The Unexpected Implications of
Industry Involvement in Trans Fat Research
February 22, 2015
Story at-a-glance
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As a general rule, when research is funded by the
industry, the results are likely to overwhelmingly
favor the industry’s preconceived stance
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However, sometimes industry research may be the very
thing that compels an industry to make a better,
safer product
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Industry-funded research may have been key to
changing the food industry’s stance on trans fat,
once their own research showed trans fats are indeed
worse than the saturated fats they were designed to
replace
By Dr. Mercola
I’ve written many articles about the bias inherent in
industry-funded research. As a general rule, when research is funded
by the industry, the results are likely to overwhelmingly favor the
industry’s preconceived stance.
When unfavorable results emerge, confidentiality agreements
typically have been signed that prevent the research from ever
seeing the light of day.
However, in a paper that I will summarize in this article,
titled: "We Spent a Million Bucks and Then We Had To Do Something:
The Unexpected Implications of Industry Involvement in Trans Fat
Research,"1
author
David Schleifer points out that, sometimes, industry research may
also be the very thing that compels an industry to make a better,
safer product. Such was the case with trans fat, he claims, noting
that:
“American food manufacturers long denied that transfats
were associated with disease... But in 1990, a high-profile
study showed that trans fats increased risk factors for heart
disease more than saturated fats did.
Industry funded a US Department of Agriculture study that
they hoped wouldexonerate trans fats. But the industry-funded...
study also indicated that trans fats increasedrisk factors for
heart disease more than saturated fats.
Industry quickly began developing trans fat alternatives.
This confirmsthat corporations get involved in science in order
to defend their products. But involvement in science can be the
very meansby which corporations persuade themselves to change
their products.”
Food Industry Interests Can Be Flexible...
Food manufacturers have had to disclose trans fat content since
2006, based on the emerging scientific consensus that trans fat
consumption in fact increases your risk of heart disease. At least a
dozen US states also restricted the use of trans fat in restaurants.
“Dow AgroSciences estimated a 50 percent decrease in the
use of partially hydrogenated oils in North America between 2006
and 2008. From 2002 to 2009, trans fats were replaced in
approximately 10,000 American food products,” Schleifer
writes.
According to Schleifer, this change of heart came about as a
result of the food industry’s own findings, which showed that trans
fats are indeed worse than the saturated fats they were designed to
replace.
His paper goes on to analyze the development of scientific claims
about trans fats, with the goal of showing how industry science can,
at times, lead to positive change.
“Paradoxically, I show that 'meddling' in science is
precisely what led corporations to change their positions in the
1990s and replace trans fats in their products in the 2000s,”
he says.
“I give an account of what might be called hegemonic
power by showing that industrial actors indeed tried to
discredit potentially damaging findings about trans fats. But in
their efforts to discredit those findings, industry ended up
funding research that showed trans fats increased the risk of
heart disease more than saturated fats did.
Rather than manipulating scientific claims in order to
defend their products, industry actors changed their products in
light of the scientific claims that they participated in
producing.”
Schleifer points out that, in the late '80s and early '90s, many
consumer advocacy groups actually praised food companies
for replacing saturated fats with trans fats, which was widely,
albeit wrongly, believed to be healthier.
For example, the activist organization Center for Science in the
Public Interest (CSPI) actually notoriously promoted and defended
the use of trans fats throughout the '80s, urging food manufacturers
to switch from saturated fat to trans fat. At the time, CSPI “relied
on the same government reports that industry actors used when they
defended trans fats,” