Abstract
The professionals charged with delivering important food and nutrition science information to a public ever more hungry for science-based guidance have faced increasing challenges in an increasingly complex communications environment. The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, in December 2016, issued a report assembling what has been published about science communication, both of emerging and contentious scientific issues such as vaccine and global climate science. The report outlines "Science of Science Communication" research gaps and urges a systems approach toward understanding the many factors that influence how both communicators and their intended audiences perceive and process science information. Although the Academies' report deals with a broad range of scientific issues, the authors here focus on communication of health and nutrition science, in the context of the report. Discussed are such influences on perception and understanding as preexisting individual and group psychological, economic, political, social, cultural, and media- or value-related mind-sets. Noting the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine report's repeated call for researchers to work more closely with communication practitioners, the authors of this article offer some insight into the effect that rapidly evolving social and other digital media may have on the various perceptual influences.