I often get asked why I think industry funding biases research in ways that almost always ensure that results favor the sponsor’s interests.

A reader, Professor Michael Tlusty, sent me this excellent example (my emphasis in bold).

BEEF CHECKOFF 2026 HUMAN NUTRITION REQUEST FOR PROPOSALS NOW OPEN

On behalf of The Beef Checkoff, the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association (NCBA) is conducting a request for proposals (RFP) in Human Nutrition, to further understand beef’s nutritional qualities and define beef’s role in a healthy diet to nourish and optimize health at every life stage including research topics related to growth and development, healthy aging, and reduced risk of chronic disease.As part of their long-standing commitment to further scientific discovery, beef farmers and ranchers are invested in funding high quality, rigorous research — from observational epidemiological and clinical intervention trials to modeling and substitution analyses. As nutrition science continues to evolve, broadening and deepening the beef nutrition evidence base is essential to ensure that consumers have the most up-to-date information to make informed choices about the foods they eat.

The Human Nutrition Research Program follows a two-part application process, beginning with the submission of a pre-proposal. Pre-proposals are intended to be a brief overview of the proposed project….

Comment: If you want your project funded, you need to make sure it will demonstrate beef’s role in nourishing and optimizing health.  If your project does not do this, it won’t get funded.

OK.  Here’s your chance.  Pre-proposals are due May 30 at 11:59 pm MT.  Directions: Submit a Pre-Proposal

The President’s proposed budget cuts are worth a close look.

In addition to what I’ve posted this week, I have a few comments about it.

Most of the government’s budget cannot be cut; it is mandatory.

Mandatory expenditures include defense, interest payments, social security, Medicare and Medicaid, and, yes, SNAP.   These can only be cut by an act of Congress.

The cuttable discretionary programs are the ones aimed at helping everyone, but especially the poor and vulnerable (they grey parts in this chart). 

The rhetoric—anti-woke, anti-Biden, anti-science—reminds me of the McCarthy era anti-Communist rhetoric.

Anything that Biden did is bad.  Anything aimed to help minorities or women is bad.  Anything that promotes research or tries to mitigate climate change is bad.

Is the Trump Administration engaging in “soft” eugenics, as The Guardian puts it?

By avoiding discussion of education, employment, social support networks, economic status and geographic location – the social determinants that public health experts agree influence health outcomes – Kennedy, in lockstep with top wellness influencers, is practicing soft eugenics…At the heart of all these policies is soft eugenics thinking – the idea that if you take away life-saving healthcare and services from the vulnerable, then you can let nature take its course and only the strong will survive….Maha perfectly mimics Maga’s deregulatory ethos: cut social services for vulnerable populations while parroting populist language that further helps consolidate power for the most well-off.

Food for thought, as we say.

Resource

Civil Eats on the effects of Trump’s first 100 days on the food system

I’m struck by the harshness of the USDA’s recent press announcement:  In First 100 Days, Secretary Rollins Puts Farmers First, Reverses Woke Priorities of Biden Administration

“It is absurd that while the Biden Administration was driving up inflation, American taxpayers were forced to fund billions in woke DEI initiatives. American farmers and ranchers don’t need DEI, they need reduced regulations and an Administration that is actively putting them first. In the first 100 days of the Trump Administration, USDA has done exactly that, by cancelling over 3,600 contracts and grants saving more than $5.5 billion. I look forward to finishing our work of cleaning out Biden’s bureaucratic basement and moving forward with this Administration’s priorities that put American farmers first,” said Secretary Rollins.

The statement boasts that Secretary Rollins

• Issued a memorandum to rescind all DEI programs and celebrations.
• Directed USDA to review Inflation Reduction Act funding to ensure that programs are focused on supporting farmers and ranchers,
• Terminated 597 grants, which totaled more than $3.45 billion and over 3,000 contracts totaling $1.8 billion…in unnecessary and wasteful spending.
• Canceled nearly 1,000 employee trainings, more than 750 of which focused on DEI alone.
• To ensure that taxpayer dollars are directly supporting farmers and not serving as a Green New Scam slush fund for non-governmental organizations, Secretary Rollins announced the cancellation of the Partnerships for Climate-Smart Commodities (PCSC).

