Nutrition and Diet

Poor dietary behaviors are often the underlying causes of many chronic diseases, including various forms of cancer and cardiovascular diseases. Communication plays a key role in the public's ability to gain knowledge of nutrition and diet and adopt healthy dietary behaviors. Research surrounding the nexus of communication and diet has improved the understanding of how communication might be harnessed to enhance consumers' dietary behaviors, as well as the potential dangers of misleading communication. Past and current literature covers several important lines of research in this area, including (1) how consumers process food labels and the relative effects of different formats of food labels, (2) controversial issues in dietary or nutrition-related communication, and (3) innovative ways of communicating dietary or nutrition-related information.