JMIR Publications

ABSTRACT

Background:

Background:

It is possible that tailoring dietary approaches to an individual’s genomic profile could provide optimal dietary inputs for biological functioning and could support adherence to dietary management protocols. The science required for such nutrigenetic and nutrigenomic profiling is not considered ready for broad application by the scientific and medical communities, however, many personalized nutrition products are available in the marketplace creating a potential for hype and misleading information on social media. Twitter provides a unique big data source that provides real-time information. Therefore, it has the potential to disseminate evidence-based health information, as well as misinformation.

Objective:

Objective:

We sought to characterize the landscape of precision nutrition content on Twitter with a specific focus on nutrigenetics and nutrigenomics. We focused on tweet authors, types of content, and describing the presence of misinformation.

Methods:

Methods:

Twitter Archiver was used to capture tweets from September 1-December 1, 2020, using keywords related to nutrition and genetics. A random sample of tweets was coded using quantitative content analysis by 4 trained coders. Codebook-driven, quantified information about tweet author, content details, information quality, and engagement metrics were compiled and analyzed.

Results:

Results:

Precision nutrition products and nutrigenomics concepts were the most common categories of tweets. About a quarter (26%) of tweet authors presented themselves as science and/or medicine experts. Nutrigenetics concepts most frequently came from authors with science/medicine expertise, and tweets about the influence of genes on weight were more likely to come from authors with neither expertise type. A full 15% of Tweets were judged to contain untrue information; these were most likely to occur in the nutrigenomics concepts topic category.

Conclusions:

Conclusions:

By evaluating social media discourse around precision nutrition on Twitter, we made several observations about the content available in the information environment through which individuals can learn about related concepts and products. Tweet content was consistent with indicators of medical hype, and the inclusion of potentially misleading and untrue information was common. We identified a contingent of users with scientific and/or medical expertise who were active in discussing nutrigenomics concepts and products and who may be encouraged to share credible expert advice on precision nutrition and tackle false information as this technology develops.