Webicina adds a nutrition section
Berci Mesko, creator of Webicina.com, added a guide to nutrition resources on the web.
Webicina’s mission is
“… to help empowered patients and medical professionals use the web as efficiently as possible because quality medical information must be accessible for everyone for free.”
So what’s in it?
Berci includes links to news sources, blogs, people, and more. Below are links to each section.
http://www.webicina.com/nutrition
There is also a section called PeRSSonalized Nutrition: http://www.webicina.com/perssonalized/?cat=42. You can view recent journal articles, news, blog posts, or tweets related to nutrition and somewhat customize them.
A few of us on Twitter have suggested some of these Twitter users and blogs as evidence-based sources of nutrition information, but if you have others that may deserve to be on the list, the contact information is listed on the previous link.
“Top 10 rules for writing a critical blog”
Periodically, I want to highlight examples of online debates, done publicly via social media. It is important to see how disagreements between bloggers are presented in effective or in many cases ineffective ways. If you plan on or already have started a blog, being prepared for the inevitable disagreement can make it less stressful. Not everyone deserves to be engaged, especially if they fail to use proper logic, patience, and etiquette.
In this instance, a blogger, Drew, disagreed with Yoni Freedhoff’s criticism to Canada’s Food Guide. While I attempted to follow the discussion that ensued in Drew’s comment section, deletions made it difficult to follow. But what I liked seeing is Yoni’s 10 rules for blogging using the debacle as an example:
http://www.weightymatters.ca/2010/02/top-10-rules-for-writing-critical-blog.html
Bing-ing nutrition data and recipes to one search
You likely have heard of Bing through their heavy advertising campaign. If not, Bing is a search engine; Microsoft’s answer to Google’s dominance in search. Though right now there are not many reasons to switch from Google if you are used to it, Bing is adding some interesting features that may be of use to some health enthusiasts.
First, if you regularly read the blog you have seen some of the nutrition related calculations WolframAlpha can do. Recently Bing partnered with WA and added the ability to do WA queries through Bing. So searching for particular health related data (or any subjects WA can do) on Bing will show an answer calculated by WA. Though some of the questions need to be phrased very specifically to get a calculation, this will only get better as WA improves.
Second, Bing now shows recipes when searching for foods from websites such as epicurious.com, MyRecipes.com, and more into one list. Bing also compares recipe calorie and fat content between recipes, and clicking on each shows Ingredients, Directions, and more detailed Nutritional Information. Even better, on the left hand side there are a number of filtering options to narrow your search to find specific recipes. You can filter by rating, cuisine, convenience, occasion, main ingredient, course, and cooking method. See the video below.
Both features give Bing an edge on Google in the race to a semantic web. As search engines improve in their ability to identify data, they become more useful as information sources.
Blogs as a supplement to research papers
Today, researchblogging.com announced that it has been incorporated into article-level metrics at PLOS. As I have blogged about researchblogging before, it is a great website for capturing credible interpretations of research. Now when a blog post covers a paper published in PLOS, it will appear on the metrics page.
Blogs complement research nicely to give concise summaries of new published papers, and as more and more scientists get online to blog, they are even becoming more accepted as references in peer reviewed publishings.
There are some great health writers who post to researchblogging, I highly recommend subscribing to the health category RSS feed, or starting an evidence based blog yourself to contribute.
“Smarter Food: How Social Media is Making Our Cities Tastier”
Via Mashable: “Smarter Food: How Social Media is Making Our Cities Tastier” by Josh Catone; I recommend reading this article for great examples of how select social tools may change eating habits.
Not all of these changes are necessarily for the better. Research showing a large social influence on health related habits is building, and if these tools promote similar habits, they may further push us away from a movement of fresh, whole foods.
USDA Thanksgiving Food Safety Live Facebook Chat
Via http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=175299945562:
Today (Thursday) at 3:00PM ET
“The USDA’s Food Safety and Information Service’s (FSIS) food safety education staff will connect with consumers during a Live Facebook Chat on Thanksgiving food safety. A food safety expert will be on hand to answer questions about safe holiday food prep.
You can ask questions during the chat or leave them in advance on the USDA Live page at http://www.usda.gov/live or leave a comment on this event notification.
Twitter users can follow the profile @USDAfoodsafety to read all the Turkey Tweets. The tips take you day by day through buying, freezing, refrigerating, thawing, preparing, roasting and serving the bird—and, of course, to storing and eating the leftovers.
You can find all the Turkey Tweets on Twitter by searching or clicking on the #turkeytweets hashtag.”
Would you buy a scale that told the world your weight?
A product called WiFi Body Scale by Withings sends information to a personal webpage and an optional iPhone app, but now they have integrated Twitter, configurable (optional of course) to Tweet your weight/body fat/BMI to your followers from every time you step on it to monthly intervals.
It seems that leveraging online social networks for weight loss support is catching on in some rather unique ways. Although several indirect lines of research would suggest this may help (reviewed in a future post), I await further studies for a clearer conclusion.
(via engadget)
Google Wave at conferences
Twitter is used with increasing frequency at conferences to allow conversations between attendees and with non attendees. But it is difficult to summarize and organize information from conferences with only 140 characters at a time. And it isn’t a good way to do it in an efficient collaborative effort.
Here is an example of how Google Wave was used in an experiment at a conference to “crowd source” writeup summaries of the conference. They quite impressively organized a page with links to individual Waves which were put together live by attendees. They also used it for feedback about the conference.
Because you can see each change made in Wave the instant it happens, it makes collaboration much more efficient.
I still have Wave invites, contact me if you would like to give it a try.
A forum sharing research papers results in an estimated $1.4 million in savings
At university, it was especially frustrating not having access to countless nutrition (and related) journals, despite my degree emphasis in nutritional science. Except for the absurd setup of publishing ownership, it is the main reason I want to see the open access movement catch on. Journals like the Public Library of Sciences are making big impacts on the existing publishing model.
Social media enables the open access movement, and a recent study about a medical forum that contained a section for research article sharing shows the significance. It estimated that for one year, the cost of savings (or loss to the publishers) was $1.4 million, just from one social platform, if the articles were estimated at a value of $30 each.
It is almost inevitable that information moves to a completely free distribution model since the broadness of the internet is simply too great to police.
Must Read: Cultivating the Web: High Tech Tools for the Sustainable Food Movement
When I first posted about the eatwellguide, I managed to miss a great resource there about the part social media plays in food movements.
“Cultivating the Web: High Tech Tools For the Sustainable Food Movement”
The 37 page publication highlights examples of influential websites, organizations, previous nutrition related online movements that have created change, online tools, and more.
Thankfully one of the authors, Leslie Hatfield contacted me about it, and has agreed to author some blog posts here. I look forward to seeing more of her insight!
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Join the Nutrition 2.0 FriendFeed room to further discuss these topics: http://friendfeed.com/nutrition20 -
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Join the Nutrition 2.0 FriendFeed room to further discuss these topics: http://friendfeed.com/nutrition20 -