Published 11th March 2025
10 ways to spot nutrition misinformation online
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We’re at a point in time where we have access to more information than ever before. At the same time, we’re bombarded with absolute nonsense by people who want our attention and money.
When people are peddling nutrition disinformation online, it can be really challenging to spot it. Using complex terms and flashing up images of scientific papers can make their message seem legitimate.
Sadly, many highly educated people — even dieticians, doctors, and scientists — have joined this disinformation free-for-all, making it even more challenging to identify the grifters.
Below, we outline words and phrases that will help you gauge how trustworthy someone’s message is.
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1. Absolutes
Scientists don’t like to use absolutes — there are always caveats, so if you hear an influencer using terms like these, it’s a red flag.
Examples
X is the best food for a good night’s sleep.
Here are the top 5 foods that cause inflammation.
You should always drink lemon water in the morning.
You should never eat snacks just before bed.
Everyone responds differently to foods, and everyone’s body works slightly differently. For instance, for one person, a handful of peanuts is a healthy snack. But for someone who has a peanut allergy, it could be fatal.
Here’s a less extreme example:
Research suggests that regularly eating snacks late in the evening is linked to poorer health outcomes. But if you do it every so often, it’s not a problem. And it’s likely that, for some people, it doesn’t impact health at all.
It’s very rare you can say that no one should ever do something when it comes to food.
2. Selective reporting and misattribution
We’ve all seen videos on social media where someone looks earnestly into the camera and says, “I’ve been doing [insert weird diet] for 2 weeks now and I feel better than ever!”
These videos can be compelling, but we shouldn’t get sucked in.
Examples
Since taking X supplements, my constipation has totally cleared up.
I used to have [insert chronic disease] but since doing this one simple exercise every day, I’m cured!
Yesterday I tried X therapy for the first time, and I slept better than I have in years!
This tactic is common because people respond well to emotive stories. If it works for them, it’ll work for me, right? Not necessarily.
The reason why nutritionists and dieticians base their advice on scientific research is that people respond differently to things. You need to look at large groups of people before you can conclude that any intervention will work widely.
There’s another issue with these videos:
The influencer on screen may well feel better than ever, but that doesn’t mean it’s because of the weird diet they’re on. It might be that they’re exercising more, or perhaps they’ve had a good night’s sleep, or it could just be a coincidence.
Alternatively, of course, they could be lying about how they feel and/or the diet they’re on.
3. Quick fix
If you’re looking to change your health, feel more energetic, or lose weight, there’s no such thing as a quick fix. Changing habits, building muscle, and moving toward a healthy weight take time.
So, if you hear any of these, you can assume it’s misinformation:
Examples
Lose weight in just 1 week!
Cure your insomnia in just 5 nights!
Burn fat instantly!
Get washboard abs in 10 days!
While some diet plans might help you slim down quickly, evidence shows that you're likely to regain it just as fast once you stop. And some crash diets can even be dangerous.
4. Us vs. them
Sometimes, an online misinformation peddler will try to make an enemy of modern medicine, the nutrition industry, or some other well-established body.
They want you to think that they have your best interests at heart and that they are defending you against “THEM.”
Examples
This surprising hack that doctors don’t want you to know.
Nutritionists always lie about this important fact.
Dieticians are hiding this quick and easy way to lose weight.
I’m going to share with you something that the medical profession wants to keep secret.
Anyone using this type of language is trying to cast doubt on the sensible advice provided by professionals while encouraging you to trust their grift.
This technique is also designed to draw you closer into their orbit where you can get stuck in an echo chamber.
This is how it works:
Once you interact with an influencer’s video, the algorithm takes note and makes sure you see more of their content in the future. You’re also more likely to see content by people spouting similar misinformation.
Very quickly, your feed becomes fully loaded with their brand of nonsense. The more you interact with it, the more of it you’ll see.
Often, people don’t realize this has happened. And if you’re not careful, it can twist your whole worldview because every time you’re on social media, the algorithm serves up the same old grifters and the people who agree with them.
5. Naturalistic fallacy
If someone tells you that an intervention is good because it is “natural,” that’s called the naturalistic fallacy.
People tend to gravitate toward things that seem natural. We automatically equate natural with healthy, but that’s just not the case.
To make the point, here are some things that are natural:
cancer
syphilis
Ebola
cyanide
wasps
cocaine
death
Being natural is not necessarily linked to health. So, look out for these phrases.
Examples
These supplements are made from all-natural ingredients.
Vaccines and other medicines are unnatural so you should avoid them.
The all-meat diet is healthy because meat is natural.
This language trick is commonly used to sell herbal supplements in place of well-researched medicines. Calling them natural makes the supplements seem safer than medicines.
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In reality, some herbal remedies can cause significant health issues if consumed in large amounts. Meanwhile, medical drugs have to go through rigorous scientific scrutiny before they enter the pharmacy.
