by Marion Nestle

Search results: the corporation not me

Apr 24 2024

American Diabetes Association: conflicted interests

Thanks to everyone who flooded my mailbox with this piece from The Guardian: She was fired after not endorsing Splenda-filled salads to people with diabetes. Why?

According to a lawsuit {Elizabeth] Hanna recently filed against the ADA, the organization – which endorses recipes and food plans on its websiteand on the websites of “partner” food brands – tried to get her to greenlight recipes that she believedflew in the face of the ADA’s mission. These included recipes like a “cucumber and onion salad” made with a third of a cup of Splenda granulated artificial sweetener, “autumnal sheet-pan veggies” with a quarter cup of Splenda monk fruit sweetener and a “cranberry almond spinach salad” with a quarter cup of Splenda monkfruit sweetener.

Guess which company gave more than $1m to the ADA in 2022? Splenda.

I also was sent an email from Georgia Warren, the  Guardian’s Interim membership editor: The link between investigative reporting, some nightmarish recipes and the diabetes epidemic.

Why would a public health charity promote a product that its own science shows contributes to the disease it is fighting? Well, as Neil Barsky reported for us this week, the ADA took more than $1m from Splenda in 2022 – and then fired their chief nutritionist when, according to a lawsuit she recently filed, she refused to sign-off on the Splenda-based recipes that her bosses wanted the ADA to publicly endorse.

Neil – creator of our new series ‘Death by diabetes: America’s preventable epidemic’ – told me…“The ADA has bought into a system that requires them to raise money from corporations to fund their research. I don’t for a second doubt that every single person who works there cares about people with diabetes and wants to do the right thing, but being beholden to these groups distorts your judgment.”

..And what else is pharma funding? The ADA. The organization – whose guidance doctors rely on when treating their diabetes patients – boasts a $100m annual budget. Between 2017 and 2024, pharmaceutical and device manufacturers contributed over $134m to the organization – or roughly 20% of its total funding.

Comment: The ADA has long appeared to be in thrall the the drug industry.  I well remember the talk I gave at one of its annual conventions years ago.  I was one of two speakers about diet and diabetes (the other was a session on the role of sugar in diabetes sponsored by Coca-Cola—truly you can’t make this stuff up).  The other talks, hundreds of them, were about drugs.  At that time, the ADA said virtually nothing about diet on its website.

It’s gotten much better.  Here’s what it says about carbohydrates:

  • Try to eat less of these: refined, highly processed carbohydrate foods and those with added sugar. These include sugary drinks like soda, sweet tea and juice, refined grains like white bread, white rice and sugary cereal, and sweets and snack foods like cake, cookies, candy and chips.

And here’s what the ADA says about artificial sweeteners:

It’s also important to know that at this time, there is no clear evidence to suggest that using sugar substitutes will help with managing blood sugar or weight or improving cardiometabolic health in the long run. So here’s the bottom line:

  • Sugar substitutes are effective alternatives to sugar for some people, but not a perfect fit for all—it’s a personal choice.
  • If you’re looking to reduce your intake of sugar or sugar substitutes, start slowly. For example, start by replacing one soda or juice with water or a no-calorie drink at a time.
  • Water will always be a great choice! If you start feeling yourself get bored with just water, you can always spruce it up with fruits or herbs like this sparkling strawberry mint infused water.

And, finally for now, here are the ADA’s corporate sponsors, and its national sponsors.

Conflicted?  Sure looks like it.

Oct 27 2023

Weekend reading: School food in Mexico

José Tenorio.  School Food Politics in Mexico: The Corporatization of Obesity and Healthy Eating Policies.  Routledge, 2023.  

I was asked for a blurb for this one:

From first-hand observations and deep research, José Tenorio makes it clear that school food in Mexico is about much more than feeding hungry kids; it’s about how food corporations have taken advantage of social inequalities to replace native food traditions with less healthful but profitable products.  School food politics, indeed!

This book may seem specialized, but it is a useful case study in the politics of school food—not confined to the United States, apparently.

Mexico leads the way in efforts to promote healthier diets.  It has  excellent dietary guidelines.   It also has warning labels on food products (see my post on these), soda taxes, a ban on trans fats, and other measures.

