The Tragedy of American Nutritional Science
A Note from Foodthink
In a modern society where science is equated with progress, this should not even be a question. Yet one of the greatest tragedies of our age is that science, which could have been used to help humanity tackle poverty, hunger, disease and environmental destruction, has been irredeemably corrupted by big capital. It threatens the air we breathe, the water we drink, and the food and medicines we rely on.
The Tragedy of American Science: From the Cold War to Perpetual War analyses and explores a process by which American science, under an extreme dependence on corporate and military funding, was transformed from a creative force for human progress into a destructive, anti-human one. The author argues that replacing the existing profit-driven scientific system with one that serves humanity is not an unattainable utopian dream—but only if we face up to the reality unfolding before our eyes.
Foodthink has excerpted part of Chapter One of this book, which reflects critically on nutritional science and prompts us to ask: can human diets be reduced to the intake of nutrients? Can nutritional science, manipulated by food-industry interests, help us eat more healthily? And at what cost have ordinary people paid?
Thanks to The Commercial Press, the publisher of this book, for granting us permission to publish this excerpt.
I. Is Nutritional Science an Oxymoron?
In September 2018, according to an article by Anahad O’Connor in The New York Times, the career of Professor Brian Wansink—director of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab and one of America’s most respected food-research experts—had come to a dishonourable end. Wansink resigned after Cornell University publicly confirmed that he had committed academic misconduct, including falsifying research data.
Some experts believe this scandal points to far deeper problems in food and health research. Critics argue that “a considerable body of food research is misleading. These studies lack scientific rigour, producing dubious conclusions obtained through manipulation.”
Dr Wansink’s lab had long been notorious for data dredging—or, more precisely, P-hacking. P-hacking involves exhaustively analysing a dataset and extracting, from inflated figures, conclusions that should have been overlooked. Critics say this amounts to casting a wide net and then formulating a hypothesis to support the data behind whatever findings appear interesting—the very antithesis of the scientific method.
Unfortunately, the exposure of Wansink’s misconduct is unlikely to significantly improve the state of nutritional science research. The examples that follow show that research built on unreliable statistics is far from rare, and data dredging will not disappear any time soon.
II. How Scientific Are the Government’s Dietary Guidelines?
The federal government publishes and revises the Dietary Guidelines for Americans every five years. Whether or not a great many Americans actually consult these guidelines, they have undeniably had a profound influence on how Americans eat. The Guidelines serve not only as the foundation for nutrition education, food labelling law and food assistance programmes across the United States, but also as a priority focus for research at the National Institutes of Health.
Incidentally, these food assistance programmes directly affect a quarter of the American population. School breakfast and lunch programmes and the food stamp programme—or Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program—require over USD 100 billion each year to provide food that meets federal nutrition standards.
US law requires that the Dietary Guidelines incorporate scientific and medical knowledge relating to nutrition and diet. Before the 2015 edition was released, the government tasked an expert panel, the Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee, with preparing an initial report. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans were to be revised on the basis of this report and jointly produced by the US Department of Agriculture and the Department of Health and Human Services.
In February 2015, the report attracted unprecedented public attention the moment it was released. In stark contrast to the previous report, which received only about 2,000 public comments, this one drew 29,000—and that figure merely reflects the comments generated during the first round of fierce debate among consumer-protection groups and lobbyists advocating on proposed legislation over issues such as sugar, red meat, sustainable agriculture and science. The BMJ (formerly the British Medical Journal) subjected the report to in-depth analysis and sharply criticised it for lacking sufficient scientific rigour.
At the heart of The BMJ’s criticism was the finding that the scientific evidence underpinning the report had, in fact, been compromised by conflicts of interest. The expert committee acknowledged that the report relied heavily on data provided by health-advocacy organisations funded by food and pharmaceutical companies. For example, the American Heart Association had received “decades of funding from vegetable-oil manufacturers. In return, the Association has long promoted vegetable oils, claiming they improve cardiovascular health.”
III. Severe Sugar Addiction in Nutritional Science
The Sugar Research Foundation also bought off three Harvard professors to write review articles on topics the organisation selected. Their reviews appeared in July 1967 in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine. They downplayed the role of sugar in heart disease while implying that saturated fat was the true culprit. The thousands of pages of previously undisclosed archive files made plain, without question, the tacit collusion between these Harvard scientists and the sugar industry.
