BETRAYED by “none other than our own medical associations, our own doctors.”

In 1988, the American Heart Association decided that it would be a good idea to start accepting cash to put its Heart Check symbol on foods of otherwise dubious nutritional quality. The Center for Science in the Public Interest estimates that in 2002, the AHA received over $2 million from this program alone. Food companies paid $7,500 for one to nine products, but there was a volume discount for more than twenty-five products! Exclusive deals were, of course, more expensive. In 2009, such nutritional standouts as Cocoa Puffs and Frosted Mini-Wheats were still on the Heart Check list. . . . As noted on Dr. Yoni Freedhoff’s weightymatters blog, a bottle of grape juice proudly bearing the Health Check contained ten teaspoons of sugar. The fact that these food[s] were pure sugar seemed not to bother anybody. . . .

Funding sources have enormous implications on study results. In a study that looked specifically at soft drinks, Dr. Ludwig found that accepting funds from companies increased the likelihood of a favorable result by approximately 700 percent! This finding is echoed in the work of Marion Nestle, professor of nutrition at New York University. In 2001, she had found it “difficult to find studies that did not come to conclusions favoring the sponsor’s commercial interest.”

Related: Marion Nestle: Sponsored research inevitably favors the sponsor’s vested interests. “You must understand that I am not searching for sponsored studies in any systematic way. They just appear in the tables of contents of journals I typically read and are easily identified by their titles.”