Gaining a deeper understanding of nutrition using social networks and user-generated content

Using user-generated content (UGC) on Twitter, the present study identifies the main themes that revolve around the concept of healthy diet and determine user feelings about various foods. Using a dataset of tweets with the hashtag “#Diet” or “#FoodDiet” (n = 10.591), we first use a Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) model to identify the food categories most discussed on Twitter. Then, based on the results of the LDA model, we apply sentiment analysis to divide the identified tweets into three groups (negative, positive and neutral) based on the feelings expressed in corresponding tweets. Finally, the text mining approach is performed to identify foods according to the feelings expressed about those in corresponding tweets, as well as to derive key indicators that collectively present the UGC-based knowledge of healthy eating. The results of the present study show that among the foods most negatively perceived in the UGC are bacon, sugar, processed foods, red meat, and snacks. By contrast, water, apples, salads, broccoli and spinach are evaluated more positively. Furthermore, our findings suggest that the collective UGC knowledge is lacking on such healthy foods as fish, poultry, dry beans, nuts, as well as yogurt and cheese. The results of the present study can help the World Health Organization (WHO), as well as other institutions concerned with the study of healthy eating, to improve their communication policies on healthy products and preparation of balanced diets.