"Detoxify or Die": Qualitative Assessments of Ontario Nutritionists' and Dietitians' Blog Posts Related to Detoxification Diets.

Abstract

While the title Registered Dietitian (RD) is regulated under provincial legislation in Ontario and other Canadian provinces, the title "nutritionist" is not regulated in Ontario, which poses potential risks to consumers who place misguided trust in those proclaiming to be nutrition experts. This is concerning as nutrition is a complex health care discipline and RDs, the recognized providers of credible nutrition information, must be registered with an accredited regulatory college that requires them to have undergone rigorous training, practicum placements, entrance examinations, and continuous professional development. The purpose of this study was to determine if Ontario-based unregulated nutritionists and RDs are providing safe, evidence-based, information regarding detoxification diets. Content from 10 blog posts were qualitatively analyzed using deductive content analysis with predetermined categorization matrices. The results revealed that Ontario nutritionists promoted detox diets and provided unproven, misleading, and potentially harmful information, whereas Ontario RDs did not promote detox diets and provided evidence-based, harm-reducing information. Additionally, conflicts of interest arose only in nutritionists' blog posts. RDs provided credible references for their information while nutritionists did not. Protecting the term "nutritionist" for use exclusively by RDs under provincial legislation would be a positive step towards ensuring Ontarians are receiving the highest quality evidence-based nutrition information.