Food and Nutrition Myths among Future Secondary School Teachers: A Problem of Trust in Inadequate Sources of Information

The Internet and social networks are full of nutrition information, offering people guidance to make healthy eating choices. These sources always present themselves as a gateway to reliable information on healthy eating; however, too often this is not the case. Far from being trustworthy, there are...

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Published inSocial sciences (Basel) Vol. 10; no. 9; p. 325
Main Authors Moreno-Rodríguez, Vanessa P., Sánchez-Cabrero, Roberto, Abad-Mancheño, Alfonso, Juanes-García, Almudena, Martínez-López, Fernando
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Basel MDPI AG 01.09.2021
Subjects
Biology
Eating behavior
Food
Habits
healthy habits
Hypotheses
Knowledge
nutrition
nutrition myths
Nutrition research
Physics
Secondary schools
secondary teachers
Standard deviation
Students
Teacher education
Spain
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Summary:The Internet and social networks are full of nutrition information, offering people guidance to make healthy eating choices. These sources always present themselves as a gateway to reliable information on healthy eating; however, too often this is not the case. Far from being trustworthy, there are usually plenty of food myths. A food myth is a widespread false belief about food, nutrition, and eating facts that gives rise to certain behaviors, from fashionable trends to diets. Academic training is a valuable tool to combat food myths and the pseudoscience linked to them, but educators must participate in this battle. To test this idea, we analyzed the prevalence of nine highly popular food myths held by 201 secondary school Spanish teachers. The aim was to assess whether expertise in science areas prevents teachers from falling into these food misconceptions. Our study results showed that food myths are held regardless of specialty area. The power of the media in popularizing and spreading nutrition myths among educators may be the cause, even more potent than academic training. We conclude that since scientific knowledge is not enough to erase food myths, we need further actions if we aim to prevent the problems that food myths may cause.
ISSN:2076-0760
2076-0760
DOI:10.3390/socsci10090325