Food Industry and Nutritional “Science”

A recent article in JAMA uncovered the sugar industry’s purposeful attempts to shield their product from being linked to coronary heart disease (CHD)   This discovery shouldn’t surprise anybody.  Sugar is just another industry that perverts nutritional science and keeps people confused.

In their conclusion, the authors state:

“Policymaking committees should consider giving less weight to food industry–funded studies, and include mechanistic and animal studies as well as studies appraising the effect of added sugars on multiple CHD biomarkers and disease development”

I think we can agree that less weight should be given to food industry-funded studies.  However, future studies specifically focused on added sugars (sucrose) is not going to help us much. If future studies don’t show a strong link between added sucrose and CHD, I’ll continue to recommend limiting added sugar as much as possible.  It’s still calorie dense junk.

The reductionist questions these studies are asking are outdated.  The answers are meaningless based on what the research of Dean Ornish, Caldwell Esselstyn Jr. and the Nathan Pritikin Research Foundation has shown.

This highly reductionist view of nutrition keeps people in the dark about what low-fat whole food plant-based (WFPB) diets can achieve in preventing and treating CHD.

It’s frustrating, but I’m trying to be optimistic.

If you’re looking for more frustration, check out this recent article about the “health-promoting” properties of high fat cheese.

It’s shameful that such a poorly designed and interpreted study was published in The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition.

The authors were clearly data dredging to come up with a desired result. The study is not quite as bad as the notorious Chocolate Study, but it’s not too far off. You’d think the study was deliberately designed to provide positive results for cheese. It makes you wonder if the study was fully funded by the dairy industry. Oh wait… it was.

A general rule to follow:

NEVER put too much weight into the results of one study, especially a nutrition study that provides surprising results.

If you’d like to learn more about how science is under siege, I suggest you click on the links below:

• John Oliver video on scientific studies
• Article – The 7 Biggest Problems Facing Science
• Food Politics – Marion Nestle

Stay Healthy and Strong