Whoa: Huge Number of Nutritional Experts May Be Bought off by the Big Junk Food Companies

Reports paint a scary picture of how food corporations collude to manipulate information in order to increase profits.
By Ari LeVaux / AlterNet

According to a new report, many scientific studies about nutrition, as well as the trusted experts who disseminate this information to the public, are being funded by the very entities that should be scrutinized. The report, "Nutrition Scientists on the Take from Big Food," details the ways that the world’s largest food corporations—aka Big Food—exert their influence on nutrition research and the people who conduct it.

The report’s author, attorney and food advocate Michele Simon, has previously studied the influence of Big Food on the nation’s largest organization of registered dietitians. Together, these reports paint a scary picture of how food corporations collude to manipulate information in order to increase their profits at the public’s expense. The coyote isn’t just guarding the chicken coop here, it built the coop and kept the only copy of the key.

The new report details how the likes of Coca Cola, Nestle, Hershey’s, Monsanto, Cargill, and many other food giants control what studies get funded and published, steering researchers toward projects that benefit the industry, while silencing research that doesn’t...................