ZAGREB, 7 Dec (Hina) - The establishment of a systematic methodology for fact-checking and detecting food-related disinformation is the main goal of the ‘Food Facts’ project, carried out by the Faculty of Food Technology (PTF) in Osijek together with its partners.
It is currently the only Croatian platform dedicated to verifying information about food.
As much as 30% of false information circulating in the public sphere relates to food, which is why PTF decided to bring together a multidisciplinary team of experts in food technology, nutrition, communications and the social sciences.
The project has received €198,000 in funding from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (NRRP).
The biggest source of food-related disinformation are various influencers and self-proclaimed nutrition experts.
Given that food-related disinformation has harmful effects on human health, the economy and the food sector, the PTF dean, Stela Jokić, says that over the course of the project they published 147 articles on food disinformation, in which, with the involvement of experts, they presented correct and verified facts on the subject.
In addition to the project’s website, the articles were published on social media, as our public space is full of sensationalism, pseudoscience and unverified claims, and the largest source of food-related disinformation are various influencers and self-styled nutrition gurus who promote supposedly healthy diets.
Ines Banjari, Vice-Dean of the Osijek faculty, says that they carried out 113 checks of social media posts, and literally all of them turned out to be disinformation. Most food-related myths concern various crash diets that claim to offer rapid weight loss.
One such myth relates to the so-called honey diet, which some domestic news portals reported on.
Nutrition experts refuted the claims that honey can stimulate the burning of fat tissue, as there is no scientifically relevant evidence to support this.
The most bizarre story they investigated was a TikTok post claiming that people should eat soil in order to ingest essential minerals and cleanse or restore the body. Soil is not food, and eating it is not advisable under any circumstances, even if it is organic or biodynamic, Banjari says.Experts involved in the project also debunked claims, repeated by numerous domestic portals, that people should tailor their diet to their blood type. Research shows that aligning one’s diet with a particular blood type is not associated with health benefits and may even have harmful effects.
Disinformation harmful to public health, the economy and the food industry
The project was carried out in collaboration with the agricultural information system "Agroklub", and Agroklub board member Vedran Stapić points out that ‘fact-checking’ projects have emerged as a corrective on the Croatian media scene, offering facts as an alternative to disinformation on dominant media platforms and social networks.
During its implementation, the project’s website recorded 36,000 active users, and such significant interest highlights the need for higher-quality and verified content, Stapić said.
Accordingly, a handbook for verifying food-related information and media content was developed as part of the project.
The aim of the handbook, which presents concrete facts obtained through the project’s work, is to provide practical tools and methods for checking information about food and to explain why disinformation is harmful to public health, the economy, and the food industry.
Indeed, multiple studies show that disinformation about a particular type of food can lead to organised boycotts that affect sales and cause losses, and companies then have to spend significant resources combating false information, PTF notes.
