What most excites a typical reporter who’s putting out a story on food and health these days? According to new media research commissioned by the International Food Information Council (IFIC) Foundation, news stories on food are most likely to focus on “functional foods.” IFIC’s
Food For Thought IV research, fielded from May to July 2001, found that nearly one in every four news stories about food and health monitored was about a functional food, that is, a food or food component believed to have health benefits beyond basic nutrition.
The Food For Thought IV study is the latest in a series of four biannual tracking surveys (1995, 1997, 1999, 2001) that provide a snapshot of food and health in the news. The research is based on quantitative and qualitative analyses conducted by the Center for Media and Public Affairs on behalf of the IFIC Foundation. One of the principle purposes of the surveys is to enable food and health professionals to see general themes and trends in news reporting and thus understand how to communicate better with journalists about food and health science issues. This year’s research reconfirms the single most emphatic fact to emerge from the previous studies: food is big news. Not that that’s a big surprise: a 1999 study by Princeton Research Associates for Rodale Press reported that health news was the number one topic that consumers follow very closely—and food is increasingly perceived as a major factor in our health.
During the three-month research period in 2001, 40 major national and regional outlets were monitored, including five Internet sites that originate news. The Food For Thought IV survey sample included a cross section of national and local daily newspapers, network and local television news, newswire services, and monthly magazines, in addition to the media websites. Altogether, 1,075 news reports on food safety and nutrition topics were analyzed in the news vehicles surveyed.
The Hot Food and Health Topics
Functional foods, which first emerged in 1999 as a star topic in the media, have broadened in the 2001 research into a virtual smorgasbord of reported healthful food compounds—from garlic to lycopene to red wine to omega-3 fatty acids. Over the years, news reports have focused on a wide range of specific foods such as soybeans, fortified foods, fruits, and vegetables. What has been evolving and what has continued to evolve in the 2001 survey, is a more sophisticated discussion of the functional food chemical components believed to promote general health or reduce the risk of disease. What first stood out in the 1999 media sample and what was again prominent in 2001, was the increasing discussion of previously esoteric ingredients like lutein, flavonoids, isoflavones, anthocyanidins, lycopene, ellagic acid, and omega-3 fatty acids. The Food For Thought IV researchers note, “this attention to functional foods has had a clear impact on the tone of food news. When we examine all the benefits linked in the media to food or dietary choices, a solid majority of the reports has mentioned a functional food. In 2001, more than three out of five (63 percent) benefit claims referenced some type of functional component. That represents an increase over the 57 percent of such claims in 1999, 60 percent in 1997, and 50 percent in 1995.”
In addition to the media’s continuing interest in functional foods, the 2001 study suggests that journalists are most interested in food and health news dealing with:
- biotechnology
- disease prevention
- foodborne illness
- vitamin and mineral intake
- allergies
News coverage of food biotechnology, which first appeared as a hot news topic in 1999, doubled between then and 2001, making food biotechnology the most reported single food and health issue in the survey. A sizeable 12 percent of the stories monitored dealt with biotechnology, primarily, say the researchers, because of allegations that allergic reactions were due to StarLink® corn, which was accidentally mixed into the food supply. This new issue overlaid regulatory concerns and continuing international controversies over the safety of food biotechnology. Not surprisingly, given the widely reported European opposition to the technology and extensive coverage surrounding the allegations of the allergenicity of StarLink®, more news stories speculated on the possible negative health consequences than on the benefits of food biotechnology. (Note that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention reported in June that they found no evidence that StarLink® had caused allergic reactions.)
Obesity Weighs into the Debate
New agricultural technologies were not the only subjects getting negative media. Obesity has become a major food news story as well. The 2001 Food For Thought research found that the issues of weight management and obesity comprised 5 percent of the media discussions of harms and benefits linked to food and dietary choices. The focus of news stories on these issues has undergone a change in the past two years: while the 1999 study noted a two-to-one surplus of news reports citing the benefits of weight loss over worries about weight gain, the situation is reversed in the 2001 research. Concerns about the myriad of health problems related to weight gain outnumbered news stories about dieting three-to-one.
Evolving Trends
Dietary fats, which had been the number one food news topic in 1995, continued to show a diminishing appeal to reporters and editors, as determined from the new research. The researchers attributed this trend to a general shift by the media to a more complex view of fats. For example, news stories that tended in 1995 to focus on health warnings about consuming fat have evolved into more targeted health warnings, mixed with advice on which fats may be healthful.
Number One Source
One encouraging trend for those looking for factual food and health information is the sourcing of news stories. As in the 1999 research, legitimate experts were the number one food news source cited in media outlets surveyed in 2001. Reporters relied most on scientific experts and researchers, with food producers, and federal government officials in second and third places, respectively, on journalists’ Rolodexes. Food and Drug Administration and U.S. Department of Agriculture officials were the government sources most often cited. Reporters less often relied on environmentalists and consumer advocates as providers of information and quotes in food news.
The increased presence in the media in recent years of information and quotations from scientists and university nutrition experts reflects the continued effort of journalists to seek out independent experts to comment on a variety of topics, research, and controversies. It is not clear, according to Food For Thought IV researchers, just how this source selection will affect food and health news coverage, generally. They do point out that it has not significantly increased the amount of contextual information provided to consumers.
Still Out of Context
Over the past three media studies, spanning a six-year period, researchers have found that news reports of dietary benefits and harms usually provide little context with the nutritional advice offered. Food For Thought IV chief researcher Dan Amundson says, “By many measures, the public seems to have a great appetite for information on food and health. That appetite is only partially sated by current reporting, which can often omit the information necessary to judge the significance of food news.” In other words, a news story advising you to eat more fruits and vegetables to improve your heart health may very well neglect to tell you how many fruits and vegetables to eat or how often. Relatively few news reports have mentioned which groups of people are most affected by the health advice being offered. The omission of such context makes it harder for readers, listeners, and viewers to make practical use of the advice being offered.
In the 2001 Food For Thought research, this trend is extended: only 7 percent of the news stories monitored mentioned how much of a specific food needed to be eaten to bring about the reported health benefit; only 4 percent included answers to the question “how often.” These statistics represent all-time lows for these particular pieces of crucial context. In regard to specific scientific attribution, the latest study found that barely 6 percent of news reports monitored cited the scientific evidence that provided the basis of the report. As the Food For Thought IV researchers commented, “stories rarely mentioned such crucial issues as the statistical significance of research findings or the causal implications.”
However, in the minority of news reports that cited scientific evidence, the media did a very good job of providing information on such specific issues as the research design, use of a control group, sample size, and where the results were published. Still, overall, in the words of the Food For Thought IV research team, “these results suggest that the media are still neglecting to provide key contextual information in reporting on food and health.”
In addition to documenting trends in food coverage (e.g., from the proliferation of “fat” warnings in 1995 to the analysis of functional food flavonoids and phytochemicals in 2001), the six-year Food For Thought tracking study of food issues in the media has now firmly established media enthusiasm for food and health news, and has established that the media pays insufficient attention to context in the reporting of these issues. “The emerging science on nutrition and food safety can have profound practical implications, but only if consumers are able to understand how the new research relates to them in their daily lives,” says Sylvia Rowe, president and CEO of the IFIC Foundation. “Despite the media trend toward increasing brevity in reporting, we hope this kind of research might motivate editors and reporters to be more mindful of consumers’ need for context, along with the news.”
