Good to eat : food and health at a time of information overload

For most of the world's population, eating is no longer what it was just a few decades ago. The diversification and globalisation of the food supply, the industrialisation of food, and the abundance of information have simplified this everyday activity, but they have also made it more complex. Never before has it been so easy to eat well and to eat poorly. The proof is that obesity and overweight are no longer a problem exclusive to the richest, while nutritional deficiencies do not affect only the most impoverished. The new thing about our time is that both problems, over-nutrition and under-nutrition, coexist not only in countries and cities, but also within the same family and even throughout a person's lifetime. Growing concern for health has fuelled interest in the relationship between diet and disease prevention. But despite the remarkable scientific advances, there are still many unanswered questions, and many evidence-based messages do not reach the population and are lost in a sea of misinformation and half-truths. In this monograph, apart from presenting a brief social history of food, we will delve into the advances in nutritional epidemiology, we will separate facts and fiction regarding current food, we will review what reliable dietary recommendations are and how they are identified, we will explain the evolution of dietary guidelines with an example, we will tackle the problem of ultra-processed food from the point of view of addiction and we will analyse miracle diets and how to detect them

Nutrimedia : A novel web-based resource for the general public that evaluates the veracity of nutrition claims using the GRADE approach

The objective of Nutrimedia is to evaluate, based on the scientific evidence, the veracity of nutrition claims disseminated to the public by the media. In this article, we describe the methodology, characteristics and contents of this web-based resource, as well as its web traffic and media impact since it was launched. Nutrimedia uses a systematic process to evaluate common beliefs, claims from newspapers and advertising identified and selected by its research team, as well as questions from the public. After formulating a structured question for each claim, we conduct a pragmatic search, prioritizing guidelines and/or systematic reviews. We evaluate the certainty of the evidence using the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) approach, and classify the veracity of each claim into seven categories (true, probably true, possibly true, possibly false, probably false, false, and uncertain). For each evaluation, we develop a scientific report, a plain language summary, a summary of findings table, and, in some cases, a video. From November 2017 to May 2019, we published 30 evaluations (21 were related to foods, six to diets, and three to supplements), most of which were triggered by questions from the public (40%; 12/30). Overall, nearly half of the claims were classified as uncertain (47%; 14/30). Nutrimedia received 47,265 visitors, with a total of 181,360 pages viewed. The project and its results were reported in 84 written media and 386 websites from Spain and 14 other countries, mostly from Latin America. To our knowledge, Nutrimedia is the first web-based resource for the public that evaluates the certainty of evidence and the veracity of nutrition claims using the GRADE approach. The scientific rigor combined with the use of friendly presentation formats are distinctive features of this resource, developed to help the public to make informed choices about nutrition

GACETA SANITARIA in 2017. Improving the quality of our journal

Empezamos este año 2018 con nuestra Nota editorial anual, en la cual pretendemos compartir con los/las lectores/as, personas autoras y la sociedad la actividad realizada por el equipo editorial de la revista a lo largo del año anterior. El documento también permite analizar los avances y las áreas de mejora en marcha de la revista. A continuación, presentaremos brevemente las actividades realizadas durante el año 2017, así como la información sobre el desempeño de la revista. Muchas de estas actividades se ven reflejadas también en el blog del comité editorial de Gaceta Sanitaria