In our everyday life we use more or less social media. We use it to express ourself in a different way.
Coffee, beer and pizza were the most talked about food and drinks on the social media platform in the US last year, a study found.
Starbucks also featured highly, followed by yet more alcohol - which increases the risk of some types of cancer - in the forms of India Pale Ale and wine.
Shockingly, only one of the 10 most popular mentioned products was deemed 'healthy' - chicken.
BBQ, ice cream and tacos completed the list.
<>Researchers from the University of Utah assessed around 80 million geotagged tweets sent between mid-2014 and mid-2015.They then sorted through them to find 4 million (five per cent) which had mentioned food or drink.
They then categorised them into either healthy options or the opposite.
Researchers also conducted the same process for a range of exercises to determine the most popular.
However, scientists noticed a stark difference when comparing tweets with their socio-economic background.
They found messages from poor areas were less likely to mention healthy foods.
While people living in dense areas were more likely to tweet about fast food.
Twitter has already been used to track health by gauging the prevalence of smoking and finding the source of outbreaks.
But this study was used to determine how the areas people live in can impact their health and well-being.
Lead researcher Quynh Nguyen said: 'Our data could be telling us that certain neighborhoods have fewer resources to support healthy diets.'
The study also found the areas which tweeted more about walking, dancing and running had fewer deaths and lower rates of obesity.
Positive messages towards healthy foods were also related to reduced levels of chronic health conditions.
But experts warn it's too early to draw firm conclusions about what the findings could mean.
Dr Nguyen says twitter users represent just a fraction of the population and are mainly between 18 and 49.
She also said people are more likely to tweet about certain foods than others.
However, the automated algorithms used to sort tweets were only 85 per cent accurate.
For example, initially computers labeled messages about basketball player Stephen Curry as tweets about foods.
But future versions of the programmes will integrate new machine learning, which should improve results, they say.
The study was published online on in the JMIR Public Health and Surveillance.
| The 10 most popular foods | The 10 most popular activities |
|---|---|
| 1. Coffee | 1. Walking | 2. Beer | 2. Dancing | 3. Beer | 3. Dancing | 4. Starbucks | 4. Work-out | 5. IPA | 5. Golf | 6. Wine | 6. Pool (swimming) | 7. Chicken | 7. Hiking | 8. BBQ | 8. Yoga | 9. Ice cream | 9. Swimming | 10. Tacos | 10. Bowling |
0 comments: