Resveratrol and Wine: An Overview of Thirty Years in the Digital News

Paula Silva (), María P. Portillo and Alfredo Fernández-Quintela ()
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Paula Silva: Laboratory of Histology and Embryology, Institute of Biomedical Sciences Abel Salazar (ICBAS), Rua de Jorge Viterbo Ferreira 228, 4050-313 Porto, Portugal
María P. Portillo: Nutrition and Obesity Group, Department of Nutrition and Food Science, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), 01006 Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain
Alfredo Fernández-Quintela: Nutrition and Obesity Group, Department of Nutrition and Food Science, University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), 01006 Vitoria-Gasteiz, Spain

IJERPH, 2022, vol. 19, issue 23, 1-14

Abstract: Background: Resveratrol’s health benefits have received wide media coverage. Since resveratrol is usually associated with wine, informative texts about it should be prepared very carefully, since inaccurate website content could easily change people’s wine consumption behavior. This study aimed to assess the quality of informative texts related to resveratrol on science journalism websites. Methods: We analyzed 125 resveratrol posts on Science Daily, WebMD, and EurekAlert! published between 1990 and 2020. Results: A higher number of posts was published in the years in which the number of people looking for information on the internet also increased. The increase can also be related to David Sinclair’s notoriety, a fact that we called the “Sinclair effect”. Most of the posts are replications of universities’ press releases, mainly reporting resveratrol’s health benefits, which resulted from preclinical studies and cannot be translated to humans. Most of them mention wine in the text and some in the title. Conclusions: Wine is usually mentioned in headline resveratrol news, which could potentially influence wine consumption behavior. Scientists must intensify their efforts to communicate with the public to increase people’s health literacy. Online news portals should have science journalists skilled in exploring scientific data and their translation into a simple and accurate language.

Keywords: resveratrol; wine; health communication; health literacy (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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