A new study analysed 50 years all the food words trending in 2015 in major newspapers like the New York Times and London Times, and will now predict a country's obesity level in 2018.
Lead author, Brennan Davis, Associate Professor of Marketing from California State University at San Luis Obispo said that the more sweet snacks mentioned and the fewer fruits and vegetables mentioned in the newspaper, the fatter your country's population would be in 3 years.
But the less often they're mentioned and the more vegetables are mentioned, the skinnier the public will be, he added.
These findings provide public health officials and epidemiologists with new tools to quickly assess the effectiveness of current obesity interventions. If people wished to estimate obesity rates in three years, the best indicator would be what is mentioned in the paper today.
The study is published in the journal BMC Public Health.
