Review by Choice Review
Unsavory Truth, a well-written and carefully documented book, examines the ways in which food, beverage, and supplement companies use or misuse scientific findings to promote products. After an opening chapter that introduces the challenges associated with industry-funded research and the potential for bias, several chapters focus on specific areas of funded inquiry where results seem questionable. This includes the nutritional value of candy and sweeteners, meat and dairy products, and a specific case study on the Coca Cola Company. Nestle (New York Univ.) explores how food companies and producers use specific study findings to market their products. She examines the roles and potential biases of the many nutrition education and dietetic societies, as well as potential conflicts of interest of various advisory committees. Especially compelling chapters address university scientists' reliance on funding for research, which is frequently tied to promotion and tenure, and strategies for better addressing such conflicts, including clearer disclosure statements in publications. The final chapters consider roles of various stakeholders: should industry be funding nutrition research? Is more transparent government funding needed? How can universities and scientific journals better control bias? Summing Up: Highly recommended. All readers. --Martha E. Richmond, emerita, Suffolk University
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Booklist Review
It's reasonable to expect that food companies will employ all means necessary to market their products. What's surprising is the extensive and insidious lengths some go to in presenting their foodstuffs as healthy, desirable, and even necessary components of a balanced diet. This exposé documents numerous examples of corporations wooing experts to conduct studies that produce dubious results, such as that children who eat candy tend to be less obese, and chocolate milk alleviates concussions. While it may seem logical that the Food and Drug Administration would curtail such ""research,"" Nestle (Food Politics , 2002; What to Eat , 2006) describes how some major food interests fund nutritionists to infiltrate professional organizations and government-sponsored studies, influence food-related publishing, from scientific journals to foodie blogs, and successfully lobby against any legislation that might affect sales. The solution? Consumers should ""vote with their forks"", question company-authored food studies about nutrition or health, and demand that elected officials investigate and verify published results. This well-documented, accessible venture makes a compelling argument.--Kathleen McBroom Copyright 2018 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Nestle (Soda Politics) delivers a groundbreaking look at how food corporations influence nutrition research and public policy. Her focus, influenced by her own experience as a nutrition researcher, is on the myriad conflicts of interest created when food corporations fund research projects into public health. She opens with a Coca-Cola-backed study as an example of how corporations sponsor nutrition research that ultimately supports their own marketing goals-in this case, by backing researchers who showed exercise as more consequential than diet for influencing body weight. Nestle goes on to find many more examples of corporate-backed studies affecting the often misleading marketing consumers receive about the health benefits of various foods, including in the meat, yogurt, and milk industries. She also provides solutions for managing these conflicts of interest, acknowledging that not all industry-backed research is biased or false. To this end, Nestle cites several examples of organizations, such as World Obesity, that are paving the way for establishing ethical standards when using corporate funding. However, she insists that it is imperative to eventually disengage research from food industry funding altogether. General and specialist readers alike will appreciate this important message for consumers. (Nov.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
A leading nutritionist asks whether consumers can trust highly publicized research into whether food and beverages are healthy and safely produced.Nestle (Emerita, Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health/New York Univ.; Big Soda Politics: Taking on Big Soda (and Winning), 2015, etc.), who has a doctorate in molecular biology and a master's degree in public health nutrition and has conducted decades of research into food producers, is perfectly positioned for this topic. She makes the convincing case that because so much of the research is paid for by industries that benefit from the results, buyers should interpret the results skeptically. Many of Nestle's previous books, articles, and academic studies focused on specific types of food. Here, the author turns her attention to large corporations, investigating why they pay for supposedly independent researchers, why the quality of the research might be compromised by conflicts of interests, how consumers can separate reliable science from compromised science, and why consumers should lobby legislators, government regulatory agencies, and universities for reforms regarding the disclosure of conflicts. Nestle emphasizes research paid for and disseminated by the sugar/candy industry, producers of dairy foods, marketers of meat, andin its own chapter, "A Case Study in Itself"the soda giant Coca-Cola. Since the author is a prolific nutrition researcher who has accepted funding that could involve conflicts of interest, she admirably scrutinizes her own policies of funding and how she discloses it. Ultimately, researchers must act as ethicists as well as scientists. When her own studies and those of fellow researchers become marketing tools for multinational conglomerates, the author admits that she feels queasy about how consumers might be misled by the marketing. On the other hand, she writes, some studies paid for by industry can be trusted scientificallyand be marketed and advertised responsibly.Nestle proves yet again that she is a unique, valuable voice for engaged food consumers. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.