to list those health credentials, which really makes it hard for people to understand what's correct. And what's not correct. 

Sally: Right. And you know, this was in, in this particular study, they were looking at videos that specifically hashtag Mediterranean diet and, you know, although they found that 78% of these posts were related to health in some way, only 9% of them actually offered a definition of what the diet is. So, you know, to those RD's out there and those brands out there and people in the nutrition world, you know, there is an opportunity to really promote great information and educate people through social media. I just don't think that we've really figured that out yet. 

Phil: No, we haven't. It's more about how many views can I get versus the accuracy of information.