I am having a hard time understanding how these actions will help farmers and ranchers, especially because one of the cut programs was the Patrick Leahy Farm to School Grant, which paid farmers to provide fresh food to schools—a totally win/win program costing a tiny fraction of USDA’s budget but of inestimable worth to participating local farmers.

The anti-woke rhetoric reminds me of the McCarthy anti-Communist era.  If Biden did it, it’s bad.  If it helps vulnerable Americans, well, it’s “leftist ideology.”

I do not see how any of this will Make America Healthy Again.

If you think it will, please explain.

Seed oils, according to Robert F. Kennedy Jr, are the unhealthiest ingredient in the food supply, not least because they are cheap and subsidized.

He also says they are one of the worst things you can eat.

Really?  I don’t think so, although seed oils, like everything else high in calories, are best consumed in moderation.

OK.  Here’s my understanding of what’s up with seed oils.

The basics

• They are essential in the human diet.  We require two fatty acids, linoleic (omega 6) and linolenic (omega 3), best obtained from seed oils.
• All food fats, seed oils no exception, are mixtures of saturated, unsaturated, and polyunsaturated fatty acids; only their proportions differ.
• All food oils have about 120 calories per tablespoon; this is why fat is fattening.
• Unsaturated and polyunsaturated fatty acids, when substituted for saturated fatty acids, reduce blood cholesterol levels and heart disease risk.

On this last point, a recent epidemiological study, Butter and Plant-Based Oils Intake and Mortality, found:

• Higher intakes of canola, soybean, and olive oils was associated with lower total mortality (the investigators couldn’t find enough respondents who ate safflower or corn oils to study the effects of those oils),
• Every 10-g/d increment in plant-based oils intake was associated with an 11% lower risk of cancer mortality and a 6% lower risk of CVD mortality.
• Substituting 10-g/d intake of total butter with an equivalent amount of total plant-based oils was associated with an estimated 17% reduction in total mortality  and a 17% reduction in cancer mortality.

Note: butter has a similar fatty acid composition to beef tallow.  If they had studied beef tallow, I would expect the results to be similar.

The arguments against seed oils hold grains of truth but require explanation [my comments]

• We eat too much of them and with too much fried food [no argument on this one]
• Consumption increased from 1980 to 2000 in parallel with the rise in obesity [true, but so did calories from all other sources, and this is just an association].
• Their ratio of omega-6 fatty acids to omega-3 fatty acids is much too high [true for some seed oils, but not for olive, soy, or canola].
• Seed oils are extracted using hexane, a dangerous organic solvent [true, but processing removes most of it, and only slight traces remain. Still, it would be good if chemists could find “greener” alternatives].
• Highly unsaturated seed oils can become rancid quickly [true, which is why they need to be stored in dark bottles and refrigerated].
• Omega-6 fatty acids cause inflammation [not really, if anything, they are slightly anti-inflammatory but not by much; omega-3 fatty acids are somewhat more anti-inflammatory than omega-6’s, but that doesn’t mean omega-6s are terrible.
• They have too many calories and are mainly in junk foods [true, hence moderation].

One additional issue: replacing them

The soybean industry,  clearly in its own self-interest, notes that a reduction in use of soybean, canola, corn, cottonseed, grapeseed, rice bran, safflower and sunflower oils, would likely see an increase in use of imported palm oil, which will raise food costs.

That’s not all it would do.  As I’ve written previously, palm oil raises so many issues that it’s hard to know where to begin: unhealthy degree of fat saturation, deforestation, loss of biodiversity, child labor, labor exploitation, adulteration, and criminal behavior, with everyone who consumes products made with palm oil wittingly or unwittingly complicit in these problems.  See, for example, Jocelyn Zuckerman’s Planet Palm: How Palm Oil Ended Up in Everything—and Endangered the World.

Comment

I cannot find convincing data that seed oils are any worse for health than any other high-calorie food, and the evidence for their benefits as compared to animal fats seems strong and consistent.  Getting them out of the food supply could help reduce calorie intake, but only if they are not replaced by other fats. Using seed oils is healthier than using more saturated fats.

