ArticleJournal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition2023
Evaluation of the reliability and educational quality of YouTube™ videos on sport nutrition topics.
Article in Journal of the International Society of Sports Nutrition, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
What it found
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it, 11 citations in OpenAlex.
- Characteristics and Popularity of Videos of Abusive Head Trauma Prevention: Systematic Appraisal.Journal of medical Internet research · 2024Pooled it
- Evaluating YouTube content on appendicitis: a comparative analysis of Arabic and English videos in terms of quality.Scientific reports · 2026Article
- YouTube videos on nutrition and pediatric cancer: scientific reliability and quality.Frontiers in public health · 2026Article
- Educational quality of YouTube videos on scapular dyskinesis: a cross-sectional analysis.Clinics in shoulder and elbow · 2025Article
- Conveying Sport Nutrition Information in YouTube Videos: A Qualitative Content Analysis of Dietary Advice and Ways of Communication.Current developments in nutrition · 2025Article
- Quality of Pancreatic Neuroendocrine Tumor Videos Available on TikTok and Bilibili: Content Analysis.JMIR formative research · 2024Article
- Financial and Business Literacy Among Urology Residents: Is this a Problem and How Can We Better Prepare Residents for their Careers?Current urology reports · 2024Review
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundYouTube is one of the most widespread social media channels, which is of growing importance in science communication and health education. The validity of medical and health-related information available on YouTube cannot be assured, and videos often contain potentially misleading or inaccurate information. Communication on sport nutrition may have a profound effect on the change in nutrition behavior among athletes, so evidence-based nutrition information must reach athletes. The main goal of the research is to evaluate the quality, reliability, and applicability of sports nutrition YouTube videos as educational material for athletes.
methodsA descriptive cross-sectional design was applied, and a systematic search was performed on YouTube. The quality and reliability of the videos were evaluated by applying the most frequently used and highly reliable scoring systems in the literature (e.g., DISCERN, Global Quality Score, and JAMA criteria) and a sports nutrition-specific scoring system (SNSS). Descriptive statistical analyses, two-sample t-test, Spearman correlation, Kruskal - Wallis, and Mann - Whitney U test were used to evaluate the results. A total of 114 YouTube videos met the inclusion criteria.
resultsIn 25% of the videos, the sports nutrition information was presented by a dietitian, while in two-thirds, coaches and athletes and other professionals shared sports nutrition knowledge. In terms of video content, the three most common topics were nutrition and health (33%), special diets (21%), and the training diet (17%). For the majority of the videos that received low GQS, JAMAS, DISCERN, and SNSS scores, the accuracy and quality of the analyzed YouTube videos on sports nutrition were inadequate. Videos uploaded by dietitians achieved significantly higher DISCERN, JAMAS, GQS, and SNSS scores. The GQS, SNSS, and DISCERN scores of videos from sports organizations, nonprofit organizations, and independent user sources were lower compared to videos uploaded by academic and professional organizations. Popular sport nutrition videos among users that contain personal stories or the experiences of athletes were deemed less reliable by experts or showed lower educational quality. Henceforth, we found a negative correlation between video popularity and JAMAS, GQS, and SNSS scores.
conclusionThis study revealed that sports nutrition videos on the YouTube video platform show low accuracy and reliability. Professionals working with athletes need to consider misconceptions from sports nutrition videos in their nutrition counseling practice. Due to the popularity of the videos, professionals and professional organizations could use YouTube as an online educational tool to increase the nutrition knowledge of athletes.
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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.