Tufts University in its _Health and Nutrition Letter_ for November 1997 examines the Web to find RELIABLE nutrition information on line. The results can be found in the new Tufts web site: <navigator.tufts.edu>
The following are exerpts from the newsletter.
You WANT TO GO online for some
ideas about how to fit more vegetables
into your diet; or to get some
perspective on whether it's safe to eat
genetically modified foods; or to find
out whether pork is actually as low in fat
as the advertisements suggest. But
where to begin? With an ever-growing
number of food- and nutritionrelated
sites on the World Wide Web, the
Information Superhighway is becoming
congested to the point that finding
accurate and timely particulars on the
whys and how-to's of better eating is
getting increasingly harder rather than
easier.
Sure, you would expect organiza-
tions such as the American Dietetic
Association (www.eatright.org) and
the American Cancer Society
(www.cancer.org) to have reliable
facts and worthwhile links to other
sites, which they do. But how would
you choose between Green Giant
(www.greengiant.com) or Birds Eye
(www.birdseye.com)? Or whether to
learn something about the genetic
modification of food from the Institute of
Food Science and Technology
(www.easynet.co.uk/ifst) or the Institute
of Food Technologists (www.ift.org)? Or
whether to skip the site that is
sponsored by the National Pork
Producers Council (www.nppc.org) in
the belief that it would contain little more
than a hard sell for "the other white
meat?"
Finally, there's a way to find out
without wading through the sites
themselves. The Tufts University School
of Nutrition Science and Policy has
sifted through the clutter by evaluating
some 200 of the most commonly visited
nutrition Web sites-and putting up its
findings on a site of its own so that you
can do one-stop, online nutrition
shopping, if you will. Called Nutrition
Navigator (navigator tufts.edu), it's the
first site to systematically review sites
for accuracy and usability based on
rigorous criteria set forth by nutrition
professionals. It also has a search
engine whereby you can type in a key
word (or group of words) in order to find
reviews of Tufts-evaluated sites that
contain the particular word(s) you've
chosen. From there you can click onto
recommended sites.
"There's almost too much
information out there," says Jeanne
Goldberg, PhD, RD, Director of the Tufts
University Center on Nutrition
Communication. "And at least on the
Internet, it's a totally un-refereed arena.
We wanted to create some order out of
chaos."
That's why you'll learn on Nutrition
Navigator, for instance, that Green
Giant's Web site, with a rating of 19 (out
of a possible 25), does a better job
overall than Birds Eye's (with a score of
16). It has a games section that
"includes some very clever interactive
food and nutrition activities that will
engage both adults and kids." Birds
Eye's pages, on the other hand,
"download so slowly that ... browsing is
difficult."
Nutrition Navigator also gives
higher marks to the site maintained by
Britain's Institute of Food Science and
Technology than to the one sponsored
by the U.S.-based Institute
of Food Technologists, which provides
"authoritative, well-referenced, and carefully
researched" information but makes relatively
few docu- 09 ments available for viewing
online. And-Surprise!-it rates the National
Pork Producers Council site (www.nppc.org)
"Among the Best" because "along with the
expected pork-related nutrition facts, readers
can test their food safety savvy, complete an
'Eat to Compete' health quiz, and e-mail their
nutrition questions to be answered online by
a dietitian."
In 2 years, 800 more sites will be
rated by Tufts for a total of 1,000 site
evaluations. And all site reviews will be
updated regularly.
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Sid Roberts 67/dx3
[log in to unmask] Youngstown, Ohio
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