Are you wasting your AI potential? Learn 10 strategies to maximize it.

Are you maximizing your AI potential?

How well do you understand the potential of artificial intelligence to help you be a more effective and efficient professional?

As we revise Communicating Nutrition: The Authoritative Guide and create the 2^nd edition, we are incorporating best practices for using artificial intelligence. The first edition never mentioned AI. Not once.

The second edition has more than 70 mentions of AI, detailing how to use it responsibly, ethically, and for its maximum potential.

This post will share 10 strategies for maximizing your use of AI, excerpted from the current first draft of the 2^nd edition of the book. Note: words in italics are added to the excerpts.

Strategy 1: Employ AI to enhance your capabilities – as featured in Chapter 1:

Throughout the book, we will explore how to leverage artificial intelligence to make your communication more effective and efficient while expressing your unique voice, creativity, empathy, and critical thinking abilities. AI might be used to streamline and enhance communication efforts. Employing well-designed prompts, AI can make tedious tasks a breeze and free up time and resources for deeper thinking, research and fact-checking, and more intentional human interaction and relationship building. AI does not replace human intelligence, judgment, or human interaction, but can support it. Communication remains a human activity, connecting people and ideas.

Strategy 2: Engage AI to Listen, Teach, and Care – as described in Showcase 2:

AI supports participatory nutrition, enhancing data systems, personalizing interventions, and forecasting needs. It is not merely a trendy technology; it is an innovative partner in communicating nutrition effectively. When used thoughtfully and ethically, AI enables inclusive, future-ready classrooms where educators and learners grow together. In corporate and clinical settings, AI can strengthen nutrition communication, from wearable apps to corporate platforms, empowering professionals to make a meaningful impact with their message.

Yet, AI must remain accountable. Every algorithm should prompt us to ask: Who is being heard? Who determines what matters? Across classrooms, clinics, and continents, AI is not replacing human connection; it is reshaping how we listen, learn, and lead in nutrition care.

Strategy 3: Use AI to help locate scientific research – as in Chapter 4:

Artificial Intelligence (AI) tools are available for nutrition professionals to locate scientific and related nutrition information. While AI tools are now available to identify scientific information online, it is best practice to use academic search tools or databases first. How a question or search is framed within AI may impact what information is provided by AI, thus potentially limiting the effectiveness. Other limitations of AI in accessing scientific research include bias in the content provided because the information is limited to what’s openly available, and inaccurate or invalid content. When using any AI tools, it is imperative that you check your results for accurate and valid content. Also, any use of AI in the search, summary, or writing process must be properly disclosed. 

Strategy 4: Maintain your credibility when using AI – as in Chapter 5:

Why this matters – Consumers increasingly encounter nutrition content shaped by artificial intelligence (AI), from generative chatbots to engagement-driven social feeds. AI can amplify low-credibility messages, and generative tools can hallucinate, producing confident but incorrect text or fabricated citations. Treat AI as assistive, not authoritative. In this chapter, you will learn how to…

1.      Triage with tools - verify with sources - cite and disclose appropriately

2.      Define the pitfalls (and how to counter them)

3.      Use a 6-question mini-check for any AI-shaped claim

4.      Include language to use with the public

“AI can help us find studies faster, but it can also be wrong. I verify claims in the original research and trusted guidelines before I make recommendations.”

Strategy 5:  Wisely Use AI to Interpret Nutrition Research – as in Chapter 6:

The integration of AI into nutrition research is transforming how studies are conducted, analyzed, and interpreted. AI tools can process vast datasets to identify dietary patterns, predict health outcomes, and uncover relationships between nutrients and disease that might be missed through traditional statistical methods. Machine learning algorithms are increasingly used to analyze complex nutritional data from food frequency questionnaires, biomarker measurements, and longitudinal health records.

