Pandemic Recipes-Nutritional Values of Recipes in Legacy Media

Legacy media are those that existed prior to the advent of the internet. Legacy media have a focus on the needs of specific readership populations. Because of this focus, they remain a trusted source of information for many people. During the COVID-19 pandemic, these media addressed readers' needs for recipes for home food preparation.

To evaluate the accuracy of the recipe descriptions and to compare these to their estimated nutritional value, we examined 182 recipes extracted from 942 food- and nutrition-related articles in a sample of magazines collected from January to December 2020. Because herbs and spices enhance the palatability of foods, are associated with healthier diet patterns, and provide phytochemicals which may have health benefits, we also examined the inclusion of these in the recipes when comparing their nutritional value.

Nutrient comparisons across these groups showed that recipes identified as healthy were the highest in vitamin C, fiber, and potassium and the lowest in cholesterol (p < 0.01). Cocktails were about half the calories per serving as all other recipes, and they were substantially lower in all the nutrients evaluated (p < 0.01) except for sugars (p = NS). An increase in seasonings was associated with higher levels of vitamin A, vitamin C, calcium, potassium, iron, and fiber (p < 0.001). Recipes with added seasonings were also lower in sugar (p < 0.05).

Overall, these results support the hypothesis that recipes in legacy media identified as healthy, as well as those that contained more herbs and spices, were more likely to correspond to healthy diet guidelines.