Free Online Course from EIT Food: The Truth Behind Food Headlines

EIT Foo offers a free online course on food and nutritdion: the truth behind food headlines.

Course background:

Due to conflicting messages from the media, it’s becoming harder to know what to believe when it comes to following a healthy diet and lifestyle.

On this course, you’ll compare how nutrition and health topics are handled by the media and science.

You’ll be encouraged to think critically about the information behind media headlines and come to your own conclusions about what’s good for you.

You’ll explore the psychology of why we’re easily influenced by headlines and learn about different types of biases, like confirmatory and availability bias.

You’ll also learn how to find reliable information online and identify unreliable health studies.

This course is intended for:

This course is designed for anyone who is losing trust in media headlines about how what we eat affects our health and who wants to get to the truth.

Course duration:

2 hours per week for 3 weeks.

Course topics:

• How to analyse a headline by understanding the biases that we, as readers, bring to our understanding of food and nutrition stories.
• Become familiar with the journalist’s perspective, the agenda behind the story and the hooks used to make readers interested.
• Discover how to find out about the original science the story is based on and understand how to interpret the results of the research.
• Learn about the regulations surrounding food and nutrition and where to find reliable sources of information.
• Understand the processes of publishing scientific articles.
• Use tools that help identify unreliable sources of information.

Course objectives:

By the end of this course learners will be able to:

1. Interpret why the media is so interested in reporting about food & nutrition, why the 'advice' changes so rapidly and the part we play in that, as readers.
2. Explore the hierarchy of scientific evidence and judge for yourself whether you believe an example headline.
3. Explore the biases you bring to what you read and gain a perspective into journalists' agendas which influence how they present scientific evidence.
4. Identify how to find the original research, how to interpret scientific terms and make sense of statistics.
5. Discuss where to obtain the information you can trust about food & nutrition and use tools that help identify unreliable studies.

Course costs:

Learner can join this course for free and get access to it for 5 weeks.

Or upgrade this course for $44 and gets:

• Access to this course for as long as it’s on Future Learn.
• Access to this course’s tests as well as a print and digital Certificate of Achievement once he/she is eligible.

Or buy unlimited for $ 259.99 for one year and gets:  

• Access to this course, and hundreds of other FutureLearn short courses and tests for a year.
• A printable digital Certificate of Achievement on all short courses once they are eligible.
• The freedom to keep access to any course he/she has achieved a digital Certificate of Achievement on, for as long as the course exists on Future Learn.
• The flexibility to complete own choice of short courses in learner’s own time within the year.

About EIT Food:

EIT Food is Europe’s leading food innovation initiative, with the aim to create a sustainable and future-proof food sector, funded by European Institute of Innovation and Technology (EIT).

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