But all of this has to be understood in the context of calories and everything else in the diet.  Seed oils on salads make a lot of sense.

If you are still worried, there is always olive oil.  Olives are a fruit, not a seed.

The Trump Administration has issued its proposed budget.

It begins with the rhetoric characteristic of this administration.

The recommended funding levels result from a rigorous, line-by-line review of FY 2025 spending, which was found to be laden with spending contrary to the needs of ordinary working Americans and tilted toward funding niche non-governmental organizations and institutions of higher education committed to radical gender and climate ideologies antithetical to the American way of life.

If anything, these proposals are totally contrary to the needs of ordinary working Americans, so much so that it’s hard to know where to begin, but let’s start with some selections from the USDA summary on page 31.

• Food Safety Inspection Service: a $15 million increase for meat and poultry inspection
• National Institute of Food and Agriculture: $602 million decrease (“eliminates wasteful, woke programming,”… “protects funding to youth and K-12 programs such as 4-H clubs, tribal colleges, and universities”)
• Agricultural Research Service and USDA Research Statistical Agencies: $159 million decrease.  Note the rhetoric: “…stop climate-politicized additional scopes added by the Biden Administration…”
• Farm Service Agency: $358 million decrease
• State, local, tribal, and NGO conservation programs: $303 million decrease
• Commodity Supplemental Food Program: $425 million decrease .  This program, which mostly helps seniors, is being replaced with “MAHA food boxes.”

On this last one: Oh no.  Not that again.  The boxes are a logistic nightmare , absurdly expensive, and do not help any except the largest farmers.

Note that there is nothing here about SNAP, which comes out of USDA’s budget.  SNAP is an entitlement; only Congress can cut its budget, and would have to do so through the Farm Bill.

Fortunately, these are proposals, which means there is at least a chance that Congress won’t agree to them.

A Canadian reader, Michel Lucas, sent this one (merci).

The report: Benoît Lamarche, Arne Astrup, Robert H Eckel, Emma Feeney, Ian Givens, Ronald M Krauss, Philippe Legrand, Renata Micha, Marie-Caroline Michalski, Sabita Soedamah-Muthu, Qi Sun, Frans J Kok.  Regular-fat and low-fat dairy foods and cardiovascular diseases: perspectives for future dietary recommendations.  The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Volume 121, Issue 5, 2025, Pages 956-964,  ISSN 0002-9165, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajcnut.2025.03.009.

The workshop: Saturated Fat in Dairy and Cardiovascular Diseases, Amsterdam, 15–16 April, 2024.

Findings: “The most recent evidence indicates that overall, consumption of milk, yogurt and cheese, irrespective of fat content, is neutrally associated with CVD risk. There is also no evidence yet from randomized controlled trials that consumption of regular-fat milk, yogurt, and cheese has different effects on a broad array of cardiometabolic risk factors when compared with consumption of low-fat milk, yogurt, and cheese.”

Conclusion: “Thus, the body of evidence does not support differentiation between regular-fat and low-fat dairy foods in dietary guidelines for both adults and children.”

Implication: “Strategies focusing primarily on reduction of energy-dense, nutrient-poor foods, the main source of SFAs in Western diets, rather than on the fat content of dairy foods, are more likely to benefit the population’s cardiovascular health.”

Funding: The workshop “was supported by an unrestricted grant from the Dutch Dairy Association.”

Comment: Foods from animal sources—meat and dairy—are by far the main sources of saturated fatty acids in US diets (all food fats, no exceptions, are mixtures of saturated, unsaturated, and polyunsaturated fatty acids; it’s just the proportions that differ).

Cows eat grass; grass has fatty acids but they are mostly unsaturated; bacteria in the cows’ rumens saturate the fatty acids.

Pretty much everyone agrees that when saturated fatty acids are substituted for unsaturated or polyunsaturated fatty acids, they raise blood cholesterol and the risk for heart disease.  The disagreements are over by how much and whether clinically meaningful.

The dairy industry would like everyone to believe that the saturated fatty acids in dairy foods are benign.  Hence this workshop.