Mexico’s schools do not provide meals for kids in schools.  They sell foods at canteens.

The country set nutrition standards for foods sold in schools in 2011, but compliance is not great.

Public health and food advocacy groups support laws to ban unhealthy foods and drinks from schools.  Despite formidible industry opposition, this may actually happen.

This book provides evidence for why it should.

May 1 2023

American Society for Nutrition commissions highly conflicted meta-analysis

I was surprised to see a press release from the American Society for Nutrition (ASN—of which I am a member) announcing publication of a research paper the Society had commissioned and published on sugars and body weight: Important food sources of fructose-containing sugars and adiposity: a systematic review and meta-analysis of controlled feeding trials.

The paper, the press release said, “Illustrate[s] The Need for Nuance in Public Health Guidance Related to Consumption of Sugars: Findings call into question recommendations that imply all sources of fructose-containing sugars carry the same risk.

The press release notes that “this comprehensive review is timely as the 2025 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee currently assesses the latest science to inform updated evidence-based recommendations,” and it quotes the lead author: “There is an opportunity for more food-based guidance around sugars to help ensure Americans don’t inadvertently eat less health-promoting foods containing fructose – especially at a time when most people don’t eat enough of all forms of fruit, which offer significant health benefits.”

Uh oh.  This is an easily misinterpreted message.

My immediate question:  Who wrote the paper ?

No surprise.: authors with extensive conflicts of interest.

I’ve written about some of these authors’ conflicts of interest disclosures previously.  See, for example. this, this, and this.

Just for fun, I’ll post this particular statement of the conflicted interests at the end of this post.

Basically, these authors do not understand the difference between a conflict of interest (financial ties, which are discretionary) and non-discretionary viewpoints (all researchers have them).  In this case, consulting for a sugar company is a conflict; being a vegan or avoiding sugar-sweetened beverages is not.

My second question: Why did ASN commission this paper, and from these particular authors no less?

I contacted John Courtney, the long-time executive director of the ASN.  He said this was a leftover from an initiative started ten years ago.  Since then, the ASN has decided not to commission papers on controversial topics and this will not happen again.

Good.  It shouldn’t.  Commissioning papers like these make the ASN look like an arm of the food industry.  The ASN should avoid even teh appearance of conflicts of interest as much as it possibly can.

You don’t believe this is a problem?  Take a look at this conflict of interest statement.  Enjoy!

Conflict of Interest

JLS is a member of the Journal’s Editorial Board and played no role in the Journal’s evaluation of the manuscript.

LC was a Mitacs-Elevate postdoctoral fellow jointly funded by the Government of Canada and the Canadian Sugar Institute (September 2019–August 2021). She was previously (2010–2018) employed as a casual clinical coordinator at INQUIS Clinical Research, Ltd. (formerly Glycemic Index Laboratories, Inc.), a contract research organization.

AC and AA have received funding from a Toronto 3D MSc Scholarship award.

SA-C was funded by a Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR) Canadian Graduate Scholarships Master’s Award, the Loblaw Food as Medicine Graduate Award, the Ontario Graduate Scholarship, and the CIHR Canadian Graduate Scholarship Doctoral Award. She avoids consuming NSBs and SSBs and has received an honorarium from the international food information council (IFIC) for a talk on artificial sweeteners, the gut microbiome, and the risk for diabetes.

NM was a former employee of Loblaw Companies Limited and current employee of Enhanced Medical Nutrition. She has completed consulting work for contract research organizations, restaurants, start-ups, the International Food Information Council, and the American Beverage Association, all of which occurred outside of the submitted work.

TAK has received research support from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research (CIHR), the International Life Science Institute (ILSI), and the National Honey Board. He has taken honorarium for lectures from International Food Information Council (IFIC) and Institute for the Advancement of Food and Nutrition Sciences (IAFNS; formerly ILSI North America).

FA-Y is a part-time Research Assistant at INQUIS Clinical Research, Ltd., a contract research organization.

