'The corporate capture of the nutrition profession in the USA: the case of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics' by
Angela Carriedo,
Ilana Pinsky,
,
Eric Crosbie,
Gary Ruskin
and
Melissa Mialon in (2022)
Public Health Nutrition comments
The AND [Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics], AND Foundation (ANDF) and its key leaders have ongoing interactions with corporations. These include AND’s leaders holding key positions in multinational food, pharmaceutical or agribusiness corporations, and AND accepting corporate financial contributions. We found the AND has invested funds in corporations such as Nestlé, PepsiCo and pharmaceutical companies, has discussed internal policies to fit industry needs and has had public positions favouring corporations....
The rising global burden of non-communicable diseases has for decades been addressed by downstream efforts that focus on improving individual behaviours. However, recently upstream efforts focused on societal and environmental changes have led to important population-level approaches and policies implemented in several countries to improve non-communicable diseases, including obesity and diabetes. An important barrier to these approaches is the commercial determinants of health. These are actions, processes and ways in which commercial actors such as unhealthy commodity corporations (tobacco, alcohol and ultra-processed food and drink) influence health policy making and, in general, influence the environment to protect their interests.
There is extensive literature that shows how unhealthy commodity corporations are involved in setting health policy and research agendas globally. In particular, they use instrumental (action-based) and discursive (argument-based) strategies to influence science and policy surrounding public health efforts to protect well-being and healthy environments. Furthermore, corporations lobby and litigate against health policies and capture science by recruiting and hiring scientists to influence public discourse and position corporate interests in the public agenda. One key strategy is to capture health professionals and health institutions as a vehicle to achieve its interests more broadly in the global health agenda.
In the USA, one of the most important professional health associations is the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND). The AND’s relationship with the food and beverage industry has been described elsewhere. Founded in 1917 as the American Dietetic Association, the AND is the largest US-based organisation comprised of food and nutritional professionals, with approximately 100 000 dietitians and nutrition practitioners and students. It is established as a 501(c)(6) trade association and certifies dieticians and nutrition practitioners in the USA and abroad. The AND’s stated mission is ‘to accelerate improvements in global health and well-being through food and nutrition’. AND acts as a reference for dietetics curricula accreditation and as an authority in US food policy making. For instance, the Academy has been influential in the process of setting US Dietary Guidelines, which are then taken into consideration all over the world in order to develop vital nutrition policy decisions. The AND also provides ‘expert testimony’ including ‘comments and position statements for federal and state regulations on critical food and nutrition issues’. The ‘philanthropic arm’ of the AND is the AND Foundation (ANDF), established as a 501(c)(3) charitable organisation. The ANDF does not receive member dues and relies on donations. It focuses on scholarships, awards, food and nutrition research and public education. The AND and the ANDF report jointly their annual activities and achievements, without a clear distinction between each another. They also share staff, including the chief executive officer and chief of operations.
The AND has been repeatedly criticised for its close ties to food and beverage corporations, including Coca-Cola, PepsiCo and General Mills, which may undermine ‘the integrity of the professionals most responsible for educating Americans about healthy eating’. Two years after the publication of a critical report about AND’s relationship with food corporations in 2013, the ANDF announced a partnership with the food company Kraft. This collaboration, which was seen as an endorsement of some of Kraft’s products as ‘healthy’ options to include in children’s menus at schools, caused further outrage among AND’s members, public health experts and the general public.
Although the AND’s relationship with the food and beverage industry has been described before, little is known about its relationship with other unhealthy commodity industries as well as the dynamics and evolution of such relationships. This study is the first to obtain and review AND’s internal communications and interactions between the AND and the food and beverage, pharmaceutical and agribusiness industries. We explore how these interactions evolved over time and how they influence the politics and decision-making of an influential professional health association, by analysing documents obtained through freedom of information (FOI) requests, filed by US Right to Know (USRTK).
