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I'm coming from Seasoned Advice SE since I voted to flag something as off-topic there because the question was asking for dietary and nutrition advice.

Question here - Are overnight oats good for breakfast with their high carbohydrate content?

Before sending the OP here, I checked the community rules and it says:

questions about cooking, nutrition and diets that are not directly connected to medical treatments (see Cooking.SE (Seasoned Advice) for that)

This doesn't match the Seasoned Advice SE community scope, as nutrition and diets can be considered off-topic per the following definition from the community scope:

General health and diet issue (e.g. "Is cauliflower healthy?")

According to the standard note when there is a question requesting nutrition, diet and other questions that border on medical / health advice:

"Questions on nutrition or requests for medical advice are off-topic here; you should contact a qualified medical professional instead."

Seasoned Advice only handles questions related to substitutions when the restrictions and boundaries were already established by medical professionals / nutritionists / dieticians or when the dietary restriction is not health related. (E.g. "I'm lactose intolerant, how can I substitute cream in X recipe?" or "What's a vegan alternative to gelatin in Y recipe?")

TL, DR: How can we ensure that both communities have matching scope description so questions don't get moved from one SE to another (i.e. question gets moved from here to Seasoned Advice because it is not connected to medical treatments, and then gets closed or moved from Seasoned Advice because it is considered nutrition / diet health advice)

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    That is a good point. Some moderators know the scope on Cooking, some do not. I agree it needs to match, just need to find the correct wording.
    – JohnP Mod
    Commented Sep 17, 2019 at 20:02
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    I've addressed your concerns. See the edit to my answer.
    – Carey Gregory Mod
    Commented Sep 27, 2019 at 5:03

2 Answers 2

Reset to default
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Although I'm aware of the limitation on nutrition questions on Seasoned Advice and I bet @michaelpri is too, I agree the language needs to be cleaned up for users and future mods.

Frankly, the easiest thing to do would be to simply delete the reference to SA entirely and replace it with a firmer statement that nutrition questions are off topic unless they're directly connected to medical treatment.

I can't recall ever seeing a nutrition question that would be acceptable on SA, and if one ever does pop up we can always just migrate it. I don't think users need to be pointed in their direction by our help section since 99% of all nutrition questions are of the "Is cauliflower healthy?" variety, which neither site finds acceptable.

I could also readily go along with prohibiting nutrition and diet questions entirely, but that's another thread.

EDIT:

It's been 10 days and this answer has a pretty solid upvote so I implemented the changes I suggested. The reference to Seasoned Advice has been removed entirely and this has been added (emphasis added here only):

Often asked questions that are off-topic include:

  • medical advice for yourself or others
  • questions about nutrition and diet that aren't directly connected to medical treatment
  • any other personal advice
  • interpretation of test results
  • treatment recommendations
  • second opinions.
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    I also cannot recall a diet / nutrition question that would be acceptable in SA outside of substitutions
    – Juliana Karasawa Souza
    Commented Sep 18, 2019 at 7:40
  • My impression may be wrong, but it is a bit different. Our policy on 'nutrition' is in effect: many Qs are posted, almost all now get answers (by far not closed quickly enough), Q&A get upvotes. So I guess either we reformulate our written policy and forget about what is so often voiced here on meta, or get 'a little bit' stricter on "is Coconut water so good that I should drink it daily". We shouldn't meta-talk about 'that's off-topic' & 'bad' when main does not even start to reflect that.
    – LаngLаngС
    Commented Sep 18, 2019 at 12:22
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    @LangLangC That's largely because we have a very active high-rep user who jumps on every single nutrition question and answers it almost immediately, quite often before a mod even sees it, and usually with a very good answer.
    – Carey Gregory Mod
    Commented Sep 18, 2019 at 14:14
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    Yup, I see, and I see that as a contradiction between stated policy here and acted policy there. So why keep the lofty theoretical ban active in this discussion when the reality on the ground looks quite different? It's not only one user answering, it's also a few voters encouraging both, questions and answers.
    – LаngLаngС
    Commented Sep 18, 2019 at 14:59
  • @LangLangC Are you suggesting opening the site to nutrition questions in general or closing the questions despite the answers (and protests) of said users?
    – Carey Gregory Mod
    Commented Sep 18, 2019 at 15:04
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    I'd prefer to either opening the site for nutrition or stating a policy that is then followed through. I criticise that we discuss always on meta and on this Q in particular 'yeah, sure, nutrition is awful and we dislike it so much to declare it off-topic' and on main we pump water into the swamp. Was there a vote on 'nutrition' on meta? Was a consensus reached? Do we need another one? Maybe? But if your statement in this answer is still 'true' and reflecting the consensus (99% inacceptable), then yes, CV off-topic until Q is fixed up. Non VC because 'has A' is just circumvention.
    – LаngLаngС
    Commented Sep 18, 2019 at 15:13
  • @LangLangC I agree completely and I've edited the help section to more clearly reflect the policy and have already begun trying to enforce it uniformly.
    – Carey Gregory Mod
    Commented Sep 27, 2019 at 5:02
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In lieu of perfect language, maybe something like:

questions about cooking, nutrition and diets that are not directly connected to medical treatments (rarely such questions may fit Cooking.SE (Seasoned Advice), check the on-topic guidelines there)

would at least remove the suggestion that everything not belonging here fits there.

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