Are we talking about food? Journalists’ speech and content analysis of popular news

Healthy eating is one of the main themes of health promotion and source of journalistic information. The research analyzes the content of a popular Rio de Janeiro regional newspaper and the discourse of the collective subject of its journalists. With a quantitative, descriptive and exploratory methodology, it was observed that the paper focuses on the effects of specific foods and recommendations of the Dietary Guidelines for the Brazilian Population, and prioritizes information on in natura foods, to the detriment of the ultra-processed ones. There is, however, little room for commensality and predominance of the voice of experts. The journalists’ speech confirms the findings in the print and highlights that part of the texts analyzed is configured as service journalism with aspects related to health promotion.