Nutrition Notes: Behind That Beverage Health Claim
Studies have already shown that when a drug study is sponsored by the pharmaceutical industry, it's more likely to paint a rosy picture. Now researchers are training the same spotlight on the scores of studies making health claims for food and drinks. In their first big effort, they've found that industry funding does indeed make a difference.
Researchers from Children's Hospital Boston and the Center for Science in the Public Interest in Washington, D.C., looked at studies about the health effects of soft drinks, juice, and milk published over a five-year period. One group of researchers–without knowing how the studies were funded–evaluated the studies to see if their conclusions were favorable, unfavorable, or neutral. Other researchers just looked at the funding and characterized it depending on industry ties. The results: Research funded totally by the industry was about four to eight times as likely to be favorable as` studies that had no industry funding. The study appears in the online journal Public Library of Science Medicine.
These beverages were picked because there has been a lot of controversy about their impact on obesity, they're marketed to kids, and the beverage industry is large and profitable enough to fund research, says study author David Ludwig, director of the Optimal Weight for Life program at Children's Hospital Boston.
The authors speculate that the industry may fund only studies that they think will be to their advantage, that studies might be designed or interpreted to be most favorable to the sponsoring industry, and that studies with negative results may never see the light of day. "Don't blame the researchers," Ludwig urges. "The problem is that when the government underfunds nutrition research, industry money becomes difficult to resist. It's in the public health interest and would save the country a lot of money to properly fund this work."
He says the stakes are enormous, given that research on food influences nutritional recommendations. And, unlike a drug study, the findings of which affect only those taking the drug, "we all eat," he says. Ludwig adds that this is only a first step and that the findings can't be applied to all food and drink research.
The American Beverage Association, a trade group representing makers of non-alcoholic drinks including soda, fruit juice, and bottled water, criticized the research for looking only at the source of funding, not at the science behind each study evaluated. "This is yet another attack on industry by activists who demonstrate their own biases in their review by looking only at the funding source and not judging the research on its merits," said Susan Neely, president and chief executive officer of the trade group, in a press release.
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