Abstract
As much as the field of health promotion has benefited mightily in the past decades from Internet abetted access to unlimited health content, our field is also experiencing the best of times and the worst of times. When it comes to our core work of supporting healthy decision-making for individuals, organizations, and communities, the unfettered, voluminous material available has, unimaginably, made facts seem fickle. I am delighted to have Dr Marion Nestle’s insights as a preamble to this special issue of the journal. Educating about nutrition and food choices, in particular, has become as much a contest between competing interests and commercial forces, as it has been a discipline guided by credible professionals. I am all in on our Constitution’s First Amendment, and having live abroad, I am endlessly smitten with America’s robust expression and freedom of speech. But I wonder if our forefathers had seen the Internet coming whether they might have added more stipulations about telling the truth. This special issue of the American Journal of Health Promotion is dedicated to nutrition research where new discoveries, and impassioned scientists like Dr Nestle, provide the light needed to grow fresh knowledge. Exposing both academics and the public to well-done studies about how food choices are influenced is ever more crucial in an era of alternative facts about what constitutes healthy eating.
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