However, food and nutrition professionals must acknowledge that AI-generated findings and communications require critical evaluation skills needed to assess study quality, identify conflicts of interest, and evaluate the broader context of research findings within the field of nutrition science. AI models can perpetuate biases present in the training data, struggle with the nuanced nature of human dietary behavior, and produce correlations that lack biological plausibility.

Strategy 6:  Always cite usage of AI – as in Chapter 8:

While GenAI is not recommended to be cited as the author of information as it is not “human,” the ideas generated from the use of GenAI should be cited. This will include noting the use of GenAI in the narrative and the corresponding citation. If using GenAI, be aware that the citations generated to support the information GenAI produces may not be true publications or may not contain the information being cited, commonly called AI hallucinations. It is always important to verify the content and associated citations produced by GenAI. 

Strategy 7:  Utilize AI to help analyze data – as in Chapter 11:

As a nutrition communicator, AI tools may be used to analyze needs assessment data to identify themes to guide the message. By entering needs assessment responses from focus groups, interviews, or surveys, an AI tool can assist in synthesizing qualitative data into clear and meaningful categories. The prompt put into the AI tool can impact what results you may receive in the output. Here is an example prompt for a nutrition communicator when analyzing needs assessment data. “Here are open-ended responses from a nutrition needs assessment survey. Please read through the responses and identify the top three recurring themes. Then, summarize those themes in simple language I could use to guide the development of a nutrition message.”

Strategy 8:  Use AI with competency and caution – as in Chapter 13:

Artificial intelligence (AI) offers both opportunities and risks for culturally focused communication. No longer an optional skill, AI literacy has become a core competency for food and nutrition professionals. By embedding a cultural, public health, and equity lens in its algorithms, AI can be a useful tool for responsibly and ethically cultivating culturally sensitive, inclusive communication. However, it also raises substantial issues of bias, equity, ethics, accuracy, access, and efficacy for diverse audiences.

Strategy 9:  Use AI to assist in creating visual aids – as in Chapter 18:

Artificial intelligence (AI) has rapidly become a powerful tool for presenters, helping them design clearer, more engaging visual aids with less time and effort. While traditional presentation software still plays an essential role, AI systems expand what communicators can do by automating design, enhancing creativity, and improving clarity. When used thoughtfully, AI can elevate the quality of slides, graphics, and other visual support, allowing speakers to focus more attention on message delivery. See link below for more on using AI to create visuals.

Strategy 10:  Use AI to assist with writing and revising – as in Chapter 27:

Artificial Intelligence (AI) writing tools can support the drafting or editing process, but they should be used thoughtfully. When using AI tools, begin with clear information about your intended audience and existing draft copy. Always review and revise the output so it aligns with your tone, accurately reflects your practice, and preserves the phrasing and nuances important to your audience. AI-generated text should not be used verbatim without careful evaluation. See links below for more on using AI for writing and using effective prompts.

Which strategies have you used? Which ones do you plan to try?

The 2^nd Edition of Communicating Nutrition provides even more information about using AI, including its applications in food photography, video production, grant writing, journal article writing, online education, and much more. To be a competent communicator requires AI literacy.

Check out these previous posts about using Artificial Intelligence:

• What are best practices for creating visual aids with AI?

• How do you create effective prompts for AI? With prompt engineering.        

• What are ethical ways to use AI in professional writing?          

• Can artificial intelligence support human skill in nutrition communication?          

• Will artificial intelligence make us smarter or dumber? It's up to us.          

• Are you smarter than a 5th grader? Use AI to explain complex concepts.          

• Communicating about risk? Ask AI to help with clarity and examples.     

“AI is not replacing human connection; it is reshaping how we listen, learn, and lead in nutrition care.” ~ Communicating Nutrition - Section 2 Showcase: “Engage Artificial Intelligence (AI) to Listen Better, Teach Differently, and Care More Deeply” by Tatyana El-Kour, PhD, MA, MS, RDN, FAND, Lori Greene, PhD, RDN, LDN, and Drew Hemler, MSc, RD, CDN, FAND

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