The quality of dietary information on the World Wide Web

Dietary information on the World Wide Web (WWW) is vast, diverse and determined solely by the organizations and individuals who publish it. To evaluate the accuracy of nutrition information on the Internet, a survey of WWW sites that provided dietary recommendations were reviewed and compared to the Canadian Guidelines for Healthy Eating and Nutrition Recommendations for Canadians. Web sites were accessed through "diet", "food" and "nutrition" keyword searches. Of the 365 documents accessed, 167 contained dietary recommendations. Forty-five per cent (n=76) of these provided information that was not consistent with one or more of the Canadian dietary guidelines and included information in the forms of advertisements recommending supplements, herbal remedies, weight loss products and promotion of specific diets. The total number of web sites that provided information that was inconsistent with Canadian guidelines per each keyword search was 25 (29.8%) for "diet", 11 (13.1%) for "food" and 48 (57.1%) for "nutrition". Sources of differing information included individual web pages (n=31, 40.8%), private vendors (n=44, 57.9%) and health organizations (n=1, 1.3%). Because Internet resources continue to increase at on incredible pace, nutrition professionals need to take on active role in this technology and develop strategies to address inconsistent or questionable dietary information provided through this avenue.