Education and Diet in the Scientific Literature: A Study of the Productive, Structural, and Dynamic Development in Web of Science

Abstract

Nutrition-related education is necessary to protect and improve the health status of schoolchildren and to minimize the risk of future diseases. The objective of this research was to analyze the trajectory and transcendence of the concepts “education” and “diet” in the Web of Science literature. The methodology focused on bibliometry, analyzing both the performance and the structural and dynamic development of the concepts through a co-word analysis. A total of 1247 documents were analyzed, and the results show that scientific production experienced a turning point in 2009, in comparison to the level of production reported in previous years. The medium of papers and the language of English were the most common. In relation to the research topic, before 2014, scientific production focused on medical and disease-related aspects; however, since 2014, it has focused on disease prevention and feeding. It was therefore concluded that the theme “diet and education” has been researched for more than 20 years, although it is only in the last decade that it has become more relevant—particularly studies focusing on disease prevention and the type of food, specifically fruit, which is presented as the most outstanding issue for researchers in this field of knowledge.