When the titans of the U.S. sweetener industry – sugar producers on one side and makers of high-fructose corn syrup on the other – faced off in court last month, a Canadian university professor stood ready to wade into the epic battle.
Dr. John Sievenpiper was retained by the Corn Refiners Association as an expert witness to further its case that the much-maligned but ubiquitous syrup is no less healthy than sugar.
For the University of Toronto nutrition-science professor and physician, a consultant to the corn refiners’ law firm, it was just the latest collaboration with the producers of sweeteners — and of foods that amply use sucrose and fructose.
Sievenpiper, world-renowned in the field, is among a small group of Canadian academic scientists who have received hundreds of thousands in funding from soft-drink makers, packaged-food trade associations and the sugar industry, turning out studies and opinion articles that often coincide with those businesses’ interests.
The links highlight a burgeoning debate about the relationship between academia and industry amid an epidemic of obesity-related disease.
The issue came to the fore again last week as an-anti obesity centre at the University of Colorado announced it was shutting down in the wake of news that it had received more than $1 million from Coca-Cola Co.
The support in Canada includes over $265,000 that Coca Cola provided to University of Toronto researchers in the last few years, $50,000 of it for a child-nutrition centre.
University faculty members have also reported funding for studies, or fees for speaking engagements, consulting and travel from PepsiCo, Dr. Pepper-Snapple, General Mills and Archer Daniels Midland, one of the world’s biggest producers of high-fructose corn syrup.
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Some of their research and public pronouncements would not displease those companies.
Last year at a “Sweet Symposium” sponsored by Coke in Australia and a program put on by the Corn Refiners Association in San Diego, Sievenpiper argued that sweeteners are not the culprit in obesity and related ailments – eating too much is the problem.
It’s a point the University of Toronto professor has made in 22 studies, editorials and letters to the editor published in peer-reviewed journals just in the last three years.
Harvey Anderson, another highly respected University of Toronto nutrition scientist who receives funding from Coke and sweetener companies, co-wrote a 2011 paper with four employees of Archer Daniels Midland.
Diet-related disease is the leading cause of death, period
Its conclusion? Contrary to some other research, fructose and other sugars are not linked to body mass or metabolic syndrome, a cluster of symptoms that raises the risk of heart disease, stroke and diabetes.
The scientists say such financial ties are needed to bolster scarce public research funds and involve the private sector in improving public health.
Other experts say it only leads to bias, aiding businesses at the heart of the obesity problem.
Postmedia NewsBill Jeffery.
“According to the World Health Organization … diet-related disease is the leading cause of death, period,” says Bill Jeffery of the Centre for Science in the Public Interest, a food-regulation advocacy group. “When studies are conducted with funding from organizations that have a vested interest in the outcome, they sow doubt, they sow doubt with public-policy makers.”
A Spanish study in 2013 concluded that just 17 per cent of company-supported review studies found a link between “sugar-sweetened beverages” and body weight. More than 80 per cent of those free of such financing suggested drinking pop led to weight gain.
Pointing to the research it funds, industry can often discourage government action, Jeffery charged.
Indeed, the Canada Food Guide and government-mandated nutrition labels still fail to address the sugar that manufacturers add to their foods.
Researchers who get industry money are good people who likely consider themselves impervious to influence, but the practice will one day be considered taboo — much as independent scientists no longer take tobacco funds, predicts Yoni Freedhoff, an Ottawa obesity doctor.
“I think we will eventually see researchers say, even if the money is tight, ‘We just can’t take this because it’s got too many strings,’ ” he says. “History won’t look kindly on some of the funding of the food industry in both research and public-health organizations.”
Such scientists, however, deny corporate financing ever shapes their work. They say they typically obtain peer-reviewed grants from government agencies or health charities before approaching corporations to top up the funds – a practice actually encouraged by the Harper government — and do not let industry dictate the nature of their work.
Money available from the likes of the Canadian Institutes for Health Research rarely covers the full cost of expensive clinical trials, said Sievenpiper. “It’s a function of economics,” he said.
And if there is an apparent slant, it is only because industry seeks out researchers whose work already happens to support their agenda, not because of influence after the fact.
Chris Roussakis/National PostDr. Yoni Freedhoff.
“These companies are full of really smart people and they have risk managers and they’re only going to fund research that they think will work for them,” said Sievenpiper. “They pick winners.”
