In this issue
The poetry and politics of nutrition
Visual material for Fabio Gomes's last column this month: the Brazilian poet
Renata Bomfim; the 'flag of Cokeistan'; Chilean President Sebastián Piñera
After 15 successive issues of our website, we publish the final column by Fabio Gomes this month. His voice has a wide range, for he believes that nutrition is poetic and also political. Three examples from his column this month are as follows. He quotes Brazilian verse that is in love with food, as written by Renata Bomfim (above left). He denounces the hanky-panky of transnational food and drink manufacturers, symbolised by the 'flag of Cokeistan' (above middle). He tracks the occasional successes of public interest organisations fighting to restrict advertising of ultra-processed products to children, in this case in Chile, hopefully with the formal support of President Sebastián Piñera (above right). Also, his 'Joke of the Month' in this column is about the new smash functional food hit, Meat Water, in a convenience store near you soon.
Fabio is not lost to us. He is membership secretary of the Association, and is a member of the publications committee responsible for our Rio2012 congress – see the stories above this one. Also, he is studying for a PhD. Oh yes, and plus, he has a full-time job. You may be reading some more provocations and entertainments by Fabio on this website soon, even if not in the form of a regular column.
Big pictures
Nutrition journals typically do not use evocative photographs and other visuals, as Fabio and our other columnists do, and as we do on our website and in World Nutrition. Perhaps there are two reasons for this. One is that the use of colour is more expensive when publications are printed – not on-line, though. But the main reason probably is that current conventional nutrition sees pictures as not 'scientific'. Their content cannot be quantified, except in terms of dimensions and pixels and such-like 'metrics'. For somewhat similar reasons, as Carlos Monteiro points out in his WN commentaries last and this month, the 'scientific' approach detaches nutrients from food, and detaches food from meals. There again, in the opinion of Claudio Schuftan, elegantly argued in his column this month in the form of a letter addressed to a young person thinking of entering the profession, nutrition – at least, that part of nutrition concerned with public health – is political.
Clinical nutrition, by insisting on a dessicated approach, excluding emotions and values, has lost its way. It has, as the phrase goes, painted itself into a corner. By itself, knowledge drives out wisdom. This website, with its columns and home page stories, is designed to appeal to our sense of reason, and to the other senses that make us human, and enable us to make the most reliable judgements. Meanwhile, we will miss Fabio. In the Brazilian word that means a felt sense of loss, and more besides, saudades!
Impact, pictures and jokes
There's no need to say more about our Rio2012 congress here. Please see the various home page items this month, and from now on every month. Instead, here is a brief account of the progress of World Nutrition and its impact.
Last year, beginning with the launch of WN, from May to September our faithful statistics recorder (yes, even we appreciate some metrics) showed that our site plus WN was averaging around 10,000 page sessions every month. ('Hits' were about ten times that amount). In October this number doubled, mainly because we published the first of Carlos Monteiro's commentaries on ultra-processing in our November issue, which went on-line on 30 October. Page sessions rocketed, crucially because of the support of Carlos's commentary by Marion Nestle and Michael Pollan in the US, on their own potent websites and tweets. Figures from then to this April, including volume downloaded, are:
| Impact of World Nutrition | ||
| Month | Page sessions | Downloaded |
| September | 9,500 | |
| October | 19,500 | |
| November | 34,500 | 10.40 Gb |
| December | 27,000 | 5.30 |
| January | 15,750 | 2.77 |
| February | 22,750 | 3.93 |
| March | 26,750 | 6.18 |
| April | 22,500 | 3.41 |
The disparity between December and January is because there were two 'surges' in December resulting in the January issue being on-line and promoted in the US twice in that month.
So since October last year our page sessions have more than doubled, from around 10,000 a month to what is now well over 20,000 a month. Page sessions come from around 90 countries and territories, including around 25 in Asia and 25 in Europe. Roughly half the sessions originate from the US. Detailed analysis of our statistics shows that this increase remains driven principally by WN, and within WN mainly by the ultra-processing commentaries, although leading home page stories and other WN contributions also attract a lot of sessions. A total of 250,000 for the year of 2011 seems feasible.
This quantity seems gratifying. Is it? Should we be aiming for ten times the amount of page sessions? Or, as some might argue, is a relatively high number of sessions evidence that we have dumbed down? In response, we have plenty of evidence of quality impact, from colleagues in UN agencies, national governments, their agencies, and from other policy-makers. Michael Latham's May commentary 'The great vitamin A fiasco', together with its accompanying editorial and subsequent correspondence in June and July is a case in point. So is Carlos Monteiro's initial November commentary: 'The big issue is ultra-processing', its accompanying editorial, and subsequent commentaries to date. These and other WN contributions, together with leading home page stories, are having an impact on public policy.
We use the word 'impact' deliberately. In the May issue of our sister journal Public Health Nutrition, editor-in-chief Agneta Yngve and the PHN deputy editors, publish an editorial on the issue of the 'impact factor' also known as IF(1). This, as readers will know, measures the number of times any scientific journal paper is quoted by any other journal recognised as scientific. This metric might be dismissed with derision as laughably hermetic, were it not for the fact that the careers of research scientists increasingly depend on accumulating impact factor 'points'. The idea is that the more quantity, the more quality. This is a convenient notion, because it evades the need to think, in evaluating the work of scientists.
Thus, suppose that a team of research scientists impresses top civil servants and other heavy-hitting officials, as a result of a series of discussions supported by books, reports, other 'grey literature' not subjected to formal peer review, and unpublished papers, such that national public policy changes, in the public interest? The effect on the careers of the team would be zero. Or actually negative, since the time could have been spent accumulating impact factor points.
Agneta Yngve and her colleagues also point out that the impact factor game works in favour of extremely specialist journals, and against journals with a broad field. This means that a research science team hunting for points is liable to scorn PHN, current IF a laudable 2.749, and such-like journals, in favour of Reviews of Clinical Subcellular Nanonutrigenomics (not a real journal, we believe, but you never know) whose very narrow focus might of itself guarantee a whopping IF of 10+.
This brings us back to World Nutrition. Formally it is an outlaw journal. It does not go in for external peer review, without which publications remain in official obscurity. Its formal impact is therefore zero. Should the Association, the publishers of WN, care? Should it come into line with other journals? Or should we continue to believe that an annual count of 250,000 page sessions, and evidence of influence on public policy-makers, is enough for now? Indeed, maybe the fact that WN is ideas-driven, pictures, poetry, jokes and all, is what supplies its quality and – dare we say – its impact.
The editors
Reference
- Yngve A, Tseng M, McNeill G, Hodge A, Haapala A. Is the emperor nude? Impact factor or health impact factor? [Editorial]. Public Health Nutrition 2011, 14, 5: 753
