Trial reportPublic health nutrition2019
Confusion and nutritional backlash from news media exposure to contradictory information about carbohydrates and dietary fats.
Trial report in Public health nutrition, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 21 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
21 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- Commonalities among Dietary Recommendations from 2010 to 2021 Clinical Practice Guidelines: A Meta-Epidemiological Study from the American College of Lifestyle Medicine.Advances in nutrition (Bethesda, Md.) · 2023Pooled it
- Effects of Exposure to Conflicting Health Information on Topic-Specific Information Sharing and Seeking Intentions.Health communication · 2025Trial
- Vulnerability to the Effects of Conflicting Health Information: Testing the Moderating Roles of Trust in News Media and Research Literacy.Health education & behavior : the official publication of the Society for Public Health Education · 2023Trial
- Effects of Prior Exposure to Conflicting Health Information on Responses to Subsequent Unrelated Health Messages: Results from a Population-Based Longitudinal Experiment.Annals of behavioral medicine : a publication of the Society of Behavioral Medicine · 2022Trial
- Perceptions of ultra-processed foods, food processing and food healthfulness among a cross-sectional national sample of US adults: do perceptions align with the evidence?Public health nutrition · 2026Article
- Conflictive Uncertainty: A Framework for Understanding the Aversion to Conflicting Information in Social Contexts.Personality & social psychology bulletin · 2025Article
- Consumer Perception of Plant-Based Cheese.Journal of food science · 2025Article
- The effects of social media criticism against public health institutions on trust, emotions, and social media engagement.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Content quality versus sharing practices on social media: a cross-sectional analysis of nutrition information on Twitter.Public health nutrition · 2025Article
- Refined carbohydrates and the overfat pandemic: implications for brain health and public health policy.Frontiers in public health · 2025Review
- Beyond the Myths: Brazilian Consumer Perceptions of Functional Food.Foods (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
- Article
- #Fail: the quality and accuracy of nutrition-related information by influential Australian Instagram accounts.The international journal of behavioral nutrition and physical activity · 2024Article
- Are popular books about diet and health written based on scientific evidence? A comparison of citations between the USA and Japan.Public health nutrition · 2023Article
- Web-Based Content on Diet and Nutrition Written in Japanese: Infodemiology Study Based on Google Trends and Google Search.JMIR formative research · 2023Article
- Sustaining positive perceptions of science in the face of conflicting health information: An experimental test of messages about the process of scientific discovery.Social science & medicine (1982) · 2023Article
- Understanding Trust Determinants in a Live Chat Service on Familial Cancer: Qualitative Triangulation Study With Focus Groups and Interviews in Germany.Journal of medical Internet research · 2023Article
- Prevalence and Potential Consequences of Exposure to Conflicting Information about Mammography: Results from Nationally-Representative Survey of U.S. Adults.Health communication · 2023Article
- Print and online textual news media coverage of UK low-risk drinking guidelines from 2014 to 2017: A review and thematic analysis.Drug and alcohol review · 2022Review
- 'I need someone to believe in me and walk the journey with me': A qualitative analysis of preferred approaches to weight management discussions in clinical care among adults with type 2 diabetes.Diabetic medicine : a journal of the British Diabetic Association · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
objectiveTo test the effect of news media exposure to contradictory information about carbohydrates and dietary fats on levels of confusion, nutritional backlash and dietary intentions.
designWe conducted an online survey experiment between 11 and 28 February 2018, randomizing participants to one of six experimental conditions. Two 'contradictory information' conditions asked participants to read one news article on the risks of a low-carbohydrate diet and one article on the risks of a low-fat diet. Two 'convergent information' conditions asked participants to read two articles with similar information on the risks of one of these two diets. A fifth 'established health recommendations' control condition asked participants to read two articles on the harms of smoking and sun exposure. A sixth 'no information' condition served as a second control group. We used general linear models to test hypotheses on the effects of exposure on confusion, nutritional backlash and dietary intentions.
settingUSA.
participantsAdults (n 901) registered with Amazon's Mechanical Turk (M-Turk).
resultsExposure to contradictory information about carbohydrates and dietary fats increased confusion and nutritional backlash compared with exposure to established health recommendations for non-dietary behaviours and a no-exposure control. Exposure to contradictory information also increased confusion compared with exposure to consistent nutrition information regarding carbohydrates and dietary fats.
conclusionsContradictory nutrition information in the news media can negatively affect consumers' attitudes, beliefs and behavioural intentions. Dietary debates that play out in the media may adversely influence both short-term dietary decisions and future efforts to communicate about unrelated nutrition issues.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.