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Content and quality of nutrition‐related information disseminated in the newspapers with the highest readership in Lima, Peru
Author(s) -
Oxenstein Jackelyn Friedman,
Campa Adriana
Publication year - 2017
Publication title -
the faseb journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.709
H-Index - 277
eISSN - 1530-6860
pISSN - 0892-6638
DOI - 10.1096/fasebj.31.1_supplement.956.15
Subject(s) - audience measurement , newspaper , checklist , quality (philosophy) , medicine , advice (programming) , content analysis , descriptive statistics , advertising , psychology , family medicine , social science , sociology , business , mathematics , philosophy , statistics , epistemology , computer science , cognitive psychology , programming language
Objective to analyze the content and quality of the nutrition‐related news disseminated in the newspapers with the highest readership (57%) in Lima, Peru. Methods A descriptive, non‐experimental study was conducted using a total number of nutrition‐related news published in 210 copies (30 each) of the seven newspapers with the highest readership (57%) in Lima‐Peru between November 2013 and October 2014. Opinion columns or interviews with nutrition professionals were excluded. To analyze the characteristics of the content, the nutrition‐related news were reviewed using a checklist that included newspaper names, publication date, title, section, topic, presence and type of sources. To analyze the quality, the checklist included: presence of recommendations, and its congruency with credible sources. The 2010 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the 2009 Peruvian Food Composition Tables, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics webpage, the World Health Organization's nutritional standards, the American Diabetes Association webpage, or current scientific articles published since 2012 were used to judge the quality of the recommendations. The congruency of the advice was classified as: pure congruent advice, pure incongruent advice, mixed advice, or no advice. News that included pure congruent advice, or no advice with no incorrect information, were classified as “high quality news.” All the others were classified as “low quality news.” The findings were modified by the effect of the size of the readership. Results Content analysis showed 61 nutrition‐related news with 59% in a “Nutrition” section, 55.7% of the news were about the benefits of consuming a specific food, 57.4% of the news did not mention a source, while only 42.6% included a source that supported the information. In the quality analysis, 47.5% of the news had pure congruent advice, 31.1% included no advice, 11.5% provided pure incongruent advice, and 9.8% had mixed advice; 72.1% of the nutrition‐related news did not include any incorrect information, 75% of the news were classified as “high quality news. However, when the percent of the high quality news was modified by the readership, only 43%, or less than half of the news, were of high quality. Conclusions Newspapers are a major source of nutrition‐related information in Lima‐Peru, where other media is not highly accessible, and where consumers make lifestyle decisions based on what is publicly disseminated. The role of the Registered Dietitians as an expert in the development of nutrition messages for the mass media in Peru needs to be established and emphasized. This study demonstrates the importance of the synergetic work between journalists and Registered Dietitians to produce quality nutrition‐related information to be disseminated in the printed media. Support or Funding Information Latin American & Caribbean Scholarship