In 1964, sugar-industry executive John Hickson discussed a plan with others in the industry to change public opinion “through our own research, information and legislative programme.” Given that nutritional research at the time had already begun to point to a link between high-sugar diets and high rates of heart disease, Hickson proposed that industry-funded research be used to counter these troubling conclusions. “Then we can publish data that counter the people who are damaging our industry,” he wrote in the documents. In 1965, Hickson recruited researchers from Harvard. They wrote a review article to rebut the findings of anti-sugar studies. He paid them USD 6,500—equivalent to USD 49,000 today. Hickson selected the articles for them to review and made it clear that he hoped the results would vindicate sugar. Dr Hegsted of Harvard University assured the sugar-industry executives, allaying their concerns.
IV. Sugary Drinks and Candy Science
And those rates continue to climb. How rapidly have overweight and obesity spread in America? In 1980, fewer than 15 per cent of Americans were obese; today, more than two-thirds of adults and one-third of children and adolescents are overweight or obese. In 1980, type 2 diabetes in children was rare. Based on current data projections, growing numbers of adolescents and half of all adults now have the disease or are in a pre-diabetic stage.
The now-defunct Global Energy Balance Network had claimed to be the “voice of science” in obesity research. According to its scientific rationale, children were gaining weight not from excessive calorie intake but from insufficient exercise. The organisation also designed studies and cherry-picked data to support this false scientific narrative.
Another investigative report by Anahad O’Connor revealed that Coca-Cola had “been partnering with influential scientists on research projects. The latter then went to great lengths to promote false scientific ideas in medical journals, at conferences and on social media.”
When the Global Energy Balance Network was exposed as a Coca-Cola puppet, the organisation shut down. At the same time, Coca-Cola approved the “retirement” of its chief scientific officer, Dr Rhona Applebaum, who oversaw the company’s public-relations crises.
James O. Hill, a professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine and an obesity researcher who had worked alongside Dr Applebaum, in an email recommending a research project to Coca-Cola executives, appeared more like a salesman than a perceptive scientist.
“My view is set out below. This study could provide a compelling argument for why companies selling sugary drinks should vigorously promote physical activity. It would be a large-scale and costly study, but one that could be a game-changer. We need to get this done.”
In a subsequent email, Hill added, “I want to help your company move away from the impression of being a trouble-maker and back towards being a company that brings meaning and enjoyment to people’s lives.” The proposal was put forward on 9 November 2015, and just six weeks later, The Denver Post reported that Hill had received USD 550,000 from Coca-Cola for “obesity research.”
Dr Steven N. Blair, an obesity researcher at the University of South Carolina, received USD 3.5 million in research funding from Coca-Cola between 2008 and 2015, shifting the attribution of obesity from sugary soft drinks to physical inactivity. Blair’s highly influential findings “largely formed the basis of the US Physical Activity Guidelines.” However, a scholar from Harvard University’s Department of Nutrition, together with 36 other scientists, co-signed a rebuttal of Blair’s claims, labelling them “scientific nonsense.”
A thorough investigation of this affair revealed that the International Life Sciences Institute was the mastermind behind the whole operation. The International Life Sciences Institute, a US-based body, is a “shadowy organisation that influences global food policy.” It is funded by more than 400 companies, including Coca-Cola, Pepsi, General Mills and DuPont, with branches in 17 countries and considerable influence in China, India and Brazil.
Meanwhile, in the United States, Dr Brenda Fitzgerald, a researcher who had received substantial research funding from Coca-Cola, was appointed by the Trump administration in July 2017 as the head of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention—a position of considerable significance in federal science. Previously, while serving as Georgia’s State Health Officer, Fitzgerald had received USD 1 million from Coca-Cola for research on childhood obesity. In early 2018, Fitzgerald was forced to resign as CDC director over a separate conflict-of-interest scandal involving investments in the tobacco industry.
Coca-Cola was not the only company seeking to cloak its commercial interests in the guise of science. An Associated Press investigation into the food industry’s influence on food policy found that thousands of emails revealing criminal conduct were exposed in records provided by public universities under the Freedom of Information Act.
One of the so-called scientific studies concluded that “children who eat sugar tend to weigh less than children who do not eat sugar.” The research project that produced this laughable paradox was funded by the National Confectioners Association, whose members include manufacturers of butter biscuits, Hershey’s chocolate and Skittles.