DL reports receiving a stipend from the University of Toronto Department of Nutritional Sciences Graduate Student Fellowship, University of Toronto Fellowship in Nutritional Sciences, University of Toronto Supervisor’s Research Grant—Early Researcher Awards, and Dairy Farmers of Canada Graduate Student Fellowships; a scholarship from St. Michael’s Hospital Research Training Centre, and a University of Toronto School of Graduate Studies Conference Grant.

AZ is a part-time Research Associate at INQUIS Clinical Research, Ltd., a contract research organization, and has received funding from a BBDC Postdoctoral Fellowship. She has received consulting fees from the GI found.

RJdS has served as an external resource person to the World Health Organization’s Nutrition Guidelines Advisory Group on transfats, saturated fats, and polyunsaturated fats. The WHO paid for his travel and accommodation to attend meetings from 2012–2017 to present and discuss this work. He has also performed contract research for the CIHR’s Institute of Nutrition, Metabolism, and Diabetes, Health Canada, and the World Health Organization for which he received remuneration. He has received speaker’s fees from the University of Toronto and McMaster Children’s Hospital. He has held grants from the Canadian Foundation for Dietetic Research, Population Health Research Institute, and Hamilton Health Sciences Corporation as a principal investigator and is a co-investigator on several funded team grants from the CIHR. He has served as an independent director of the Helderleigh Foundation (Canada). He serves as a member of the Nutrition Science Advisory Committee to Health Canada (Government of Canada) and is a co-opted member of the Scientific Advisory Committee on Nutrition Subgroup on the Framework for the Evaluation of Evidence (Public Health England).

TMSW was previously a part owner and now is an employee of INQUIS and received an honorarium from Springer/Nature for being an Associate Editor of the European Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

CWCK has received grants or research support from the Advanced Food Materials Network, Agriculture and Agri-Foods Canada, Almond Board of California, Barilla, CIHR, Canola Council of Canada, International Nut and Dried Fruit Council, International Tree Nut Council Research and Education Foundation, Loblaw Brands Ltd, the Peanut Institute, Pulse Canada, and Unilever. He has received in-kind research support from the Almond Board of California, Barilla, California Walnut Commission, Kellogg Canada, Loblaw Companies, Nutrartis, Quaker (PepsiCo), the Peanut Institute, Primo, Unico, Unilever, and WhiteWave Foods/Danone. He has received travel support and/or honoraria from the Barilla, California Walnut Commission, Canola Council of Canada, General Mills, International Nut and Dried Fruit Council, International Pasta Organization, Lantmannen, Loblaw Brands, Ltd., the Nutrition Foundation of Italy, Oldways Preservation Trust, Paramount Farms, the Peanut Institute, Pulse Canada, Sun-Maid, Tate & Lyle, Unilever, and White Wave Foods/Danone. He has served on the scientific advisory board for the International Tree Nut Council, the International Pasta Organization, McCormick Science Institute, and Oldways Preservation Trust. He is a founding member of the International Carbohydrate Quality Consortium (ICQC), Executive Board Member of the Diabetes and Nutrition Study Group of the European Association for the Study of Diabetes, is on the Clinical Practice Guidelines Expert Committee for Nutrition Therapy of the EASD and is a Director of the Toronto 3D Knowledge Synthesis and Clinical Trials foundation.

