True or false isn't enough: Food Facts adopts UCL tool that rates diet misinformation by its risk to health
Non-profit fact-checker licenses Diet-MisRAT, developed by Alex Ruani at UCL, to catch the half-truths and missing caveats most likely to hurt people.
London, 19 October 2026: Food Facts (foodfacts.org), the non-profit tackling diet and nutrition misinformation, has licensed the Diet-Nutrition Misinformation Risk Assessment Tool (Diet-MisRAT) for use in its fact-checking work. Developed by Alex Ruani at University College London (UCL), the tool's validation research was co-authored with Professor Michael Reiss and Professor Anastasia Kalea and published in Scientific Reports in March 2026.
Most fact-checking asks whether a claim is true or false. Diet-MisRAT asks a different question: how likely is this content to mislead people in ways that could harm their health? It looks at four things: inaccuracy, incompleteness, deceptiveness and potential health harm. It then gives a graded risk rating, from very low to very high.
That matters for nutrition, where much of the most damaging content is not an outright lie. It is a half-truth, a missing caveat or an overhyped claim that sounds reasonable but can push people towards restrictive diets, extreme fasting or unsafe supplement use.
The tool is built on the World Health Organization's approach to assessing hazards, adapted for online information. Its five-round validation and refinement involved around 60 highly experienced nutrition professionals, trainee dietitians, postgraduate nutrition students and testing with generative AI.
Food Facts will use Diet-MisRAT within its fact-checking process to help its editorial team and expert reviewers prioritise the content most likely to cause harm, and to explain to readers why a piece of content is risky, not just whether it is wrong. Every published fact check continues to be researched and reviewed by people.
"Nutrition misinformation rarely looks like a lie. It looks like advice. Alex's work gives us a rigorous, evidence-based way to measure how risky that advice is, so we can focus on the content most likely to hurt people and show our readers exactly where the danger lies."
Robbie Lockie, CEO and Founder, Food Facts
"Food Facts is doing fantastic work tackling misinformation in an area that desperately needs it. I'm delighted to see Diet-MisRAT being put into practice to help focus fact-checking efforts where the risks to people's health are greatest."
Alex Ruani, lead author and developer of Diet-MisRAT, UCL
About Diet-MisRAT
Diet-MisRAT was developed at UCL by Alex Ruani with validation research co-authored with Professor Michael J. Reiss and Professor Anastasia Z. Kalea, published as Development and validation of a tool for detecting misinformation risk in diet, nutrition, and health content (Diet-MisRAT), Scientific Reports (Nature Portfolio), 2026. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-026-40534-2. Diet-MisRAT and its underlying methodology remain the intellectual property of its developer. Food Facts uses the tool under licence.
About Food Facts
Food Facts (foodfacts.org) is a non-profit that fact-checks diet and nutrition claims and helps the public, health professionals and policymakers navigate food misinformation. It is supported by a network of volunteer researchers and an expert advisory board.
Media contacts
Robbie Lockie, Aenya Greene RD and TJ Waterfall RNutr: [email protected]
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