Conflict of interest: The disclosure statement begins with “The Dutch Dairy Association had no role in the discussions held at the high-level closed workshop and did not participate or provide comments during the development and writing of this manuscript.”  It didn’t have to.

Here’s the rest of the statement (I’ve emphasized dairy connections):

AA is a member of the Journal’s Editorial Board and is also an Associate Editor on The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and played no role in the journal’s evaluation of the manuscript, reports a relationship with Rééducation Nutritionnelle et Psycho-Comportementale Scientific Committee and American Journal of Clinical Nutrition that includes board membership; and a relationship with Ferrero that includes funding grants. QS reports travel provided by Dutch Dairy Association. AA, RHE, IG, EF, RMK, PL, RM, M-CM, SS-M, and FJK reports financial support and travel provided by Dutch Dairy Association. BL reports writing assistance provided by Chill Pill Media Ltd and relationship with Health Canada that includes funding grants. EF reports a relationship with Food for Heath Ireland and Teagasc Food Research Ireland that includes funding grants; relationship with Irish section of the Nutrition Society and British Journal of Nutrition that includes board membership; relationship with National Dairy Council Ireland that includes consulting or advisory and travel reimbursement. IG reports a relationship with Global Dairy Platform, Dairy Australia, Barham Benevolent Foundation, UK Research and Innovation, Medical Research Council that includes funding grants; relationship with European Milk Federation, French National Interprofessional Centre for Dairy Economics, and Dairy Council Northern Ireland that includes speaking and lecture fees and travel reimbursement; relationship with ELSEVIER INC that includes consulting or advisory. RMK reports a relationship with Dairy Management Inc that includes funding grants. RM reports a relationship with National Institutes of Health and Gates Foundation that includes funding grants. M-CM reports a relationship with French Dairy Interbranch Organization, Sodiaal-Candia and Danone that includes funding grants; relationship with Sodiaal-Candia that includes consulting or advisory; relationship with International Milk Genomics Consortium that includes speaking and lecture fees and travel reimbursement; relationship with Danone Nutricia Research and French Dairy Interbranch Organization that includes travel reimbursement. SS-M reports a relationship with Dutch Dairy Association and Danish Dairy Research Foundation that includes funding grants.

 

 

The New York Times did an analysis of US government expenditures that I’m still thinking about.

The annual budget is $7 trillion.  Try and get your head around that number.

Here are the two illustrations I think deserve a close look.

The expenditures in color are fixed; they cannot be cut.  The only more easily cuttable expenses are the ones in grey.  But those are the ones that make life better for all of us.

And take a look at this one.

What this tells us is that if the entire government workforce were fired, it would only reduce federal expenditures by 4.3 percent.

This is why tax cuts for the rich make no sense and are deeply unfair.

For more on this topic

The US government’s guide to federal spending

According to the Constitution’s Preamble, the purpose of the federal government is “…to establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” These goals are achieved through government spending.

We need good news.  This announcement comes from the Norwegian government.

It will still be legal to sell these products to children and youth, but marketing unhealthy products to this group will be illegal.

When it comes to products covered by the ban, the most unhealthy products, such as candy, soft drinks, ice cream and energy drinks, cannot be marketed particularly towards children. For other products, such as cereals, yogurt and fast food, limits for different nutrients are used to cover the most unhealthy products in these categories. For example, for breakfast cereals, the content of sugar and dietary fibre determines whether the product can be marketed particularly towards children or not.

The foods that are covered by the ban are listed in a product list attached to the regulation (in Norwegian, PDF).

I looked for an English translation and found this from Obesity Action Scotland:

The ban on unhealthy food advertising will cover all forms of marketing, including television, print, online, and in schools. Products affected by the ban include sugary drinks, salty snacks, and fast food…The regulation will ban the advertising of unhealthy foods that are high in fat, salt, or sugar. It will also ban the advertising of foods that are marketed as being “healthy” or “natural,” if they are high in unhealthy ingredients.

Impressive!  I wish RFK Jr’s MAHA campaign would do this as well as removing color additives.

Thanks to Marit Kolby for sending this.