DJAJ has received research grants from Saskatchewan & Alberta Pulse Growers Associations, the Agricultural Bioproducts Innovation Program through the Pulse Research Network, the Advanced Foods and Material Network, Loblaw Companies, Ltd., Unilever Canada and Netherlands, Barilla, the Almond Board of California, Agriculture and Agri-food Canada, Pulse Canada, Kellogg’s Company, Canada, Quaker Oats, Canada, Procter & Gamble Technical Centre, Ltd., Bayer Consumer Care, Pepsi/Quaker, International Nut & Dried Fruit Council, Soy Foods Association of North America, the Coca-Cola Company (investigator initiated, unrestricted grant), Solae, Haine Celestial, the Sanitarium Company, Orafti, the International Tree Nut Council Nutrition Research and Education Foundation, the Peanut Institute, Soy Nutrition Institute (SNI), the Canola and Flax Councils of Canada, the Calorie Control Council, the CIHR, the Canada Foundation for Innovation and the Ontario Research Fund. He has received in-kind supplies for trials as a research support from the Almond Board of California, Walnut Council of California, the Peanut Institute, Barilla, Unilever, Unico, Primo, Loblaw Companies, Quaker (Pepsico), Pristine Gourmet, Bunge Limited, Kellogg Canada, and WhiteWave Foods. He has been on the speaker’s panel, served on the scientific advisory board and/or received travel support and/or honoraria from Nutritional Fundamentals for Health (NFH)-Nutramedica, Saint Barnabas Medical Center, The University of Chicago, 2020 China Glycemic Index International Conference, Atlantic Pain Conference, Academy of Life Long Learning, the Almond Board of California, Canadian Agriculture Policy Institute, Loblaw Companies, Ltd., the Griffin Hospital (for the development of the NuVal scoring system), the Coca-Cola Company, Epicure, Danone, Diet Quality Photo Navigation, Better Therapeutics (FareWell), Verywell, True Health Initiative, Heali AI Corp, Institute of Food Technologists, SNI, Herbalife Nutrition Institute, Saskatchewan & Alberta Pulse Growers Associations, Sanitarium Company, Orafti, the International Tree Nut Council Nutrition Research and Education Foundation, the Peanut Institute, Herbalife International, Pacific Health Laboratories, Barilla, Metagenics, Bayer Consumer Care, Unilever Canada and Netherlands, Solae, Kellogg, Quaker Oats, Procter & Gamble, Abbott Laboratories, Dean Foods, the California Strawberry Commission, Haine Celestial, PepsiCo, the Alpro Foundation, Pioneer Hi-Bred International, DuPont Nutrition and Health, Spherix Consulting and WhiteWave Foods, the Advanced Foods and Material Network, the Canola and Flax Councils of Canada, Agri-Culture and Agri-Food Canada, the Canadian Agri-Food Policy Institute, Pulse Canada, the Soy Foods Association of North America, the Nutrition Foundation of Italy, Nutra-Source Diagnostics, the McDougall Program, the Toronto Knowledge Translation Group (St. Michael’s Hospital), the Canadian College of Naturopathic Medicine, The Hospital for Sick Children, the Canadian Nutrition Society, the American Society of Nutrition, Arizona State University, Paolo Sorbini Foundation, and the Institute of Nutrition, Metabolism and Diabetes. He received an honorarium from the United States Department of Agriculture to present the 2013 W.O. Atwater Memorial Lecture. He received the 2013 Award for Excellence in Research from the International Nut and Dried Fruit Council. He received funding and travel support from the Canadian Society of Endocrinology and Metabolism to produce mini cases for the Canadian Diabetes Association. He is a member of the ICQC. His wife, Alexandra L Jenkins, is a director and partner of INQUIS Clinical Research for the Food Industry. His 2 daughters, Wendy Jenkins and Amy Jenkins, have published a vegetarian book that promotes the use of the foods described in this study, The Portfolio Diet for Cardiovascular Risk Reduction (Academic Press/Elsevier 2020 ISBN:978-0-12-810510-8). His sister, Caroline Brydson, received funding through a grant from St. Michael’s Hospital Foundation to develop a cookbook for 1 of his studies. He is also a vegan. JLS has received research support from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, Ontario Research Fund, Province of Ontario Ministry of Research and Innovation and Science, Canadian Institutes of health Research (CIHR), Diabetes Canada, American Society for Nutrition (ASN), International Nut and Dried Fruit Council (INC) Foundation, National Honey Board [the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) honey “Checkoff” program], Institute for the Advancement of Food and Nutrition Sciences (IAFNS), Pulse Canada, Quaker Oats Center of Excellence, The United Soybean Board (the USDA soy “Checkoff” program), The Tate and Lyle Nutritional Research Fund at the University of Toronto, The Glycemic Control and Cardiovascular Disease in Type 2 Diabetes Fund at the University of Toronto (a fund established by the Alberta Pulse Growers), The Plant Protein Fund at the University of Toronto (a fund that has received contributions from IFF), and The Nutrition Trialists Fund at the University of Toronto (a fund established by an inaugural donation from the Calorie Control Council). He has received food donations to support randomized controlled trials from the Almond Board of California, California Walnut Commission, Peanut Institute, Barilla, Unilever/Upfield, Unico/Primo, Loblaw Companies, Quaker, Kellogg Canada, WhiteWave Foods/Danone, Nutrartis, Soylent, and Dairy Farmers of Canada. He has received travel support, speaker fees, and/or honoraria from ASN, Danone, Dairy Farmers of Canada, FoodMinds LLC, Nestlé, Abbott, General Mills, Comité Européen des Fabricants de Sucre, Nutrition Communications, International Food Information Council, Calorie Control Council, the International Sweeteners Association, the International Glutamate Technical Committee, Phynova, and Brightseed. He has or has had ad hoc consulting arrangements with Perkins Coie LLP, Tate & Lyle, Phynova, and INQUIS Clinical Research. He is a former member of the European Fruit Juice Association Scientific Expert Panel and a former member of the Soy Nutrition Institute (SNI) Scientific Advisory Committee. He is on the Clinical Practice Guidelines Expert Committees of Diabetes Canada, European Association for the study of Diabetes, Canadian Cardiovascular Society, and Obesity Canada/Canadian Association of Bariatric Physicians and Surgeons. He serves or has served as an unpaid member of the Board of Trustees and an unpaid scientific advisor for the Carbohydrates Committee of IAFNS. He is a member of the International Carbohydrate Quality Consortium (ICQC), Executive Board Member of the Diabetes and Nutrition Study Group of the EASD, and Director of the Toronto 3D Knowledge Synthesis and Clinical Trials foundation. His spouse is an employee of AB InBev.

