There is an extensive engagement among online users using social media to seek nutrition information. A vast number of sources providing nutrition information are disseminated throughout the internet; however the quality of the information is unassured. Withthe food-based dietary guidelines serving as one of the most reliable sources of nutrition information and dietary advice, this study the accuracy of the nutrition information advice among popular nutrition-related Facebook posts in the Philippines through its alignment with the Nutritional Guidelines for Filipinos (NGF). The data gathered were primarily analyzed through descriptive statistical analysis describing the data’s average or mean. The characteristics of the data were analyzed through percentages and graphical representation.
Findings have shown that the total number of Facebook engagements the top 100 nutrition-related posts received summed up to 2,309,700 Facebook interactions. The majority of the nutrition information was primarily from social media specifically, Youtube (40%), followed by news (39%), and lastly, from articles (21%). The majority of the authors were identified as journalists (56%) followed by health professionals (23%), others (health and fitness coaches) (13%), celebrities (5%), and lastly, Registered Nutritionist-Dieticians (3%). Among the identified primary sources of nutrition information of the selected popular local nutrition-related Facebook posts,
findings have shown that only a minority (3%) of this online nutrition information used a local government dietary guideline as a reference for their dietary advice. A majority (59%) of the nutrition information possess at least one (1) contradictory dietary advice against a specific NGF category on the data table. On the other hand, it was observed that nutrition information having no contradictory dietary advice against NGF (41%)is lesser. On average, only 4 out of 10 nutrition information from popular nutrition-related Facebook posts were aligned with the local food-based dietary guideline, Nutritional Guidelinesfor Filipinos. Overall, this study showed that there are existing nutrition-related Facebook postscontaining nutrition information and dietary advice having contradictory recommendations against the dietary guidelines of the Nutritional Guidelines for Filipinos.