Editorial Policy

What this policy covers

Buddy Magazine publishes general nutrition education for people making ordinary decisions about food. This page explains where our facts come from, how a guide is written and reviewed, what happens when we get something wrong, and how commercial interests are kept away from editorial judgment.

It applies to everything published on Buddymagazine.org, including every guide in the nutrition guides hub. These are the standards we hold ourselves to. If a published page falls short of them, that is a defect we want reported, so please tell us and point to the sentence.

How we research and what sources we trust

We work down a hierarchy of evidence. When a stronger tier already answers a question, weaker evidence does not overturn it in our copy, however striking the weaker study's headline may be.

1. Systematic reviews, meta-analyses and the guidance built on them. Reviews pool many studies and are the closest thing nutrition science offers to a settled answer. We look for them first, usually through PubMed, and we prefer recent ones. National and international guidance sits in the same tier, because the bodies that write it have already weighed that literature with more expertise than any single writer. For practical recommendations we lean on the World Health Organization, the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, the National Academies' Dietary Reference Intakes, the National Institutes of Health and its Office of Dietary Supplements, and the US Food and Drug Administration.
2. Large randomized controlled trials and cohort studies. Where no review or guideline answers a question, we rely on well-conducted trials and long-running population studies, and we note their size, length and population so you can judge how well they apply to you.
3. Single small studies. We treat these as leads, not conclusions. A promising result in forty people, in mice, or over six weeks may be worth mentioning, but it is labeled preliminary and does not drive a recommendation.

When two sources in the top tier disagree, we report both rather than quietly pick one. Protein is the current example: the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines set a target of 1.2 to 1.6 grams per kilogram of body weight a day, while the National Academies' Recommended Dietary Allowance remains 0.8 grams per kilogram, and professional bodies are still debating the new target.

Numbers get a stricter rule than prose. A gram target, a serving size or a daily value has to come from the guideline or label document that sets it, such as the FDA's daily value tables or the National Academies' reference intakes, and the nutrient content of a particular food comes from USDA FoodData Central, not from a news article or a teaching page quoting it secondhand.

Data on what people actually eat is used to describe, not to recommend. For that we use national surveillance, such as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's report on how many US adults met fruit and vegetable recommendations in 2019.

A worked example: fiber and heart disease

Say a draft contains the sentence "eating more fiber is associated with a lower risk of heart disease." To publish it, we need a top-tier source: a systematic review or meta-analysis located on PubMed, or national guidance that has already weighed the trial and cohort evidence. The Harvard Nutrition Source fiber page is a useful plain-language summary from a university and we may link it for readers, but it is an educational page, not a systematic review, so it cannot carry the claim on its own. If the same guide gives a daily fiber target, that number is cited to the National Academies' Dietary Reference Intakes, which set it. The verb stays "is associated with" rather than "lowers," because the strongest evidence here is observational, and the guide says which populations it was measured in.

Three things would get that sentence cut instead: a single eight-week trial in sixty people measuring cholesterol rather than heart attacks, a university press release summarizing that trial, or a fiber supplement maker's own research brief. Any of those might earn a line clearly labeled preliminary. None of them can carry a health claim on its own.

If the review behind the claim were later withdrawn, superseded or misread by us, the fix would be the same in every case: change the sentence, leave a dated correction note at the foot of that guide saying what it used to say and what it says now, and update the last-updated date. The old wording is recorded, not quietly deleted.

What we do not count as a source

Press releases and university media summaries are marketing for research, not the research itself, so we go to the paper instead. Influencer claims, testimonials and before-and-after stories are not evidence of anything beyond one person's experience.

Material published by a supplement brand, meal-plan seller or food company about its own product does not support a claim in our guides, and neither does an industry-funded white paper presented as research. Where a conflict of interest is relevant to a study we cite, we say so.

How we write

Plain language, not a literature review

A guide should be usable by someone standing in a kitchen at six in the evening. We write short sentences, define terms the first time they appear, and cut jargon that adds authority but no meaning.

Numbers in context

A relative risk with no baseline is close to useless, so we give absolute figures where they exist. We also translate research units into food: grams of fiber become cups of beans, and sodium limits become an actual label reading. When a number is a population average rather than an individual target, we say which it is.

