Using Social Media to Rebuild Trust in Nutrition Science: Jessica Knurick, PhD, RDN

Lindsey Smith
Hi, I’m Lindsey Smith, welcoming you to Raise the Line with Osmosis from Elsevier, an ongoing exploration about how to improve health and healthcare.

Today I’m happy to welcome a growing voice on nutrition, food policy, and public health in the United States, Dr. Jessica Knurick.

Her talent for translating complex scientific information into practical guidance for the public has attracted a large following on social media and received the attention of major media outlets such as ABC News, NPR, and People magazine. Dr. Knurick is a registered dietitian with a Ph.D. in nutrition science, specializing in chronic disease prevention.

She spent the last decade working on the wellness side of healthcare through research, clinical care, and working for med-tech startups. Her widely followed social media posts are known for cutting through the noise, debunking misinformation, offering a big-picture perspective on U.S. food systems and policy, and equipping people with the tools to think critically and make informed choices for themselves.

Before becoming a public voice in this space, she served as a researcher and educator at several U.S. colleges. We’re thrilled to have her with us today. Thank you so much for joining us today, Dr. Knurick.

Dr. Knurick

Thanks so much for having me.

Lindsey Smith

So to kick things off, I’d like to hear a little bit more about your background. What first sparked your interest in nutrition and food policy?

Dr. Knurick

Sure, I went into the graduate school kind of not necessarily looking for nutrition specifically. I was really looking to study kind of the prevention of chronic disease, that was really my goal. My master’s degree is in exercise physiology, and then my master’s or my Ph.D., I went into a program that was called physical activity, nutrition and wellness, and it was kind of this very cool interdisciplinary program where we were kind of covering all of the areas of health, you know, nutrition and exercise, and there were people doing sleep research and stress research, and so I was really focused on the nutrition side of things and so the nutrition science side of things. 

My goal was really looking at cardiometabolic disease, so type two diabetes, cardiovascular disease, and what could we do to, you know, help reduce risk for those conditions, and when I got through, when I got really into that research, what I started realizing was we already have a lot of pretty good data on like what can reduce risk for a lot of these chronic diseases, it’s getting, it’s the behavior change aspect of it that really kind of needs work or that we need to figure out better strategies for. And so I was really focused on this thing that we termed easily adoptable strategies, what’s the most, what is the minimum thing that we can get people to do that’s going to make a big measurable impact on their risk reduction, and so, you know, once you kind of get into that world, it becomes pretty impossible to not look at the systems overall and look at kind of how our policies are impacting our food system and our health systems and how some of that is setting people up for failure, so that’s really what kind of like fueled my interest and my focus in that particular area.

Lindsey Smith

Understanding the why behind someone’s path is always really interesting to us. So can you talk about kind of what attracted you into getting into research and what your focus has been in research?

Dr. Knurick

Yeah, I mean, I don’t really have a great story there...you know how when you look backwards and then everything kind of makes sense, but as you’re going through it, it doesn’t really make sense. I am, I’m a first-generation college student and so I actually never even considered going to graduate school. I got a full-ride basketball scholarship to play basketball in undergrad and that’s what paid for my school, and while there actually I was graduating and at the end of it and again, never thought to go to graduate school. And I had a coach, a former coach reach out to me and offered me a graduate assistantship if I came and coached basketball with her, and so that’s what actually got me into a graduate program initially, and I just fell in love with the research process. 

I fell in love with just like asking questions and kind of searching for answers, you know, so I spent two years working in the lab there before going on, you know, I had a wonderful mentor in my master’s program who really urged me to go on and get a Ph.D., and so, because she told me to, I went and got a Ph.D. And yeah, I just, I really just found something, you know, I kind of struggled, not struggled, but I didn’t love undergrad just because it was, it was just, was doing something that I wasn’t super interested in, but when I found kind of like scientific research, I really fell in love with it, and so that’s kind of what fueled me.

Lindsey Smith

That’s awesome. I think that is a great story. And where did you play basketball at? I’ve got to ask.

Dr. Knurick

Florida Atlantic University, FAU.

Lindsey Smith

Great. Well, it certainly worked out from the basketball scholarship to being a grad assistant and doing such important work in research. And speaking of important work, it is my understanding that your experience during your two pregnancies helped inspire your online presence. Can you talk a little bit about your personal journey and how that kind of shaped the work that you’re doing today?

