"If you look at the amount of funding available from the, there's been a contraction of inflation-adjusted dollars available for research over the last decade," says Jason Block, a physician and researcher at Harvard Medical School. Right now nutrition science is relatively underfunded by government, leaving lots of space for food companies and industry groups to step in and sponsor research. So why are conflicts of interest allowed to persist in nutrition research?
They all acknowledged that she was tapping into a real problem, one that's been difficult for their community to address. I asked several researchers who work in food and nutrition what they thought about Nestle's tally. "And it’s about marketing, not about science." Why this absurd state of affairs has been allowed to persist "Eating walnuts reduces the risk of diabetes!" The study, published in BMJ Open Diabetes Research and Care in 2015, was supported by the California Walnut Commission. It’s bad for public trust in nutrition science. "I think this is bad for nutrition research. Studies that were funded by beverage companies were four to eight times more likely to come to favorable conclusions about the health effects of those beverages. Or take this investigation of 206 publications on the health effects of milk, soft drinks, and fruit juices. Studies funded by soda makers, by contrast, are less likely to find such correlations. Independently funded studies tend to find a correlation between soda consumption and poor health outcomes. Take this review of studies on sugary drinks. Whereas other fields, like medicine, have been putting in place safeguards to protect against undue industry influence, the field of nutrition has lagged behind in this regard.Īnd other research backs up Nestle's findings. Many nutrition researchers have been complaining about conflict-of-interest problems in their field for some time now. It's also possible that a more careful peer review of her survey could identify errors.īut Nestle is not the first to notice this problem. It's entirely possible that there are many industry-funded food studies that don't favor their funders and she's just somehow missed them. Nestle cautions that her tally is by no means exhaustive. There are many, many more examples like this. (That study, of course, omitted any mention of the link between sugary beverages and obesity.) The study on walnuts, funded by the California Walnut Commission, concluded that consuming walnuts can help reduce the risk of diabetes. found that drinking the product on a regular basis had amazing brain-boosting properties. The aforementioned research on Concord grape juice - which was supported by Welch Foods Inc.
Of the 168 industry-funded studies she has examined, 156 boast results that favor the funder. So Nestle decided to document the problem: On her blog, Food Politics, she began tracking all the industry-funded food and nutrition research she came across, paying particular attention to the number of studies that had positive results (i.e., favoring the funder). The problem of food research funded by food companies "Drinking grape juice has brain boosting effects, even helping with everyday tasks like driving!" The study, published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition in 2016, was published by Welch Foods Inc.
They seemed more like marketing than science. Studies sponsored by the food industry were far more likely to reach conclusions that favored the industry. But independent researchers seldom discover that, say, a single food like walnuts can help stave off diabetes, as this study found. Healthy eating patterns can have a positive impact, yes. Nestle had been researching nutrition long enough to know that there's rarely clear evidence that specific foods have such miraculous health effects. ( Study: Concord grape juice can make you a better driver!) Nestle kept seeing studies with very specific names, like, "Concord grape juice, cognitive function, and driving performance," or, "Walnut ingestion in adults at risk for diabetes." These papers were funded by the food industry - a grape juice maker, walnut growers - and nearly always reached glowing conclusions about the food in question. "Without any trouble, I could identify industry-funded nutrition studies by their titles," says the New York University professor. About a year ago, Marion Nestle finally got sick of the rotten state of nutrition science.Įverywhere she looked, she found glaring conflicts of interest.
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