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By Pattison Media

Food Truth Project examines social media impacts

Apr 2, 2026 | 10:28 AM

A cofounder of the Food Truth Project warns social media has become the perfect breeding ground for the circulation of misinformation about food and nutrition.

Farm and Food Care and Canadian Food Focus, in partnership with the Food Truth Project, hosted a webinar that looked at how social media algorithms amplify misinformation about food and why it matters for public health, consumer trust and the future of our food system.

Montreal-based food scientist Veronica Jaramillo is a co-founder of Food Truth. She said most people are accessing information about food through the internet and social media. She questions whether we have ever asked ourselves about what decides what information these social media platforms will be given. The answer is the algorithm.

“If you’ve never heard of the algorithm before, it is essentially a set of rules that sorts, prioritizes, and delivers our content to us. The goal of these social media platforms is to keep us on their platform as long as possible, so they’re going to curate the algorithm to make sure that we stay on the platform as long as possible,” Jamarillo said. “To do this, they track our engagement.”

Jamarillo said everytime we are are on social media, algorithms track how long we watch certain videos, the topics of those videos, what we like, our age, our gender, our location, and our socioeconomic background.

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All of the data is fed into the algorithm, which then spits out content that it thinks we would like.

“It costs nothing to go on Facebook or Instagram, but the currency is our attention span. The content that evokes very strong emotions, like fear, guilt, disgust, worry and very over simplified fast and easy to digest information, that gets the most attention and the algorithm knows that,” she said.

Jamarillo added it’s going to take that content and boost it in other people’s algorithms hoping that they’re going to stay on the platform longer as well.

She said mis-influencers will gain a large following by propagating unreliable food and nutrition information and popularity gives the illusion of expertise which they’ll use to sell their products.

During the webinar, Jaramillo shared a video of what appeared to be an Amish woman, however, it was A.I generated and not real.

Jaramillo said people should pause and think before sharing any social media food content posts. She says 75 per cent of these posts are shared following just a quick look at the headline or a single view of the video.

For more on the Food Truth Project is available here.

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alice.mcfarlane@pattisonmedia.com