About the Project
Reporters Anahad O’Connor and Caitlin Gilbert at The Washington Post, and Sasha Chavkin and Anjali Tsui at The Examination, began a collaboration in the spring of 2023 to explore how the food industry uses its influence to shape nutrition guidance and our personal eating habits.
Those inquiries quickly led to a little-scrutinized corner of the social media world: dietitian influencers who reach millions of viewers every day. The Post and Examination collaboration resulted in two investigative articles that showed how food companies are partnering with dietitian influencers to tout industry-friendly food messages, mislead consumers and reframe the debate around unhealthy eating and poor nutrition.
For our first investigation — The food industry pays ‘influencer’ dietitians to shape your eating habits” — we created a database that included more than 6,000 pieces of content from TikTok and Instagram.
- Our analysis found that many dietitian influencers flouted disclosure rules and didn’t clearly reveal that their posts were sponsored by food and beverage companies.
- We uncovered a coordinated social media campaign by American Beverage, an industry group representing Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and other companies, which had enlisted dietitian influencers to counter health concerns about aspartame recently raised by the World Health Organization.
- Our reporting found that companies and industry groups paid dietitians for industry-friendly content that ran counter to decades of scientific evidence about nutrition.
- Without clearly disclosing their sponsors, influencers encouraged viewers to freely eat candy and ice cream, downplayed the health risks of junk foods and dismissed health warnings about aspartame.
- Our review found that among 68 dietitians with 10,000 or more social media followers on TikTok or Instagram, about half had promoted food, beverages or supplements to their combined 11 million followers within the last year.
Our second investigation, documented in “As obesity rises, Big Food and dietitians push ‘anti-diet’ advice,” focused largely on the efforts by General Mills to co-opt and distort the language of the anti-diet movement to promote its products.
- We found that some food companies were enlisting the help of so-called “anti-diet” influencers to reframe the narrative around healthy eating, obesity and weight loss.
- Our analysis of 6,000 social media posts by 68 registered dietitians showed that roughly 40 percent of these influencers, with a combined reach of more than 9 million followers, repeatedly used anti-diet language.
- We reported how General Mills, maker of Cocoa Puffs and Lucky Charms cereals, has launched a multipronged campaign that capitalizes on the teachings of the anti-diet movement and blames its critics for “food-shaming.” It has showered giveaways on registered dietitians who promote its cereals online with the hashtag #DerailTheShame, and sponsored influencers who promote its sugary snacks.
The meticulous analysis and ground breaking reporting behind this investigation marks the first time anyone has documented how the food industry has enlisted trusted dietitians to influence how we eat.
