“New Guidelines: No Need to Reduce Red or Processed Meat Consumption for Good Health!” This was the surprising headline on a news release distributed by the Annals of Internal Medicine on Sept 25.
The release was promoting a group of articles that would be published in the Annals on October 1. News outlets worldwide picked up the story. The message was clear: Meat had received scientific dispensation from its links with heart disease, colorectal cancer, diabetes, and other serious problems. Documents unearthed by the Physicians Committee, however, revealed that the authors of these studies had hidden financial ties to a multimillion-dollar meat-marketing entity.
“A study says ‘Full speed ahead on processed and red meat consumption.’ Nutrition Scientists say ‘Not so fast’”
—The Washington Post
Just days before the release of the Annals articles, the Physicians Committee confronted an equally dangerous publication which pushed parents to make dairy milk the choice for their children, despite dairy’s health risks. Non-dairy milks got surprising thumbs-down from the authors. Again, the Physicians Committee found industry ties, including dairy industry payments to the organizations that sponsored the publication.
Here are some of the details more fully covered in GOOD MEDICINE.
Meat Money
Bradley Johnston, the lead author of the Annals articles, had hidden the fact that he had been promised a $188,889 job with Texas A& M University’s AgriLife program which has conducted a reported $4.5 million in beef research in 2019 alone. In addition, AgriLife had signed an agreement for an additional $76,863 for Johnston to lead a follow-up research project designed to reexamine the risk of saturated (“bad”) fat.
Furthermore, AgriLife’s vice chancellor and dean, Patrick Stover, who was co-author on the Annals article, also hid from the Annals journal his conflict of interest in overseeing a vast meat research and marketing entity.
Milk Money
For the pro-dairy publication Healthy Beverage Consumption in Early Childhood, the money trail was more obvious. Among the report’s sponsors was the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND, formerly known as the American Dietetic Association). As a sponsor, it has received repeated financial infusions from the National dairy Council. As a second sponsor, the American Heart Association (AHA), has also received annual cash payments from the National Dairy Council to be listed on the AHA’s Industry Nutrition Forum.
“For the pro-dairy publication, the money trail was more obvious.”
—Good Health
After the Physicians Committee reported the money trail, the AHA quickly erased the National Dairy Council’s name from its web site.
(This article represents excerpts from the Physician Committee’s Winter 2020 publication GOOD MEDICINE.)