Dr. Knurick

Sure, yeah. I actually got my start on social media way back in 2016. I was a brand-new tenure track professor and there was this new app that was out and my little brother kind of suggested that I go on it and teach nutrition because I was teaching in the nutrition department at the university, and so I said, okay, well I could just go on and like teach my courses essentially like on there, you know, I teach in the classroom and then in the evenings I would go on the app and like teach the same thing and so I did that for a few months and, you know, I tell the story a lot, but it was really frowned upon at that time for academics to go on social media, and so I got a lot of pushback from colleagues, got, you know, a lot of comments that suggested that I shouldn’t be on there, and so, you know, because I was a brand-new tenure trap professor, I didn’t want to hurt my career or anything like that, and so I got off and I stopped making content after a few months, 

Years went by. I had my son in 2019 and then I had my daughter in 2022, and between those two periods of time, I saw a big difference in the information I was being given on social media, and I think probably part of it was COVID was in between those things, and then the release of TikTok was also a big change. TikTok wasn’t really around or I wasn’t on it when I had my son, and so I just saw a lot more misinformation being targeted at me because I was pregnant, a lot more like pregnancy in particular information.

So,  I decided to just go on social media, TikTok is where I started, and just kind of correct some of the nutrition misinformation that I was seeing, because I felt very protective of that particular demographic because I was going through it as well. Even postpartum, I had pretty bad postpartum anxiety with my daughter, and so, I just was really like, I need to make sure that people aren’t being misled by this information. So that’s what brought me to social media, and for a couple of years, my content was pretty focused on that demographic, especially as I was in that life stage, and that’s kind of shifted now in the last year, year and a half, but yeah, that’s what really brought me to social media.

Lindsey Smith

And so you started in 2016, you took a brief hiatus, came back after you had your son and daughter, and let’s kind of talk about social media today. There is a ton of nutritional content on social media and it’s really hard to kind of decipher what is accurate and what is not. Can you tell our listeners, what kind of messages do you think people should be cautious about?

Dr. Knurick

Yeah, I think that social media is, you know, there’s so many pros and so many cons to social media, mean, pros is that you can get endless answers for things, right, like even think of like YouTube, you can look up on YouTube and figure out how to do anything, and so there’s just a lot more information available if you’re seeking it. I think some of the cons are that the algorithms, you know, they are, you know, they’re designed in a way that they want engagement, and so what brings engagement a lot of times are things like fear, things like rage, things like, you know, conspiratorial ideas, and so I think that that lends itself to problems, right?

So if you have somebody on there kind of giving like this long drawn out, nuanced discussion of a topic, that’s not as great for social media algorithms, and so because of that, there’s evidence to show this, that misinformation spreads so much faster than accurate information, and so we’ve kind of created this ecosystem where the vast majority of information, particularly in nutrition science on social media, is inaccurate or misleading, and I think that that can be problematic, so yeah, think there’s some pros, but then there’s some cons on social media as well.

Lindsey Smith

Those are some really good call outs. Personally speaking, it can feel overwhelming when you’re scrolling through social media and everyone seems to be an expert. Speaking of your personal online presence, what do think has helped you be effective in connecting with your audience across all of the platforms?

Dr. Knurick

It’s hard to say. I think that I am genuine in the information that I give, and people can see that, they can see that, like, I care a lot about this particular topic and that, you know, I’ve dedicated my kind of life’s work to this particular topic, and I think that that comes across. I’m not trying to, like, I don’t have a storefront that I’m, like, pushing people into, and I think that that can work to build trust, I’m not saying that no one can have that because I know that people have to make a living, but I do think that that has helped me to build trust with my audience. 

I think I try really hard to source the information that I’m saying, so I’ll provide sources, I always welcome people to fact check the information that I’m saying, which I think kind of is really important right now in this era that we’re living in where there is just so much misinformation and misleading information, and so I think that those things have helped me. I also have figured out kind of like through trial and error, you know, how to make my videos more engaging, so I’ll do a lot of that work kind of on the front end, so I’ll kind of think about the topic that I’m going to write or talk about, write an outline, and then like try to figure out and sort like what’s the best way to present this that’s going to keep people engaged, but also like help them to understand this topic easier, and so, you know, I think there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes work that you don’t see just on, like, a two-minute video, and so I think that that’s been part of it as well. 

But yeah, I think probably mostly just I am quite authentic, like, what I’m saying is what I believe and what I know to be true from the years I’ve been studying these topics.

Lindsey Smith

Yeah, I think those are all really great points. And I think the authenticity is something that sticks out, as a follower and how much intentionality goes into building those connections with your followers. So I know that you’re active on Instagram, Tik ToK, Substack. Do you notice differences in how your audience engage with you on each of those platforms?

Dr. Knurick

Yeah, sure. I’m also on Facebook, which is interesting. So I started there like earlier this year and I’ll say, I mean, there’s just different audiences on them, right, like TikTok tends to skew younger, Instagram is kind of like more my demographic, I would say, and then Facebook skews older. I like just was telling my husband the other day since being on Facebook — which that’s the newest platform I’ve been on — I’ve been called like young lady several times, I would never be called young lady on the other platforms, so there are some things that are different. But I think, you know, Substack is reading, so people are reading my articles and so there’s an opportunity for us to go a lot more in depth, so I think that I probably have a, you know, closer relationship with the people who are reading my content because they’re just spending more time with my content, but I mean, overall, there’s not huge differences, but the platforms are different, like, some things will work really well on Instagram and then they won’t really work on TikTok just because the algorithms are different and the audiences are a bit different.

