Nutrition Diva

Can we trust industry funded research?

Episode Summary

The food and nutrition industry is in a tizzy over a report from The Washington Post.

Episode Notes

Much of today’s food and nutrition research is paid for by commercial interests. Just how big a problem is this?

Nutrition Diva is hosted by Monica Reinagel. A transcript is available at Simplecast.

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Episode Resources:
Public Health Nutrition journal article
The Washington Post article

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Episode Transcription

Audio: Hello and welcome to the Nutrition Diva podcast. I’m your host, Monica Reinagel. Last week, Washington Post columnist Anahad O’Connor published an article that has thrown the food and nutrition industry into a bit of a tizzy.

O’Connor was reporting on findings that were published last week in the Public Health Nutrition journal, revealing financial records and internal emails from the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, showing that the organization had accepted donations and funding from lots of large food manufacturing companies like Coca-cola and Kellogg’s, as well as commodity groups representing dairy and beef farmers, and so on.

O’Connor writes that “Conagra, which owns brands like Slim Jim, Duncan Hines, Reddi-wip and Chef Boyardee, gave the Academy at least $1.4 million.” But that’s a very selective list of Conagra brands, designed to land a punch. Conagra also owns brands like Birdseye vegetables, Udi’s gluten-free product, Gardein plant-based proteins, and Earth Balance.

But O’Connor’s point is that this corporate sponsorship is unseemly, given that the Academy “helps shape national food policy and trains thousands of dietitians, who help people decide what to eat.”

As a member of the Academy, I can tell you that its members are a very diverse group. They include prominent researchers, student radicals, policy wonks, academics, government advisors, food scientists, clinical dietitians, people who work in agriculture, schools, hospitals, food banks, restaurants, grocery stores, media and communications, and—yes—people who work for companies that make processed foods.

I personally know only a few hundred of the over 100,000 Academy members—but I literally don’t think I could come up with a single substantive statement about food or nutrition that every single one of them would agree with. So, while Academy members may collectively wield a lot of influence, they hardly speak with one voice. That influence is exerted in many different—and often—conflicting directions. 

The positions and policies of the Academy also evolve. For example, a few years ago, there was a big grassroots movement within the Academy, spear-headed by rank-and-file members who objected to the kinds of sponsors and partnerships highlighted in this report. In response to that internal pressure, the Academy made some changes. Several of the funding partnerships that are called out in this report (which was based on documents dating from 2011 to 2017) were terminated 6 or 7 years ago.

The current outrage also seems to reflect the current trope that processed food is The Problem. So by extension, any company that makes processed food is The Source of the Problem. But processed foods play many roles in our diets—some of them perfectly legitimate.

Likewise, the companies that make these foods play many roles in our health, economy, and environment. Some of those roles we may deplore; others (inconveniently) we absolutely depend on. In addition to making cheap and tasty junk food that may add excess calories (or worse) to our diets, those same companies also make products that make our food supply safer, more nutritious, and more accessible. Like most of us, big food companies are a mixed bag.

One important role that these big companies and industry groups play is to fund an enormous amount of health and nutrition research. In fact, without industry-funded research, we'd know a whole lot less about food and nutrition than we do.

There are those who feel that all industry funded research is suspect if not outright invalid. I disagree. Who funds a study is obviously an important piece of information—and that’s why researchers are required to disclose their funding sources and any other potential conflicts of interest at every step of the process. 

The fact that a study has been funded by a private interest suggests that we might want to take a closer look at how it was conducted and reported. However, it does not automatically invalidate the results. Often, the research is being conducted by university-based researchers who apply for grant money to further their own academic research interests.

Now, when a commercial interest invests in scientific research, they’re obviously hoping for results that will benefit their product or industry. And if they get results that put their product in a positive light, you better believe they’re going to try to get maximum mileage out of it. But at least they’re attempting to provide verifiable data for their claims, as opposed to just making stuff up (which would be a whole lot cheaper).

And we benefit. Conducting research is quite expensive. Quite frankly, if the food industry didn’t fund nutrition research, there’d be a whole lot less research. And although they don’t always work flawlessly, there are ethical safeguards in place.

In order to get the results published in a peer-reviewed journal, researchers have to follow certain rules and protocols about how studies are designed, how data are collected and analyzed, and how the results are reported. The researchers also have to disclose their funding sources—which may cause the review boards to look even more closely at those study designs to be sure that they are scientifically sound.

