Understanding and disrupting nutrition-related (mis)information on social media using Bourdieu’s theory of practice

The mass migration to social media for nutrition advice has amplified the health risks of false or decontextualised information. Existing countermeasures such as fact-checking, boosting media literacy and behavioural 'nudges' treat the problem as one of cognitive vulnerabilities. Yet everyday interactions with social media, like scrolling, liking and posting, are mostly practices guided by platform design and social rewards. This conceptual paper reframes nutrition-related misinformation (NRM) through Pierre Bourdieu's theory of practice. We show how the online field of digital food cultures, the capital of likes, follows and sponsorships, and an embodied digital habitus together normalise sensational, influencer-led content while marginalising evidence-based voices. Bringing disparate literatures on NRM, digital food cultures and practice theory into conversation, we map the specific mechanisms that embed misinformation in users' routines - parasocial intimacy, affective storytelling and algorithmic amplification. Recognising practice as the unit of analysis reveals why cognition-focused remedies deliver only modest, context-dependent gains. We propose practice-level interventions that seek to disrupt the field of social media through the voices of resistant health professionals and developing a resistant habitus among users of social media sites.