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Review
. 2011 Oct;15(4):304-7.

Quality of nutritional information on the Internet in health and disease

K Gkouskou  1 , A Markaki  2 , M Vasilaki  2 , A Roidis  2 , I Vlastos  3
Affiliations
Review

Quality of nutritional information on the Internet in health and disease

K Gkouskou et al. Hippokratia. 2011 Oct.

Abstract

Background: Quality assessment of nutritional information on the internet may prove vital prior to providing public guidance on searching relative information.

Methods: The most popular web sites on four different topics ("Mediterranean diet", "sports nutrition", "nutrition, dysphagia and children" and "herbs and common cold") were assessed with the use of two validated questionnaires (EQIP and DISCERN).

Results: Medical categories produced significantly lower total quality scores when compared to "Mediterranean diet" and "sports nutrition" categories. (F=7.189, P<0.001). Commercial web pages had a significantly lower credibility score compared to institutional and other web page types (H=17.987, P<0.001). Ranking order of each web page was related to its total quality score (P=0.04) but not to its credibility (P=0.241).

Conclusions: Monitoring the accuracy, comprehensiveness and consistency of health-related information on the internet is an important public health issue since there are popular web pages that are regarded as of high quality but they do not always provide reliable information. Health professionals and especially dieticians should provide consumer training on how to search for and appraise nutritional information from the internet.

Keywords: Internet; nutrition; quality of web pages; review.

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Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1. 1a: Total EQIP scores of each category, 1b: Total EQIP scores of each web type, 1c: First part of DISCERN scores in relation to four categories, 1d: First part of DISCERN scores in relation to each web type
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