I’m having trouble keeping up with industry-sponsored nutrition research so will use this week’s posts to catch up. I’ll start with this one.
Nutrition journals often publish supplements on specific themes that are paid for by outside parties, food industry groups among them. The February 2016 issue of the Journal of Nutrition contains a supplement with the papers from the 2014 International Garlic Symposium: “Role of Garlic in Cardiovascular Disease Prevention, Metabolic Syndrome, and Immunology.”
To distinguish supplement papers from peer-reviewed journal articles, citations give page numbers with the letter S. The Journal of Nutrition’s exceptionally clear policy on supplement publications explains that organizers are expected to pay page charges of $75 per article and $300 per published page plus additional editorial costs as needed. It views supplements as paid advertisements and requires full disclosure of funding sources.
Here’s the disclosure for the garlic supplement.
The symposium was sponsored by the University of California, Los Angeles School of Medicine and the University of Florida and co-sponsored by the American Botanical Council; the American Herbal Products Association; the ASN [American Society for Nutrition]; the Japanese Society for Food Factors; the Japan Society for Bioscience, Biotechnology, and Agrochemistry; the Japan Society of Nutrition and Food Science; and the Na…