Sure, there are downsides to many drugs, but we know what they are. In many cases, herbal supplements are a black box, and you don’t know what you’re going to get.
6. This food is to blame
Social media influencers are experts at keeping your attention. They know that their message needs to be quick, simple, easy to remember, and surprising.
They can’t launch into a nuanced scientific explanation, because they’ll lose their audience.
One trick they often use is to focus on one food or food group and declare that it’s the devil. Look out for these:
Examples
If you want to lose weight all you have to do is avoid seed oils.
Seed oils are the cause of all chronic diseases today.
The obesity crisis was started by seed oils.
Seed oils are the primary cause of long-term inflammation.
The interaction between nutrition and health is incredibly complicated, blaming just one component of a diet is never the answer. Many factors play a part in this relationship, including your:
socioeconomic status
food environment
genetics
metabolism
early life experiences
psychology
Pinning anything on one type of food is clearly a ridiculous oversimplification.
7. False equivalence
As we mentioned above, influencers need to make a message that will surprise you and keep your attention. To do this, they sometimes rely on false equivalences.
For instance, they might compare the amount of sugar in an orange with the sugar content in bacon.
“See, bacon has much less sugar,” they declare, “so it’s better for you than an orange!”
Of course, comparing bacon to an orange is madness. They’re not equivalent in any sensible way.
This kind of false equivalence also neglects all the other components in the food. In this case, looking at saturated fat levels would be a smarter idea.
8. The motte-and-bailey fallacy
This technique is less well-known, but it’s commonly used by grifters when responding to pushback.
For anyone who’s not familiar with medieval castles, a motte is a fortified tower on a mound, and a bailey is a walled courtyard that surrounds it.
The motte-and-bailey fallacy is a way of dodging difficult questions when pressed on nonsense. An example will help understand how it works:
Example 1
Grifter: “Seed oils are in nearly all ultra-processed foods and they cause all chronic diseases”
Dietician: “Actually, the latest scientific evidence shows that seed oils don’t cause chronic disease.”
Grifter: “So you think that ultra-processed food is healthy!?”
So here, the grifter made an outlandish claim about seed oils. When pushed, she retreats to her motte and responds to a different question, which is much easier to defend.
Example 2
Grifter: “This supplement can reverse diabetes!”
Doctor: “Do you have any scientific evidence for this?”
Grifter: “Oh, so you think modern medicine has all the answers do you?”
Now that you’ve learned about the motte-and-bailey fallacy, you’ll spot it everywhere. It’s a very common tactic, and once you’re tuned in to it, it’s really annoying.
9. The fallacy of composition
This is an important one to be aware of. Dodgy food influencers often say things like “Food X contains Y, and studies show that Y causes inflammation, so that means X must cause inflammation.”
This logic seems to make sense, and it can be very convincing, but it’s flawed.
For instance, you might have heard some influencers talking about antinutrients. These compounds can block the absorption of nutrients, which sounds bad.
For instance, rhubarb contains oxalates. If you were to eat enough oxalates they could kill you. But they’re present in such small amounts in rhubarb that they don’t cause any health problems at all.
You might have also heard of other antinutrients called lectins, which are in some legumes, like lentils. Again, these can interfere with digestion and absorption of nutrients if eaten in large quantities.
But what the social media influencers won’t tell you is that cooking destroys them and no one ever eats raw lentils.
A food is not just a collection of compounds in isolation, they all interact together, changing the way in which they influence your body.
This is an extreme example, but it rams the point home: Imagine if you put a fatal dose of strychnine inside a sealed metal ball. If you swallowed it, you would be unharmed, because your body can’t break down the metal and it would just pass straight through you.
That isn’t really an experiment we recommend you try, but you get the point.
10. Beware buzz words
To grab people’s attention, content creators often use buzzwords that don’t really mean anything or are used without context, like:
Detox/cleanse: Your body naturally detoxes and there’s no evidence that any commercially available detoxes or cleanses do anything.
Inflammatory/inflammation: Inflammation is a real thing, of course, but the word is often thrown around without any evidence or scientific context.
Toxic/toxin: Notice how they never mention what toxin they’re talking about. This is because they’re making it up.
Immune boosting: This phrase doesn’t really mean anything. Your immune system needs to be finely balanced so that it reacts when there is a threat, but doesn’t react when there’s not a threat. “Boosting” is meaningless.
Wrapping up
When you’re scrolling through social media, look out for these ten signs. The more actively you look for them, the more often you’ll spot them.
While many people online are just trying to share their opinions or what worked for them, plenty of others are actively trying to make money from you.
Stay skeptical, and don’t hand over your hard-earned money until you are sure someone is legitimate.
If you want to continue learning about these kinds of techniques and how to avoid nutrinonsense, try these next:
