What is in the newspaper today can predict how skinny or fat a country’s population will be tomorrow, says new research published in BMC Public Health by Brian Wansink, Professor and Director of the Cornell University Food and Brand Lab, and Brennan Davis, Associate Professor of Marketing from California State University at San Luis Obispo.
According to the study, food words trending today will predict a country’s obesity level by 2018 – just three years from now.
The study, Fifty Years of Fat: News Coverage of Trends that Predate Obesity Prevalence , analysed of all the food words mentioned in The New York Times and The Times of London over the past 50 years and statistically correlated them with each country’s annual Body Mass Index, or BMI, a measure of obesity.
While the number of mentions of sweet snacks was related to higher obesity levels three years later, the number of salty snack mentions was unrelated. Similarly, while the number of vegetable mentions was related to lower levels, the number of fruit mentions was unrelated.
“Newspapers are basically crystal balls for obesity,” said co-author Wansink.
These findings provide public health officials and epidemiologists with new tools to quickly assess the effectiveness of current obesity interventions.
Read the whole report here .