We are now being bombarded with nutrition information – what we should be eating, what we should be avoiding, what diets are best. These messages are often being sent out by people with no expertise at all! So it’s no wonder people are getting confused over what to do to maintain their health.
‘About a third of people are confused about what makes a healthy diet and are unsure of how to improve their eating habits, a new study has found[1].’
Of those surveyed, 19% said they would actually like to change their diets for the better but they were confused about how to do so. This was due to the mounds of conflicting information available.
‘And while 41 per cent agreed they should change their diet and knew what they needed to fix, 19 per cent said they wanted to change their diet but were unsure what to do.’
‘Associate Professor in Nutrition at Deakin University Tim Crowe said the wide variety of conflicting nutritional information available to people was the cause of the confusion [1].’
Unfortunately nutrition is an area that almost everyone feels they have some knowledge or opinion on. This is because it impacts everyone’s day to day life.
“Nutrition is one of the few fields you can be considered an expert just by talking about it,” he said. “In nutrition you can be an expert just because you have lost weight and you have had an approach that works for you. That resonates with some people. But the information can be very dubious.”
The survey also showed that the main reasons behind food choices were mood, price and nutritional value.
‘The Medibank Health Check quizzed a random sample of 1500 people on their views on topics including grocery prices, knowledge of healthy eating habits and meal routines.
Medibank senior medical adviser Ian Boyd said the results showed price, nutritional value and mood were the leading drivers of food choices[1].’
