In Cooke’s Corner

In this column, Charlie shares his thoughts on the modern problems faced by nutrition professionals. Here he considers how inaccurate and over-simplified social media health messages can be created through Chinese whispers.

CGR Cooke, ANutr

CGR Cooke has qualifications in nutrition and a history in fitness, varying from coaching boxing to international marketing.

www.cgrcooke.com

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REFERENCES Please visit: nhdmag.com/ references.html If I were to try to clarify every error in any popular health myth, it would either require a whole article dedicated to each myth or a highlight reel covering such little information on each that it would be savagely disappointing. To be entirely honest with you, I generally find the object of debunking health myths to be rather pointless and divisive. We need to approach this from a different angle. . .

I would assume that the average reader of Network Health Digest is likely to have taken a degree, or similar, in dietetics, nutrition, or a related field, so I want to avoid preaching to the choir about how preposterous so-and-so diet is and instead propose that we consider the essence of health myths and how they spread, so that we can actively aim to subdue their significance by utilising our own influence in the modern digital health space.

THE MYTH I am a big fan of pagan mythologies, particularly the Norse myths. In one tale, the god Thor is unable to outwrestle Elli, the elderly nurse of the giant king Útgarda-Loki, only to find out that she is in fact the personification of old age itself. Do we really have to believe that this event actually happened, that this is true? No, of course not, because that would be ridiculous. However, it’s an excellent tale to demonstrate that not even the God of Strength and Thunder is able to fight growing old.

So, perhaps when we rephrase a particular methodology or nutritional theory, we are simply re-engaging a listener who wants to believe, for example, that by fasting,1 taking resveratrol2 or building a sauna in their yard to beat their heat-shock proteins into submission,3,4 they too can fight the fact that they’re getting older. After all, these options are far more engaging and easily understood than having to read endless amounts of information to fully grasp the concepts of ageing. Let’s all just eat watercress instead.5

Simply put, the ‘myth’ will begin to materialise as the information spreads from the nucleus of the research and becomes more simplified and mystified to add interest along the way.

Using watercress as an example, there is existing primary research titled, ‘Watercress supplementation in diet reduces lymphocyte DNA damage and alters blood antioxidant status in healthy adults’.6 This research was referenced by Ms Rhone RD in her blog-post for Healthline, stating that watercress is the best anti-ageing food,5 a message simplified into three sentences supported by five bullet points. As we spread farther from the nucleus, this blog post is then referenced by the gym chain Anytime Fitness in their own article for anti-ageing foods,7 which in turn is then ‘pinned’ on the social media platform Pinterest8 alongside many other blogs…and so on and so on, until there are articles in The Daily Mail hosting titles such as, ‘Eat your way to a facelift: Watercress is the latest wonder food in battle against ageing’, and statements including, ‘If you want

to roll back the years, forget expensive lotions and potions and instead reach for something more natural (and cheap): a bag of watercress’.9

What originated as an interesting research article demonstrating findings of watercress supplementation in a controlled group of participants under laboratory conditions, has gone from a report from a qualified professional, to what could now be considered the ‘myth’, i.e. you can ‘eat your way to a facelift with just watercress’.

As mentioned in my introduction, I didn’t want to come into this column with the intention of demystifying any particular myth, instead I wanted to simply demonstrate their nature and what we can do about it by using our own influence. To achieve this, we need to consider what we mean by ‘influence’.

THE ROLE OF THE INFLUENCER To have ‘influence’ is generally thought of these days as having a large following. However, as someone who has formed their career in fitness and health marketing, the first figure I would look to is not the number of followers a person has but, instead, their engagement rate.

Social media engagement rate is simply a numerical representation of how much an audience interacts with a particular account/ person. This consists of the average number of likes and comments on a post as a percentage of the total following of a social media account. A benchmark study on social media statistics by RivalIQ.com10 found that the median engagement rate on Facebook across all sectors was 0.09% – meaning that, on average, only nine followers out of every 10,000 would like or comment on a post.

Of course, there are ways to cheat this, such as using something called ‘post-boosting’ in which you have online groups of accounts (typically on the chat platform Telegram) perform a ‘round’, in which each account will post at the same time and then each will like/comment on each other’s post.11 This can usually be observed by the same accounts having pointless comments such as ‘Nice!’ or ‘Love this!’ on almost every post.

However, when we get so frustrated with these social media ‘influencers’ spinning their health myths online, we need to, instead, consider how much influence such accounts truly have. Yes, we may not have the same flocks of followers coming to hear our tales as those accounts with pretty people posting pictures of themselves in their pants with endless pointless comments. Nevertheless, what we do have is the ability to shortcut straight from the nucleus of primary research directly to an audience by our ability to interpret and disseminate health information in easy-to-understand formats, thus removing the risk of a health myth forming in the first place.

GETTING BACK TO THE FACTS My proposal is simple: instead of debunking all the nonsense we see online, we should instead follow the example of Dr Sinclair, Dr Patrick and Ms Rhone by distributing good information at the root of online activity.

If we look at my quips against ageing, the concept of fasting and resveratrol supplementation was brought to my attention by the increasingly popular Joe Rogan Experience (JRE) podcast in a discussion with a very well respected and qualified anti-ageing researcher, Dr David Sinclair1,2 – a man of such youthful radiance that one would believe he threw that old Norse nurse into a choke hold. My point about regular sauna use being of benefit by its effect on heat shock proteins was in another JRE podcast, this time with American biochemist, Dr Rhonda Patrick.3,4 The point about watercress was originally sourced from a Google search for ‘antiageing foods’; the writer is a registered dietitian with a degree from Cornell University and a masters from NYU.5

Each professional demonstrated here in their respected field is able to access and disseminate information to a wider audience directly before, in the case of Ms Rhone and watercress, it is passed through the game of Chinese whispers and formed into its mythical counterpart.

Let’s continue to cut-out the middlemen and build our own influence with an engaged audience instead of complaining about the misinformation and influence of others. Let’s dominate this new online space with an open communication with our followers by phrasing findings in interesting and digestible formats. Let’s ignore the game of Chinese whispers and instead focus on putting out more of our information directly to the listener until the whispers turn to silence and people seek their information at the source.