Digital health literacy and diet quality

The objective of this study was to evaluate the correlation between the level of digital health literacy (DHL) and diet quality (DQ). Information was collected from users of digital social networks through online questionnaires containing sociodemographic data, questions from the Digital Health Literacy Instrument and a 24-hour recall. To verify the correlation between the level of DHL and QD, the Spearman correlation test and the chi-square test were applied for the association between DHL and QD with sociodemographic factors. The diet of 71% of respondents was classified as “needs modification”. There was an association between higher levels of DHL and younger age, higher income and higher education. There was no significant correlation between DHL level and QD. It was observed that sociodemographic factors are significant for the development of digital health literacy. Assessing the reliability of information was the greatest difficulty reported for health searches.