Uncertainty stated honestly

Nutrition evidence is often mixed, and a guide that hides this is doing you a disservice. We use calibrated language: strong evidence, some evidence, early signals, genuinely unresolved. When the honest answer is that nobody knows yet, that is what we publish.

Review and updates

Every guide on Buddymagazine.org carries a visible last-updated date. That date reflects the last time a person actually checked the content against current evidence, not a cosmetic edit or a site-wide republish.

We commit to rereading our core guides, meaning the foundational pieces on balanced plates, macronutrients, fiber, labels and meal planning, at least once every twelve months. A review ends one of three ways: the guide is confirmed as it stands, revised, or retired with a note pointing to what replaced it.

Some changes do not wait for the annual pass. A revision to the Dietary Guidelines for Americans, a change to FDA labeling rules, new WHO guidance on a topic we cover, or a systematic review that moves the consensus all trigger a reread of the affected guide as soon as we see it. Substantial rewrites are noted at the foot of the guide so returning readers can see what moved.

The current edition of the federal guidelines is the 2025-2030 Dietary Guidelines for Americans, released on January 7, 2026, and the guides were checked against it on September 18, 2026.

Corrections policy

We would rather be corrected than be wrong quietly. If you spot an error of fact, a misread study, a broken citation, or a passage overtaken by newer guidance, send it through the contact page or email hello@buddymagazineorg.com. Including the page title, the sentence and the source you are working from helps us verify it quickly.

Every report gets read. Where a claim is wrong, we fix it and add a dated correction note at the bottom of the guide describing what was wrong and what it now says. We do not delete the record of the error.

Typos, broken links and clarified wording are fixed without a note, since nothing a reader relied on has changed. Where a reported claim turns out to be supportable, we reply with the source it rests on rather than leaving the question open.

Independence, advertising and affiliates

Editorial decisions are not for sale. No advertiser, sponsor or affiliate partner picks our topics, sees drafts before publication, or has any say in what a guide concludes. Any paid, sponsored or contributed content is labeled as such at the top of the page, is never presented as one of our evidence guides, and its commercial links carry rel="sponsored".

At the time of this update, Buddymagazine.org carries no advertising, no sponsored posts and no affiliate links, so nothing on the site earns us a commission when you buy something. If that changes, sponsored or affiliate content will be labeled as such at the top of the page it appears on, the disclosure will be updated here first, and the commercial relationship will still have no bearing on what a guide recommends.

Buddy Magazine does not sell supplements, meal plans, coaching or any product you consume, and we do not endorse specific brands. Our privacy policy explains separately what data the tools on this site collect.

Who writes for us

Guides here are researched from primary documents, drafted in plain English, then read back against those documents line by line before publication, so every number and range in the text matches something we link to. Editorial responsibility for what appears on the page sits with Buddy Magazine.

No clinician reviews this content, and no guide is written or signed off under a clinical credential. We would rather say that plainly than imply a review that does not happen. When writers or reviewers join the masthead, their names, roles and qualifications will be listed here and their bylines will appear on the guides they work on. We will not show a credential unless the person holds it.

You can read more about the magazine's origins and how it works on our about page. For advice about your own health, the people to ask are a physician or a registered dietitian, not a magazine.

How we use AI assistance

AI tools may assist with drafting, structuring and copy editing our guides. Before anything is published, a person checks every factual claim, number and citation against the original source document and rewrites whatever does not match it. An AI tool is never the source of a health claim, is never cited, and its output is never published unreviewed. If a model produces a plausible-sounding statement that we cannot trace to a source in the hierarchy above, the statement is removed rather than softened.

The limits of our advice

Everything here is general education. Buddy Magazine cannot see your medical history, medications or lab results, so nothing we publish is personalized advice, a diagnosis or a treatment plan. We do not claim that any food or supplement treats or cures a disease, and we do not promise outcomes.

For anything that depends on your individual circumstances, including pregnancy, a diagnosed condition, medication interactions, feeding a child, or a history of disordered eating, speak to a physician or a registered dietitian. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics keeps a searchable directory of credentialed practitioners.

Our full medical disclaimer sets out these limits in detail and should be read alongside this policy. Questions about how any of it works in practice are welcome through the contact page.