Source: http://www.foodpolitics.com/2016/03/16001/
Julia Belluz of Vox has just done a story on my collection of studies funded by food companies. Here are a few excerpts. For the entire article and its excellent illustrations, click on the link):
About a year ago, Marion Nestle finally got sick of the rotten state of nutrition science.
Everywhere she looked, she found glaring conflicts of interest. “Without any trouble, I could identify industry-funded nutrition studies by their titles,” says the New York University professor. “It was so obvious”…But Nestle is not the first to notice this problem. Many nutrition researchers have been complaining about conflict-of-interest problems in their field for some time now. 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. And other research backs up Nestle’s findings. Take this review of studies on sugary drinks. Independently funded studies tend to find a correlation between soda consumption and poor health outcomes. Studies funded by soda makers, by contrast, are less likely to find such correlations. Or take this investigation of 206 publications on the health effects of milk, soft drinks, and fruit juices. 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.
The reporter inte…