Information, Misinformation and Disinformation in Human Nutrition

Nutrition is a serious and immensely important scientific discipline researched and taught in universities worldwide. Its relevance to everyday life makes it unique among the sciences. It is written about not only in the scientific literature but also in the popular media. It is talked about on television and the radio in a way more befitting the fashion clothes industry than a science, often by people no more qualified to do so than anyone else. It is also at the root of the world′s largest industry, the agro‐food industry, and consequently attracts enormous interest from another almost equally as large – the advertising and public relations industry – as well as from politicians. Poses the questions: what has shaped our current attitudes to human nutrition and what are our sources of information about it?