The study had three authors: two were nutrition professors—Carol O’Neil from Louisiana State University and Theresa Nicklas from Baylor College of Medicine. The third was Victor Fulgoni, a former executive at Kellogg’s. According to the Associated Press, he now devotes himself to helping companies promote “proactive, science-based product marketing.” The three authors have been remarkably prolific. Since 2009, they have “authored more than 20 papers funded by Kellogg’s and industry organisations representing beef, dairy and juice.”
V. Nutritional Science and “Nutritionism”
“For 150 years,” science historian David Singerman observes, the sugar industry “has consistently shaped government policy to keep people addicted to sugar.” In the nineteenth century, the American sugar industry adopted a two-pronged strategy to protect the domestic market from foreign competition. On one hand, they lobbied the government to raise import tariffs on edible sugar; “the government’s willingness to take risks on the industry’s behalf meant that by 1880, expenditure on sugar accounted for one-sixth of the federal budget.” On the other hand, they pushed for legislative reform that established the legal status of “refined sugar” based on the measurement of sucrose content, thereby disadvantaging sugar-industry competitors from the Caribbean. Singerman notes that this seemingly reasonable appeal to scientific objectivity “masked a sinister purpose”:
Just like the tobacco industry of the 1960s, these refined-sugar manufacturers understood that scientific questions are difficult for outsiders to adjudicate, making them easier for industry insiders to manipulate in pursuit of commercial interests.
Even today, the American sugar industry still employs tricks to shift people’s attention from sugar to sucrose, steering nutritional science research in a direction that favours the interests of large food companies.
In tracing the sugar industry’s transformation of sugar (an edible substance extracted from plants) into sucrose (a molecule), we also see the essence of “nutritionism” in American health policy. This view holds that what affects human health is not food itself but separable biochemical factors.
“Nutritionism,” explains Michael Pollan, a public-interest food commentator and author, “is not entirely the same as nutrition science. As the ‘ism’ suggests, it is not a science but an ideology.” The guiding premise of nutritionism is that the proper concern of food science is nutrients. Moreover, because “invisible nutrients are a bit mysterious compared to food,” we need scientists “to explain the hidden truth behind our food.”
Michael Pollan points out that it is worth noting how the above formulation erases the differences between such distinct entities as fish, beef and chicken. Fish, beef and chicken each represent a fundamentally distinct category, yet they are now conflated and lumped together as delivery systems for a single nutrient. One should also note how this new mode of expression exonerates the food itself; in this context, the true culprit is a vague, invisible, tasteless and politically neutral substance called “saturated fat.” This substance may or may not be present in the food.
From then on, government dietary guidelines began “speaking of nutrients under the guise of scientific euphemism.” In 1982, the National Academy of Sciences published a landmark report on cancer and nutrition,
which inaugurated a new official dietary vocabulary. Companies and media followed suit, and terms such as polyunsaturated fat, cholesterol, monounsaturated fat, carbohydrates, fibre, polyphenols, amino acids and carotenoids soon occupied much of the cultural landscape. Before then, what people talked about were tangible substances called food. The age of nutritionism had arrived.
Reducing food to nutrients is a reductionist fallacy, one that Pollan deconstructs. “Even the simplest food,” he explains, “is extraordinarily complex to study. A food is actually a combination of many compounds, and many of these compounds have complex, dynamic relationships with one another. All compounds are in the process of transforming from one state to another.”
A major problem with reductionist science is its tendency toward mechanical interpretation: “Adding a particular nutrient will produce a particular physiological outcome.” This mode of interpretation not only ignores physiological differences between individuals but also overlooks differences between cultures and societies.
Some populations metabolise sugar more efficiently than others; evolutionary genetics determines whether an individual can digest lactose in milk; and the specific ecology of the gut determines the efficiency of food digestion. Thus, different individuals may extract different amounts of energy from the same 100 calories, depending on the ratio of Firmicutes to Bacteroidetes in their gut. Human eating is not like fuelling a machine. The body is not a machine, so the notion that food is simply fuel for the body is wrong.
The academic development of nutritionism illustrates how corporations have influenced and obstructed holistic research into food categories. And this is merely one means of undermining food science as a complete discipline. Together with the various other means, it threatens the physical health of the American public. A warning is in order here: corrupted science will ultimately harm people’s health.
– Due to length constraints, notes and references are omitted –
Editor: Yuyang