Meanwhile, the skeptics have their own biases, whether it’s upholding the theses they promote in mass-market books — like those published by Freedhoff — or because of intellectual prejudices that are hard to disavow, he said.
Echoing his U of T colleague, Anderson noted that much of his research has nothing to do with soft drinks or sugar, but investigates the benefits of foods like beans and tree nuts. In a health-care system focused on treatments, he said he’s been a lonely voice for disease prevention through better nutrition.
History won’t look kindly on some of the funding of the food industry in both research and public-health organizations
But Anderson defends accepting industry money, calling it part of an effort to engage companies and make them part of the solution to diet-related disease.
“If we want to change public health, we have to work with the agri-food industry. It’s the delivery system,” said Anderson. “To say ‘We’re not going to talk to you, and we know better,’ is frankly nuts.”
Still, he said the industry money he gets is dwarfed by what he receives from government sources, which totals about $1 million a year. Companies like Coke, Pepsico, General Mills and Nestle have funded his Centre for Childhood Nutrition, Health and Development to the tune of about $500,000, but he’s received $8-$10 million from private philanthropists, said Anderson.
Disclosure statements in medical-journal papers indicate he has also received partial funding for studies from food-industry groups like the International Life Sciences Institute, and various companies.
AP Photo/FileA nonprofit founded to combat obesity says the $1.5 million it received from Coke has no influence on its work. But emails obtained by The Associated Press show the world’s largest beverage maker was instrumental in shaping the Global Energy Balance Network.
Those papers include one co-written with a General Mills scientist that concluded ready-to-eat cereal helps maintain body weight; a positive review of low-calorie sweeteners — partly paid for by the life sciences institute’s low-calorie sweetener committee; and a study that found pre-meal raisin snacks lead to less food intake, funded by the California Raisin Marketing Board.
According to a court document filed by high-fructose corn syrup makers in that California civil suit, the U.S. Sugar Association gave Anderson a grant of $7,500 in 2007. It was partly to look at whether the syrup affected food intake differently than sugar, which it had largely replaced in sweetened drinks.
The Toronto scientists have become at least indirectly involved in the policy-making process, too.
The U.S. government has proposed including the amount of added sugar on nutrition labels for packaged foods, an idea vigorously opposed by the food industry. As part of its lobbying, the Grocery Manufacturers Association suggested five scientists whom American government officials should consult on the controversial issue, including Anderson and Sievenpiper.
I grant we may have poor eating habits, but that is no excuse for what the beverage industry is foisting on us
Both Toronto men said last week they had no idea their names had been proffered by the group, but there is reason to understand why it might have happened.
Sievenpiper co-authored a journal editorial last year — subtitled “the blind leading the blind” — that questioned the added-sugar labeling proposal. Anderson cast doubt on the idea when he appeared before a U.S. government advisory committee in 1999.
According to Coca-Cola’s new transparency disclosures, Sievenpiper has received unrestricted research grants of $112,000 and $80,000 in the last few years. He said he also got support from the soda company and other food firms, including Mars, Tate & Lyle and Pepsi, for the International Symposium on Diabetes and Nutrition he co-chaired in Toronto last year.
Mario Tama/Getty ImagesAmericans’ ingestion of sweetened drinks quadrupled between 1950 and 2000 to almost 50 U.S. gallons per person yearly, and those liquid calories are often “invisible” – the body does not cut other foods sufficiently to compensate, says George Bray, professor emeritus at Louisiana State University’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center.
Much of Sievenpiper’s sugar research has concluded that sweeteners alone do not pose a health risk; the problem is over-consumption of starchy food generally.
It is a refrain also heard from the soda-pop industry.
But the Canadian says he is concerned that by singling out one nutrient, consumers will simply replace it with different types of calories, much as happened with an earlier campaign to reduce fat in foods.
Some other experts view the issue much differently. Americans’ ingestion of sweetened drinks quadrupled between 1950 and 2000 to almost 50 U.S. gallons per person yearly, and those liquid calories are often “invisible” – the body does not cut other foods sufficiently to compensate, says George Bray, professor emeritus at Louisiana State University’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center.
“I grant we may have poor eating habits, but that is no excuse for what the beverage industry is foisting on us,” he said in an email interview. “I’m not an ostrich with my head buried in the sand.”
National Post
tblackwell@nationalpost.com