Hello, welcome to day 2 of the media review for the diet trends, linking diet news on traditional news sites with prevalence of it on social media. It seems that the trend for today is all about sugar. Sugar has traditionally been an ingredient of debate, as sugar is in almost everything we eat. Sugar is something that is so common in our food today, and refined sugars are common causes of different diseases in our modern Western culture.

The top story on CBC was on how replacing sugar can give the dieter results much faster than someone who counts calories or controls their portion sizes. The article covers how in the past, doctors have told patients to lose weight by improving their diet in general and exercising more. Apparently, according to new studies, you will lose weight faster if you simply your sugar intake down and consume less sugar.

The top story on New York Times was concerning a federal case in the United States where sugar companies and corn companies are battling it out, concerning the labelling of fructose syrup and cane sugar and how much sides misrepresent the other. The battle and conflicts have a historical past, as it used to be that before, sugar was the bad guy and people switched off of it. Now, high-fructose corn syrup is getting the worse rap. Some scientists are arguing that both are relatively the same in terms of how the body metabolizes it.

The top post on Instagram was a recipe for a sugar free (minus natural sugars in the fruit) smoothie/milkshake that uses a fake sugar Stevia instead of regular sugar. Most of the comments on the post are expressing happiness over the fact that it does not continue refined sugars.

 

The top post on Tumblr was concerning a “fit girl shopping list” which includes no refined sugar or unhealthy things. The list was hash tagged with some telling key words: fitspo, weightless, diet, healthy, amongst others.  This focus on a healthy grocery list suggests to others a ‘right’ way of doing a healthy diet.

Sugar has been advertised in many different ways, and those advertisements have impacts on how we eat. In a study by  Ferguson, C. J., Contreras, S., & Kilburn, M., they demonstrate how the more advertisements for unhealthy food that children are shown, the more they want to consume those foods. However, with the news in the media today about the dangers and controversy surrounding sugar, it is indicted that people will consume less sugar. This is shown and demonstrated in the Instagram and Tumblr posts.

So far, my monitoring has noticed that is a strong link between what the media is telling us, and what our peers are then portraying to us online.

Till tomorrow!

 

-Alyssa

Works Cited

CBC News. “Replacing sugar can yield benefits in just days, study finds,” CBC. Oct 29, 2015, http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/toxic-sugar-dr-lin-1.3292169

Ferguson, C. J., Contreras, S., & Kilburn, M. (2014). Advertising and fictional media effects on healthy eating choices in early and later childhood. Psychology of Popular Media Culture, 3(3), 164-173. doi:10.1037/ppm0000016

Leith, William. “The bitter truth about sugar,” The Telegraph. March 23, 2014, http://www.telegraph.co.uk/lifestyle/wellbeing/diet/9160114/The-bitter-truth-about-sugar.html