Lindsey Smith

Interesting and we’ll be sure to be sure to share all of your handles with our audience in the show notes as well with us moving forward. So today in today’s world, there’s a growing push for trustworthy voices in health and nutrition. Are you seeing any signs that this kind of content is gaining momentum?

Dr. Knurick

I mean, I can really only speak to myself personally. I’m certainly seeing it in the growth of my accounts that there are people who are like, my gosh, I would like to understand more nuanced information, or everybody’s telling me that you can’t trust experts, so I actually want to go to the expert, they’re kind of looking for that. I think that there’s a real need, and I think that this time period is really highlighting the need for science communicators that has kind of like not been thought of as a role for a very long time, you know, scientists generally are not the best communicators, they speak in a language that’s not really accessible to people and write in a language that’s not really accessible to people and publish their work behind paywalls that are not really accessible to people, and so I think that we’re recognizing more and more this really important role of science communicators and so we’re seeing that happen more and more. 

And not only just science communicators, because we’ve always had great science communicators in our public health agencies, but they’ve published work largely in places people don’t really go on websites that people don’t really visit too often, you know, our physicians and things will visit those websites, but for better or worse, people are going to social media for their information, and so that’s where we need science communicators and educators also to be going and experts in their fields to also be going to also be making content, and so I do find that there is kind of a need for it right now and a hunger for it. I’m always like urging people to kind of like get into this and like if you have an area of expertise, like come and set the record straight for people as well, because I do think there’s an opportunity right now to do that.

Lindsey Smith

That’s really helpful context things for sharing it and kind of on the flip side of that with that growing concern of misinformation, when people are faced with those competing claims, especially online, it can be tough to know what’s credible and what’s not. What strategies would you recommend our audience in sorting fact from fiction?

Dr. Knurick

Yeah, there’s some things to look out for that are kind of red flags on social media with content, right, usually, if you have somebody who is a scientist or somebody who’s an expert in their field, their goal is not to scare you, their goal is not to, like, make fear-based content, and if there is kind of something that’s a bit, like, nerve-racking or scary, they will always put it in context and then offer a solution, generally, and so when you see videos that start with something very scary, right, like, are you poisoning your kids, and then they go on to talk about why you’re poisoning your kids, and then they don’t put it in context at all, so they don’t talk about dose, they don’t talk about the research, they don’t give any evidence for what they’re saying, that’s usually a red flag for me, so, again, you’re not going to see that from people who are being genuine or who are experts in their fields. 

And oftentimes when you see those kinds of things, it’ll be like, scare you, talk about it, sell you something, right, so that will sell you a solution at the end of it, so usually that’s a good thing to look out for too, that, you know, potentially this was misleading information to ultimately sell me something on the back end. 

There’s also some techniques that are used quite often that I see people conflating correlation with causation, so they’ll take two things that are correlated or, you know, they increase at the same time and then they’ll suggest that one of those things causes the other when there’s no causal evidence for that and then generally sell you something on the back end, so kind of looking out at that. 

One other thing that they do a lot is they’ll take like one mechanism. I did a video recently where there was someone doing a video on how drinking watermelon juice was enough to protect your skin from the sun and so you didn’t need sunscreen, and so I kind of went through and used what she said and used the fact that like if you eat pickles, pickles have vitamin K and did like this whole trajectory of how then that protects your teeth from cavities and you no longer need to brush your teeth, so my goal with that was demonstrating how that one mechanism is true — pickles do have vitamin K and vitamin K is needed to, you know, create osteocalcin — but the end result is not true, right, you still need to brush your teeth, you can’t just eat pickles to brush your teeth. So I think looking out for those types of things, and it’s kind of like a media literacy and science literacy thing, can be really helpful because those are used quite often on social media, and again, generally to sell you something on the back end.

Lindsey Smith

Those are really practical suggestions and two big points I took away of those red flags were making sure that it’s evidence-based and to be on the lookout if they are trying to sell you something. So I want to switch gears a little bit and talk about Osmosis. We are a teaching company and we love to fill knowledge gaps. Is there a topic that you think Osmosis should make a video on to fill a gap that is of particular concern or of interest to you?

