Learn how to find reliable, scientific information about food and nutrition and identify the truth behind food headlines. Rebuild your trust in nutrition science and look beyond the media headlines. Due to conflicting messages from the media, it’s becoming harder to know what to believe when it comes to following a healthy diet and lifestyle. On this course, you’ll compare how nutrition and health topics are handled by the media and science.
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You’ll be encouraged to think critically about the information behind media headlines and come to your own conclusions about what’s good for you.
You’ll explore the psychology of why we’re easily influenced by headlines and learn about different types of biases, like confirmatory and availability bias.
You’ll also learn how to find reliable information online and identify unreliable health studies.
Syllabus
Week 1: What's behind a headline
Week 2: Influence and interpretation
Week 3: Trust
Learning on this course
You can take this self-guided course and learn at your own pace. On every step of the course you can meet other learners, share your ideas and join in with active discussions in the comments.
What will you achieve?
By the end of the course, you‘ll be able to...
- Interpret why the media is so interested in reporting about food & nutrition, why the 'advice' changes so rapidly and the part we play in that, as readers.
- Explore the hierarchy of scientific evidence and judge for yourself whether you believe an example headline.
- Explore the biases you bring to what you read and gain a perspective into journalists' agendas which influence how they present scientific evidence.
- Identify how to find the original research, how to interpret scientific terms and make sense of statistics.
- Discuss where to obtain the information you can trust about food & nutrition and use tools that help identify unreliable studies.
Who is the course for?
This course is designed for anyone who is losing trust in media headlines about how what we eat affects our health and who wants to get to the truth.
