title: Quality of nutritional information on the Internet in health and disease.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Quality assessment of nutritional information on the internet may prove vital prior to providing public guidance on searching relative information.
  
  
  METHODS
  The most popular web sites on four different topics ("Mediterranean diet", "sports nutrition", "nutrition, dysphagia and children" and "herbs and common cold") were assessed with the use of two validated questionnaires (EQIP and DISCERN).
  
  
  RESULTS
  Medical categories produced significantly lower total quality scores when compared to "Mediterranean diet" and "sports nutrition" categories. (F=7.189, P<0.001). Commercial web pages had a significantly lower credibility score compared to institutional and other web page types (H=17.987, P<0.001). Ranking order of each web page was related to its total quality score (P=0.04) but not to its credibility (P=0.241).
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Monitoring the accuracy, comprehensiveness and consistency of health-related information on the internet is an important public health issue since there are popular web pages that are regarded as of high quality but they do not always provide reliable information. Health professionals and especially dieticians should provide consumer training on how to search for and appraise nutritional information from the internet.
authors.affiliation: Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, Technological and Educational Institute, Crete, Greece ; Institute of Molecular Biology and Biotechnology-FORTH, University of Crete, Heraklion, Greece.
authors.forename: K
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Gkouskou
authors.affiliation: Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, Technological and Educational Institute, Crete, Greece.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Markaki
authors.affiliation: Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, Technological and Educational Institute, Crete, Greece.
authors.forename: M
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Vasilaki
authors.affiliation: Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, Technological and Educational Institute, Crete, Greece.
authors.forename: A
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Roidis
authors.affiliation: Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, Technological and Educational Institute, Crete, Greece ; Deparment of Otolaryngology Head and Neck Surgery, Universtity Hospital of Heraklion, Crete, Greece.
authors.forename: I
authors.initials: I
authors.lastname: Vlastos
keywords: Internet; nutrition; quality of web pages; review