Health food blogger: friend or foe?

Abstract

Objectives: The Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition (SACN) and the World Health Organisation (WHO) have recently updated nutritional guidelines for a reduced sugar intake. With the increased popularity of online health-food bloggers and ‘refined-sugar free’ recipes, this review looked to analyse recipes from popular online bloggers to validate the veracity of their ‘sugar-free’ and ‘healthy’ claims and assess their adherence to recently implemented nutritional guidelines. Method: Four bloggers were randomly selected from the Amazon top 10 booklist and their online blogs were consulted for a selection of recipes which were then nutritionally analysed with relation to their sugar and fat content. Results: 80% of the recipes analysed contained more fat than a MarsÒ bar and 70% contained more fat than a popular online cake recipe, whilst 25% of the recipes contained over half of the recommended daily sugar intake as advised by the SACN and the WHO. None of the bloggers analysed used evidence-based approaches for the advice on their blogs. Conclusion: Bloggers offer an invaluable platform to disseminate dietary advice to the public, however the recipes in this analysis were not healthy alternatives. The challenge is for government and health organisations to utilise this platform to promote alternative healthy eating options that align to current national and international guidance.