Recently, evidence emerged that the sugar industry had paid scientists in the 1960s to implicate saturated fat, and not sugar, as a cause for heart disease. While the revelations are stunning, food industry funding of nutrition research is more common than consumers may realize.



New York University nutrition professor Marion Nestle began informally tracking studies funded by food and beverage companies, as well as trade groups, in 2015. Her research uncovered 168 such studies in that year alone, and of those, 156 showed biased results that favored the sponsor’s interests, she told the Guardian.

Other research has come to similar conclusions. A 2007 review of 206 studies that looked at the health benefits of milk, soda and fruit juices found that those sponsored entirely by a food or beverage company were four to eight times more likely to show positive health effects from consuming those products.

“Is it really true that food companies deliberately set out to manipulate research in their favor? Yes it is, and the practice continues,” wrote Nestle in a commentary that accompanied the new report criticizing the sugar industry.

The issue is complicated, she said. Companies don’t pay researchers to come to a favorable conclusion. In fact, researchers don’t think industry funding influences results, but evidence suggests otherwise, she added.

“Researchers who take food industry funding do not believe that it affects their study design or interpretation and are outraged at the suggestion,” Nestle said. “Research, however, shows strong correlations between funding and research outcome.”

Here are just a few examples of food and beverage companies footing the bill for research that could be spun into pseudoscience-based PR.

Photograph: Rob Elliott/AFP/Getty Images

Soda

One of the most high profile examples of corporate meddling was the revelation last year that Coca-Cola had paid scientists to push the message that exercise was a more effective weight loss tool than cutting down on food and drink. The beverage giant went so far as to create a nonprofit called the Global Energy Balance Network to push the message that Americans spend too much time focusing on cutting calories, and not enough time exercising. Following an investigation by the New York Times, the nonprofit announced it was disbanding. In a bid to be more transparent, Coca-Cola revealed it had spent $132.8m on scientific research and partnerships between 2010 and 2015.

Photograph: Alamy

Juice

Earlier this year, the US Supreme Court declined to hear an appeal by another beverage company, POM Wonderful, that health claims made in its advertisements misled consumers. The company had paid $35m for studies that showed drinking POM Wonderful pomegranate juice and taking POMx supplements could treat, prevent or reduce the risk of heart disease, prostate cancer and erectile dysfunction. A lower court ruled that its methodology wasn’t rigorous enough, and that ads containing claims such as, “Amaze your cardiologist” and “The antioxidant superpower” were disingenuous.



Photograph: Paolo Giovannini/AP

GMOs

Monsanto and other ag-biotech companies have recruited academics, and paid them in the form of grants and trips to publicly defend the safety of herbicides used on genetically engineered crops, according to private emails uncovered by nonprofit US Right To Know. In some cases, industry advisors even provided scripted answers to academics to answers such as “Do GMOs cause cancer?” According to an investigation into the emails by the New York Times, the biotech industry has published “dozens of articles” under the names of respected scientists, some of which were drafted by PR consultants.

Kevin Folta, chairman at the horticulture sciences department at the University of Florida, wrote in one email to a Monsanto executive: “I am grateful for this opportunity and promise a solid return on the investment.”



Folta wrote in an email to The Guardian that the claims made in the Times article were “flat-out lies” and that any answers he provided to an industry-backed site regarding GMOs were entirely his own words, and not scripted answers. He added that he was never recruited or personally paid by Monsanto, and that his email to the company was misrepresented.

Photograph: Andrew Milligan/PA

Oatmeal

PepsiCo, owner of Quaker Oats, commissioned a study in 2011 to test whether Quaker hot oatmeal and its cold cereal Quaker Oatmeal Squares were more filling than Honey Nut Cheerios, a rival. The report found that the oatmeal kept the study’s 48 participants fuller for longer than the Cheerios did, but results were mixed for Quaker’s cold cereal. PepsiCo chose only to publish the results about its hot oatmeal, omitting mention about the cold cereal. According to the Associated Press, the company said the cold cereal results weren’t “significant enough to warrant publication”.



Photograph: Sakchai Lalit/AP

Dairy and meat

This 2015 study published in the American Journal of Clinical Nutrition looked at just 14 overweight postmenopausal women over a period of two weeks to examine the effect of high-fat cheese and high-fat meat on cholesterol. It found that diets with meat and cheese as the primary source of saturated fat caused higher levels of HDL, or so-called “good” cholesterol compared to a low-fat, high-carbohydrate diet. The study was fully funded by the dairy industry, including the Dairy Research Institute and the Danish Dairy Research Foundation. The study was criticized in a letter to the editor of the journal that noted the “experimental diets were apparently designed so that the possibly desired conclusion could be drawn”.



Photograph: Ben Stevens/PA

Sugar

A 2011 study found that children who eat sweets tend to weigh less than those who don’t. The problem: the research was funded by the National Confectioner’s Association, a trade group representing manufacturers of well known candies such as Snickers bars, Tootsie Rolls and Skittles. The study was also based on a survey that asked participants what they had eaten over the past 24 hours, and the authors noted in the report that the results prove cause and effect. According to the Associated Press, which conducted an investigation into the claims, one of the scientists wrote to her co-author in 2011: “We’re hoping they can do something with it – it’s thin and clearly padded.”



Every so often, results aren’t in the funder’s interests. As reported by Nestle, the National Honey Board funded a study, in collaboration with the US Department of Agriculture, to test whether honey had less of an effect on blood sugar levels than white cane sugar or high fructose corn syrup. But study participants showed similar blood sugar levels after consuming each of the three sweeteners, leading the authors to conclude that eating less sugar was preferable to trying to find a sugar that is “more neutral in terms of its health effects”.