XYQ, SB, NM, VH, EL, SBM, VLC, and LAL declare no competing interests.

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Mar 28 2023

The Lancet series on commercial determinants of health (and, therefore, nutrition)

Executive Summary

Commercial actors can contribute positively to health and society, and many do, providing essential products and services. However, a substantial group of commercial actors are escalating avoidable levels of ill health, planetary damage, and inequity—the commercial determinants of health. While policy solutions are available, they are not currently being implemented, and the costs of harm caused by some products and practices are coming at a great cost to individuals and society.

A new Lancet Series on the commercial determinants of health provides recommendations and frameworks to foster a better understanding of the diversity of the commercial world, potential pathways to health harms or benefits, and the need for regulatory action and investment in enterprises that advance health, wellbeing, equity, and society.

  • Defining and conceptualising the commercial determinants of health: Anna B Gilmore, Alice Fabbri, Fran Baum, Adam Bertscher, Krista Bondy, Ha-Joon Chang, Sandro Demaio, Agnes Erzse, Nicholas Freudenberg, Sharon Friel, Karen J Hofman, Paula Johns, Safura Abdool Karim, Jennifer Lacy-Nichols, Camila Maranha Paes de Carvalho, Robert Marten, Martin McKee, Mark Petticrew, Lindsay Robertson, Viroj Tangcharoensathien, Anne Marie Thow

Although commercial entities can contribute positively to health and society there is growing evidence that the products and practices of some commercial actors—notably the largest transnational corporations—are responsible for escalating rates of avoidable ill health, planetary damage, and social and health inequity; these problems are increasingly referred to as the commercial determinants of health. The climate emergency, the non-communicable disease epidemic, and that just four industry sectors (ie, tobacco, ultra-processed food, fossil fuel, and alcohol) already account for at least a third of global deaths illustrate the scale and huge economic cost of the problem. This paper, the first in a Series on the commercial determinants of health, explains how the shift towards market fundamentalism and increasingly powerful transnational corporations has created a pathological system in which commercial actors are increasingly enabled to cause harm and externalise the costs of doing so….

Most public health research on the commercial determinants of health (CDOH) to date has focused on a narrow segment of commercial actors. These actors are generally the transnational corporations producing so-called unhealthy commodities such as tobacco, alcohol, and ultra-processed foods….Moving forward, it is necessary to develop a nuanced understanding of commercial entities that goes beyond this narrow focus, enabling the consideration of a fuller range of commercial entities and the features that characterise and distinguish them…Improved differentiation among commercial actors strengthens the capacity of practitioners, advocates, academics, regulators, and policy makers to make decisions about, to better understand, and to respond to the CDOH through research, engagement, disengagement, regulation, and strategic opposition.

