Corporate Funding of Food and Nutrition Research Science or Marketing?

Marion Nestle, PhD, MPH^{1 1}Department of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health, New York University, New York

This Viewpoint emphasizes that nutrition researchers and professional societies need to recognize the influence of food-industry sponsorship, take steps to control its effects, and ensure that sponsored studies promote public health. The longstanding influence of food industry funding on nutrition research, researchers, and professional societies¹ threatens the credibility of nutrition science. So much research is sponsored by industry that health professionals and the public may lose confidence in basic dietary advice. Although most journals now require authors to disclose who pays for their work, disclosure—even done diligently—is not sufficient to alert readers to the extent to which industry funding influences research results and professional opinion. As is well established from experimental and observational research, drug company gifts and grants can have substantial effects. To recipients, however, these effects are almost always unconscious, unintentional, and unrecognized, making them especially difficult to prevent.²