Is Twitter a secret weapon for improving public health?

For all the useless information on social media—not including your selfies and cat photos, of course—Twitter has provided valuable insight into the eating habits of different communities. Researchers from the University of Utah found that tweets about healthier food and more exercise came from neighborhoods that were, in general, healthier.

Analyzing four million tweets from 2014 to 2015 that contained references to food, researchers found that certain items are mentioned more in healthier communities than those that are relatively unhealthy. Things like coffee, beer and pizza topped the list of most tweeted foods, with chicken being the the only healthy option on the list at No. 7.

In the evaluation of healthy ad unhealthy food mentions, researchers found that tweets from poorer neighborhoods, houses with a larger number of people and places with many fast food restaurants were less likely to tweet about healthy food. By analyzing the differences in tweets, researchers studied the impact of one's environment on eating and exercising behaviors.

"Our data could be telling us that certain neighborhoods have fewer resources to support healthy diets," said Quynh Nguyen, PhD, an assistant professor at the University of Utah College of Health.

This method of analyzing tweets, however, still needs to be fine-tuned. For example, people are more inclined to tweet about a great piece of pizza rather than making fresh cauliflower.

"This is a promising new, cost-effective method for studying the social and environmental influences on health," said senior author Ming Wen, PhD, professor of sociology at the University of Utah.

Researcher did agree on the potential for tweets to provide information about the health of neighborhoods. Healthy communities often mentioned healthy foods and experienced lower rates of chronic conditions.