This paper is about the future role of the commercial sector in global health and health equity. The discussion is not about the overthrow of capitalism nor a full-throated embrace of corporate partnerships. No single solution can eradicate the harms from the commercial determinants of health—the business models, practices, and products of market actors that damage health equity and human and planetary health and wellbeing. But evidence shows that progressive economic models, international frameworks, government regulation, compliance mechanisms for commercial entities, regenerative business types and models that incorporate health, social, and environmental goals, and strategic civil society mobilisation together offer possibilities of systemic, transformative change, reduce those harms arising from commercial forces, and foster human and planetary wellbeing. In our view, the most basic public health question is not whether the world has the resources or will to take such actions, but whether humanity can survive if society fails to make this effort.

Comment
Perspectives
Viewpoint

Infographics

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Feb 22 2023

ILSI tracked media responses to my book, Unsavory Truth

This photo was just sent to me by Murray Carpenter (@Murray_journo).  I don’t know him personally but he is the author of  Caffeinated, which I blurbed and wrote about in 2014.

He wrote that ILSI, a well known front group for the food industry, must have hired someone to track media reception to my 2018 book, Unsavory Truth: How the Food Industry Skews the Science of What We Eat.  ILSI is the International Life Sciences Institute, which has since changed its name to the Institute for the Advancemement of Food and Nutrition Sciences.

Murray said that on January 19, 2019, he was in the audience for the annual ILSI conference  in Clearwater, Florida.  He sent me this account of that occasion [my emphasis in red below]:

As the conference ground on, attendance fell off. So there were plenty of empty seats when Clare Thorp took the podium. Thorp had newly assumed the position of executive director of ILSI North America. She talked about scientific integrity ad nauseam. The emphasis seemed a corrective, an effort to reinforce the message among the membership. Because for an organization that prides itself on independence and integrity, ILSI kept getting caught doing the bidding of its members, over and over again. It just couldn’t seem to rein itself in.

It wasn’t just that ILSI’s Applebaum, Hill, and Sievenpiper had become the public faces of pseudoscience [Note: scientists caught up in conflicts of interest with Coca-Cola]. Thorp also referenced the Mars situation. The corporation had first criticized ILSI-funded science, then left the group entirely.

“Our membership comes with some major challenges and opportunities,” Thorp said. “We’ve lost a major member. It happens. We keep going.”

Unwittingly, Thorp worked doggedly to prove the aforementioned axiom—the degree to which you have scientific integrity is inversely related to the number of times you claim it.

“I have a passion for sound science…I come from a family of scientists, whether practitioners or academics,” she said. The science statements came out in torrents. “Unbiased and credible research…Scientific integrity is not something we made up overnight, it’s a journey.” She displayed a slide touting the Scientific Integrity Consortium, in partnership with the USDA, which she called “a coalition of the willing.”

“We are not an advocacy or a lobbying organization. But we are actually something entirely different,” she said.

“ILSI is an industry-funded organization where these companies support research that doesn’t directly serve their private interests. They agree to be hands-off…and they bravely commit to publishing the data, no matter what it says. This is very scary. And then, why would they do it?…It’s actually altruistic. They genuinely believe it’s important. They also believe that having a collaborative forum where everyone’s voice can be heard is really necessary.”

But it wasn’t enough to just focus on the science. Thorp also considered the public perception of ILSI. She said she wanted to communicate their work more broadly, to step outside this circle of friends and take a more proactive approach.

“We need to have a better understanding of who ILSI North America is, and what we do, and how we do it.” In response, ILSI was developing more communications materials, she said, and new website graphics.

Then she displayed a slide showing an elaborate, graphically elegant word cloud. Some of the big words in the center of the cloud: “science,” “truth,” “food,” “unsavory,” “industry,” “Nestle,” “Marion.”

It turned out that the nonprofit had chosen to spend some of its money to hire a media tracker to follow the press coverage of Marion Nestle’s recent book Unsavory Truth. The book focused on corporate influence in nutrition policy. The word cloud represented an analysis of the press coverage.

And here, Thorp was actually pleased. “The themes of manipulation, deception, and conspiracy that Nestle is promoting are not coming through as main themes in the media coverage.”

