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Pub date
2007-01-14
A Mixed Buffet Of Food Info
Source:Washington Post Editor:By Sally Squires Read:
Ask Sally about healthy eating at 1 p.m. on Tuesdays
Tens of millions of consumers seek nutrition advice online, regularly searching for information about dietary supplements, food allergies and how to lose weight.
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But a new evaluation of the 20 most popular diet and nutrition Internet sites by Consumer Reports Web Watch shows that the information they dish out can be slim on facts and sometimes bloated with commercial interests.
"More than half the top 20 sites were not rated well by our panel," says Beau Brendler, director of Web Watch. "That is of some concern."
To evaluate the sites, Web Watch teamed with another nonprofit group, the Health Improvement Institute. Using data from Nielsen//NetRatings, they identified the 20 most popular diet and nutrition Web sites, from WebMD.com, with 11 million unique users per month, to TrimLife.com, with 743,000 users.
Nineteen experts, including doctors, nurses and medical librarians, were then tapped to rate the sites. The raters spent more than a month digging deep into the sites, six of which, including WeightWatchers.com, charge fees for use. Ten attributes were used to evaluate each site, including accuracy, disclosure of advertising and other commercial sponsorship, ease of use, privacy policies, authorship, references and how errors are corrected.
The ratings stopped short of testing the medical effectiveness of specific diets or medical treatments. "We're upfront in saying that we can't really take on the role of arbitrator of medical procedures or treatments that even the medical community doesn't agree on," Brendler says.
The six lowest-rated sites frequently blurred lines between supposedly impartial information and ads, the Consumer Reports study found. They were AOLhealth.com, QualityHealth.com, Dannon's LightnFit.com, Healthology.com, Rodale's Prevention.com and TrimLife.com, which sells dietary supplements.
"There are other places on the Web where people are better off spending their time," Brendler says.
Michael Neuwirth, a spokesman for Dannon, notes that the report is "not based on any science, as Consumer Reports states themselves."
As for mixing ads and editorial content, "it's obvious that any company-produced Web page that is clearly branded, as ours is, is a form of promotion. There's nothing duplicitous here. No sleight of hand. And the expert that helped us to develop the diet insight is a registered dietitian."
An AOL spokeswoman also took exception to the findings. "They confused AOL Health with AOL Diet & Fitness. . . . So, they were comparing apples to oranges in the category. . . . It's kind of entertaining that they talk about WebMD.com having great content. We get a lot of content from WebMD."
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