Dr. Knurick

Yeah, I mean, I’m very interested in just like policy and determinants of health and how something like food policy is a determinant of health because I think that people don’t connect to those things at all. I have this dream even to like create these little videos to show how like one thing impacts another, so that’s what I would say is kind of like talking through how that happens, like an example is corn syrup, like why does the United States use high fructose corn syrup in so much of its food? We have enacted policies that have made it so that we grow tons of corn in this country, right, we subsidize corn, we created through policy these large agribusinesses that produce monocultures and one of those monocultures is corn, and so we produce a lot of corn in this country and because of that corn is a cheap input for foods, and so these corporations, because we live in a capitalist economy that tries to maximize profit and growth, these corporations are trying to reduce cost, and so they’re going to use those cheaper inputs, which are sugar sourced, so the cheaper sugar source is corned. 

Whereas other countries, like in European countries, they don’t grow corn like we do and so they grow beet sugar, so they use beet sugar for their sugar usually, we use corn for our sugar because we grow corn so well. And also we’ve put, you know, tariffs and we’ve put quotas on the amount of other types of sugar that are allowed here because we want to protect American farmers and protect our corn supply, so I think those types of things are very interesting to just kind of highlight, well, this is why we use high fructose corn syrup so often in our products. And that helps to kind of identify, well, what would we have to change to change some of those things? 

And that’s just one example, but there’s so many different policies that translate into health outcomes that I think when I first started talking about this, I would get a lot of pushback and people say, like, nutrition is not political, food is not political, and I don’t really get that anymore because I talk so much about how policy impacts nutrition and health, but yeah, I think that a lot of people don’t connect those dots and that’s a really important thing to do.

Lindsey Smith

Those are, those are really great ideas. I appreciate you bringing those up, we will be sure to pass that along to our content team, because I think you’ve clearly pointed out an area that we need to give more focus, we have many students and early career health professionals in our audience today. And I wanted to ask you, what’s your advice is to them about meeting the challenges of this moment and approaching their career in healthcare today.

Dr. Knurick

Huh, well, I would say, I’d say a couple things. I’d say one, hold on to your curiosity, I think that that’s what gets us into these fields, and what’s really cool about science is it’s constantly evolving and we’re constantly learning new things, and the best practitioners are the ones who stay open to new information and new data and, you know, resisting oversimplified answers because it can be easy to kind of like lean into that. Obviously if you’re working with patients or clients, you have to provide them with answers, but just being open to the idea that things might change, particularly in nutrition science, because I call this a baby science, our understanding of topics is evolving, and that’s actually quite interesting, and I look at it as a pro… that’s the scientific method in action and not necessarily a con. 

And then I’d say the other thing is definitely this understanding that it’s not just all about individual choice, so you might have a patient come in who, you know, is not making what we would consider like the best decisions or choices for their own health, but we have to understand that individual choices are made within systems, and so advocating for your patients from an individual choice perspective is wonderful, but also advocating for them from a systems perspective and looking at, okay, well, how are we setting up our systems in this country, our food system, our healthcare system, our environmental policies, our built environment? Are people even able to access like parks, safe parks and walkability and bike paths and things like that? So are we setting people up for failure or are we setting them up for success? 

Because that’s what we can do from a policy perspective is create systems that put the most people in the position to succeed versus putting the most people in the position to fail, so understanding that those social determinants of health are really truly important to understanding kind of your patient or your client’s health, overall health, and advocating for both.

Lindsey Smith
Such great advice. Just to play that back one more time, hold on to your curiosity, stay open to new information that things will evolve and that it’s not all about the individual choice, some of these issues are influenced from a systems perspective. So thank you so much for sharing that with our audience. Before we wrap up today’s episode, I wanted to give you an opportunity to cover anything that we didn’t that maybe we should have.

Dr. Knurick

Hmm. What would I cover? I guess I would say, something that I’m hopeful for right now is this idea that people are interested in these systems that are impacting their health like never before. I think with this Make America Healthy Again movement, it’s kind of captured in a bipartisan way an interest in our systems and our health outcomes, and what I’m hopeful for is that those of us who have been studying these fields are able to utilize that energy and really educate people on what’s needed to improve the health of Americans, right, so where can we put our focus in the most in order to improve our food system and our healthcare system and all of these systems that again are kind of set up for us to fail right now and make them work better for us as people instead of the way that many of them work today.

Lindsey Smith

That is a great point to end on. A big thank you to Dr. Jessica Knurick for sharing your insights and passion for improving the public understanding of nutrition and food policy. Thank you so much for being with us.

Dr. Knurick

Thanks so much for having me.

Lindsey Smith

And that’s all for today’s episode of Raise the Line. Dr. Knurick’s work is a powerful reminder of how science communication can empower healthier choices and drive meaningful change in our food systems. If you’re interested in exploring more of Dr. Knurick’s content, we’ll share her Instagram, TikTok and Substack handles in the show notes.

I’m Lindsey Smith. Thanks for checking out today’s show. Remember to do your part to raise the line and strengthen the healthcare system. We’re all in this together.