Thorp said that one of ILSI’s challenges was the public perception that it’s an industry front group, and that gets onto the web. “We are working very hard to get our Wikipedia page updated, and then it gets changed again, and then we have to update it again, but it’s important,” she said.

Leading ILSI had become a tough gig. Thorp would not last a year at the helm.

Comment

Of course the word cloud did not include maniputlation, deception, or conspiracy; those words do not appear in Unsavory Truth.  The whole point of conflicts of interest induced by food industry sponsorship—which is what the book is about—is that the conflicts are almost always unintentional, unrecognized, and denied.  Researchers who take industry funding do not believe it influences their science, despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary reviewed in my book.

What’s especially interesting to me about this is that from my perspective, Unsavory Truth had little impact.  It generated much less media coverage than most of my books, and led to few speaking invitations.  I thought it had disappeared without a trace.

Apparently not.  I am pleased and honored to learn about this incident.

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Nov 18 2022

Weekend reading: Commercial Determinants of Health

From Oxford University Press:

I was happy to be asked to contribute to this book: 

My thanks to Eric Crosbie, who did the heavy lifting on the chapter and also co-authored two other chapters (on trade and investment and on teaching commercial determinants of health.

This book brings together multiple authors and perspectives on how corporations selling unhealthful commodities—tobacco, alcohol, and junk food, for example—act to protect sales and marketing, regardless of effects on individual and collective health.

Chapters cover the policies and politics, the ways commercial interessts have taken over culture, how companies influence science, research, and marketing, examples of such influence, analyses of the legal issues, and recommendations for countering corporate actions.

The chapters are so informative and so well referenced that it’s hard to select specific examples.  But here’s one from George Annas’ chapter on “Corporations as Irresponsible Artificial People.”

The public health goal is to make the social responsibility of corporations a reality rather than just a feel-good marketing slogan.  This will require transforming the corporation from an instrument designed and run to make money while indifferent to polluting the planet and destroying the health of humans to an entity whose money-making must be consistent with preserving the health of the planet and its inhabitants.  Central to this objecti8ve is to replace the currfent post-2008 system in which profits are kept by the owners of capital, and losses are socialized by being paid for by governments, most notably for corporations that are “too big to fail.”  Any sustainable system requires that both gains and losses are shared by corporations and governments.  Sharing gains and lossers will require a restructuring of corporate tax, including a minimum tax for all corporations, but domestic and multinational.

Amen.  Everyone needs to understand that food corporations are not social service or public health agencies.  They are businesses stuck with responding to the shareholder value movement, which forces them to make profits their first and only priority.

This system needs to change.  This book provides the evidence.

Note: I discussed many of these same issues in Unsavorty Truth: How Food Companies Skew the Science of What We Eat.  

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Oct 25 2022

Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics: Captured by Food Corporations

The advocacy group, U.S. Right to Know, sent out a press release to announce publication of an article in the British journal, Public Health Nutrition: The corporate capture of the nutrition profession in the USA: the case of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.

The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics [AND, formerly the American Dietetic Association] accepted millions of dollars from food, pharmaceutical and agribusiness companies, had policies to provide favors in return, and invested in ultra-processed food company stocks, according to a study published today in Public Health Nutrition…The study was produced by public health scholars and U.S. Right to Know, a nonprofit investigative public health group that obtained tens of thousands of pages of internal Academy documents through state public records requests.

I’ve been writing about corporate capture of AND (formerly the American Dietetic Association) for years (see below), but this study shocked even me, for two reasons.

  • AND holds stock in food companies making ultra-processed foods.

The documents show that the Academy and its foundation invested funds in ultra-processed food companies. The Academy’s investment portfolio in January 2015 included $244,036 in stock holdings in Nestle S.A. and $139,545 in PepsiCo. The Academy foundation’s investment portfolio in June 2013 included $209,472 in stock holdings in Nestle S.A and $125,682 in PepsiCo.

  • The list of food companies donating to AND is extraordinarily long; it goes on for pages.

