A bad #INFLUENCE

Stop social media damaging your health! Our experts explain who and what you can trust online when it comes to dietary advice...

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Social media can be funny, educational and wacky, but also destructive, even dangerous - including when it comes to our diet.

A quick hashtag search on Instagram shows that diet has hit 78.3 million posts, so it's little wonder our ideas are skewed by what influencers post. The aim for influencers is to get as much engagement as possible, so they will post images and videos that are visually attractive. But it's not real life.

It's a hot topic - a study* of UK social-media influencers and bloggers with over 80,000 followers, found that they gave 'bad diet advice' eight times out of nine. It's concerning news because who hasn't been inspired by perfectly cropped, beautifully lit and mouth-watering plates of food on Insta, Pinterest or Twitter? So, how can we make sure we still enjoy social-media influencers' posts but still gain healthy diet and eating advice?

The psychologist's view