Junk Food Producers Pay Scientists To Fudge Link Between Health And Nutrition

Yet another major long-term study, this one published in the New England Journal of Medicine, has conclusively demonstrated the link between weight gain and junk food. The study showed that soda is "the number one problem related to weight gain," Dr. Walter Willett, chair of the Nutrition department at the Harvard School of Public Health, told MSNBC.

But that's not the story that major food companies like PepsiCo, Coca-Cola or Mars Co. want you to believe. And a new report by ABC suggests that these companies are willing to pay scientists to help produce evidence refuting the link between bad health and a bad diet. The terms of the payments, of course, do not explicitly require the scientists to fudge study results. But scientists who receive big grants from major food companies have been known to testify in favor of junk food in court and in front of Congress. Some have compared such scientists to those who obfuscated the link between smoking and cancer before it became incontrovertible—which casts "big sugar" in the same role as "big tobacco."

Comments

[epsilon 2010]

08:52 PM on 06/29/2011

Oh Cooperations what will you not do for profit?

[El Chingaso]

03:07 PM on 06/27/2011

WARNING: Only consume laboratory-created / assembly line-manufactured edible substances...if you want to add lots of fat to your frame, clog your arteries, ruin your sex drive, increase your blood pressure, contract diabetes and, worst of all, destroy your intellectual functioning. Ding-Dongs, chips and sodas...just ain't worth it. American-os, take it from El Chingaso, release yourselves from the mind control of the corporate junk food industry. (You know what I mean, like, "Lays. You can't eat just one.") Gain control of your lives...and your bellies.

[Stewart Goss]

11:00 PM on 06/26/2011

Government does the same.

[Js420]

01:21 PM on 06/25/2011

Those sell outs are not real scientists. Charge them with treason!

[MasterKat]

01:48 AM on 06/25/2011

I... have no words. Anyone who believes claims that high sugar/fat consumption isn't related to weight gain and health problems is either in denial or mentally challenged. It doesn't matter what a scientist says, I notice the link between my eating habits and my weight gain/loss. It's not rocket science.

[pineappaloupe]

09:41 PM on 06/24/2011

No surprise here. Check out The Heartland Institute.
A lot of people cite their studies, most of them about how coal is good, cfls are bad, and climate change. They had a big publication about climate changed that they claimed was based on a 'peer reviewed research paper'. And the paper they references was published, but not in a peer reviewed journal.

[addisonsteele]

06:46 PM on 06/24/2011

Oh, I forgot something: the financial industry and right-wing plutocrats pay for their own economists to claim that certain policies will work while others will not. The Chicago School --- Milton Friedman and the like --- whose theories underlay Reaganomics and all subsequent Republican economic thinking was bought and paid for by plutocrats whose fortunes would be increased by their enactment. Lesson: most so-called experts will say anything for the right price.

[addisonsteele]

06:43 PM on 06/24/2011

The asbestos industry paid for its own "researchers" to deny the hazards of asbestos. The tobacco industry paid for its own "scientists" to deny the hazards of smoking. The petrochemical and coal industries pay for their own "researchers" to deny anthropogenic climate change. The list could go on and on.

[Excalibre]

03:22 PM on 06/24/2011

Is this seriously a surprise to anyone? Another news flash: they also pay scientists to "prove" that global warming doesn't exist.

[baxtron]

12:28 PM on 06/24/2011

High Fructose Corn Syrup is slowly killing my in-laws.

[kareemachan]

11:40 AM on 06/24/2011

This is nothing new. You look at an independent study vs. one done by the corporations, and hey, amazingly enough, they don't agree.

[Ossit]

10:43 AM on 06/24/2011

I only have one favorite junk food. Pork rinds! I'm going out to get some now.

[Zacky Ahmed]

08:52 AM on 06/24/2011

Yes ! every scientist is a human being first do not forget that just as every lawmaker
is a human being first etc.., however
and let me make this a strong an important point, science defeats corruption itself
the advances science makes defeats the pseudoscience and the corrupt so called scientists

because behind every science project there is a test it is there to be scrutinized, if the one who testified in front of congress lies about it there is 1000s other scientists
who can test it and verify it.
this is why it defeats itself, what are they gonna do ?
every person in the world can become a scientist you do not need votes but education,
they cant pay them all ;)

this is why we have the so called lord Monckton scientists who speak in favor of exxon mobile every time they open their mouth.

[VA Jill]

08:07 AM on 06/24/2011

And this surprises you how?

[nutsaccoupe63]

04:54 AM on 06/24/2011

are any of your surprised junkfood isnt good for you?

i mean they call it junkfood, right?

but boy,, it sure hits the spot sometimes i tell ya lol

[Zacky Ahmed]

08:55 AM on 06/24/2011

some people live in denial
heck i even hear people defending the tobacco industry now a days.
people defend what they like,