However, there’s still room for bias. Industry is more likely to sponsor research that they feel has a good chance of yielding positive results—and this may affect which questions get studied, and how. Commercial interests are also very eager to publish and publicize results that benefit them—and not so eager to promote findings that don’t.

Indeed, industry-funded research is more likely to be flattering to the funder than not. However, this is true of all research to some extent and not just industry-funded research. It’s called publication bias. If I discover that a particular thing (such as a drug, a diet, or a nutritional supplement) has an effect, my study is three times more likely to be accepted for publication in a scientific journal than a study that found no effect.

Apparently, this is simply human nature: As a species, we find it more significant when something happens than when nothing happens. But when you really think about it, proving that something has no effect is often just as meaningful as showing that it has a positive or negative effect.

There’s another kind of prejudice in the scientific community known as confirmation bias. Although scientists like to believe that they are completely objective, most have certain beliefs or suspicions about how things work. Their ideas subtly and unconsciously influence how they design their studies and how they interpret the results. As a result, researchers are more likely to get results that confirm their underlying beliefs.

Confirmation bias also operates at the larger level of the scientific community. If my results are in line with generally accepted ideas, they are more likely to be published. As a result, it can be very difficult to challenge the conventional wisdom—even when the conventional wisdom is wrong. It’s been known to happen. For decades we told people that eating too many eggs would give you high cholesterol, for example. Now we know that this is generally not the case.

People who report and comment on research (like yours truly) also suffer from ideological bias. We tend to pay more attention to research that confirms our worldview and to distrust or discount findings that don’t.

One advantage to industry funded research may be that the bias is a lot easier to detect because it’s obvious what to look for. If I see that a study has been funded by a commercial interest, I’m going be looking for ways that they may have slanted the study design or interpretation of results in their favor. (So is the peer-review board that’s evaluating the study for publication.) The fact that industry funding is involved may even cause a study to be held to a slightly higher standard of objectivity.

But when a study has been funded by a university, a non-profit foundation, or a government grant, it’s not immediately clear what sort of assumptions or prejudices the researchers may have. Usually, the researchers themselves are not aware of their own biases. That’s what makes ideological bias so insidious: We (both as individuals and as societies) are often the last to realize when we are under the influence.

Research is never going to be perfectly objective because it’s conducted—and interpreted—by humans. The scientific method is a system we’ve devised to try to compensate for our inescapable prejudices. One of the first rules is that no single research finding is definitive. If I do an experiment and get a certain result, the next step is to see if you get the same result when you do the same experiment. If you don’t, we need to try to explain why. And for every explanation we come up with, we have to ask whether there are other equally plausible explanations besides the one we came up with. If there are, we have to rule one or the other out.

It can get pretty messy. But the more data we collect, the truer the picture that emerges. To the extent that industry funded research produces more data to inform that big picture, I think we’re better off with it than without it.

Here’s the bottom line: We shouldn’t assume that all industry funded research is false and we can’t assume that publicly funded research is always true. No matter where it came from, you need to poke around under the hood a little to see whether the study design makes sense, whether the actual data are in sync with how the study results are presented to the media, and whether there are studies from other sources that either confirm or refute the results. It’s also important to be aware of your own beliefs and ideological biases and how they may be coloring your evaluations.

Finally, scientists and scientific commentators must be ready and willing to adjust or even abandon long-held beliefs in the face of new evidence. And that can be difficult for know-it-alls like us. That’s why I’m always glad to hear from Nutrition Diva readers and listeners with different points of view or research that I may not have considered. So keep those emails and comments coming. You can email them to me at nutrition@quickanddirtytips.com. You can also leave me a message at 443-961-6206

And as far as this brouhaha over Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics funding is concerned, yes, it’s important to follow the money trail. It’s also important not to jump to conclusions. I think our best bet is to judge the research, the arguments, and the resulting policies on their merits and not merely on their underwriters.

Nutrition Diva is a Quick and Dirty Tips podcast. It's audio-engineered by Nathan Semmes with script editing by Adam Cecil. Thanks also to Morgan Christianson, Holly Hutchings, Davina Tomlin, and Kamryn Lacy.

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