The Academy accepted more than $15 million from corporate and organizational contributors in the years 2011 and 2013-2017. The Academy’s top contributors in 2011 and 2013-2017 were:

  • National Dairy Council $1,496,912
  • Conagra Inc. $1,414,058
  • Abbott Nutrition $1,246,389
  • Abbott Laboratories $824,110
  • Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Foundation: $801,261
  • PepsiCo Inc. $486,335
  • Coca-Cola Co. $477,577
  • Hershey Co. $368,032
  • General Mills Inc. $309,733
  • Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality $296,495
  • Aramark Co. $293,051
  • Unilever Best Foods $276,791
  • Kellogg USA $273,272

The Academy’s response: Inaccuracies in U.S. Right to Know Article

The report is disjointed, mostly opinion, emails taken out of context, picking and choosing items based on words out of Board reports, etc.

The Academy lists facts

  • One of the authors has strong financial ties to CrossFit, a staunch opponent to RDN licensure.
  • Less than 9% (12 out of 149) of named scholarships, awards and named research grants were established through industry. The funds that are established have input into scholarship criteria, which are approved by the Foundation’s Board. An independent review committee then reviews applications and selects recipients.
  • Less than 2% (32 out of 2,812) of donors to the Academy’s Second Century were industry donors.

Additional Academy facts

  • Fact: The Academy is NOT influenced by sponsorship money
  • Fact: Less than 3% of the Academy’s and the Foundation’s investments are in food companies.
  • Fact: The Academy has never changed a position at the request of sponsors.
  • Fact: Less than 9% of Academy funding comes from sponsorship.
  • Fact: The Foundation’s Fellows program allows participants to serve as catalysts for change and advancement in emerging areas of need for the evolving nutrition and dietetics profession.
  • Fact: The Academy and Foundation have always been committed to accountability through transparency and fiduciary responsibility.

Comment

I have been writing about the Academy’s ties with food companies for years.  See, for example,

In my book, I document how food companies exert influence through sponsorship of research and professional societies.  Typically, recipients of industry funding do not recognize the influence of sponsorship and deny it, as we see here.

If AND wants to be taken seriously as an organization devoted to public health, it needs to set strong guidelines for conflicts of interest and adhere to them.  At the moment, this organization gives the appearance of a public relations arm of the food industry.

The same can be said of the American Society of Nutrition, but that’s another story.

Resources

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Oct 21 2022

Weekend thinking: holding food corporations accountable (or trying to)

The Access to Nutrition Initiative (ATNI) has released its latest Index report on the progress of the 11 largest U.S. food and beverage companies on their commitments to make, market and sell healthy food and drinks.

The report’s dismal conclusion:

While all companies have placed a greater focus on nutrition in their corporate strategies since the first index was released in 2018, their actual products have not become healthier, and they are not making sufficient efforts to safeguard children from the marketing of unhealthy products.

Collectively, these copanies have sales of about $170 billion annually and account for nearly 30% of all U.S. food and beverage sales.

The report’s overall findings (the Index is a composite on a scale of 10):

Specific findings:

  • Only 30% of their products meet criteria for “healthy,” 70% do not. This is only marginally better than in 2018 (see link to my post on this below).
  • Companies say they have a greater focus on nutrition and health, but are not doing much about it.
  • Only four companies are trying to improve the affordability of their healthier products.
  • Companies say they are trying to protect children from the harmful effects of marketing unhealthy products, but they are not doing much about it.

ATNI recommends that companies fix these problems and that the government “support such changes by introducing more effective and enforceable standards and legislation that prevent the marketing of unhealthy products and push companies to apply reformulation strategies on their products.

I like this recommendation, despite its being couched as “encourage,” rather than as a demand:

Companies are encouraged to actively support (and commit to not lobby against) public policy measures in the US to benefit public health and address obesity as enshrined in the National Strategy on food, hunger, nutrition, and health

Comment: Results liket these come as no surprise.  To repeat: food companies are not social service or public health agencies; they are businesses with stockholders who demand returns on investment as the first priority.

Expecting companies to change products to make them less attractive or to stop marketing to children means asking them to go against their business interests.

Until companies are rewarded for focusing on social values, public health, and environmental sustainability, ATNI’s evaluations are unlikely to have much of an impact on corporate behavior.

Documents

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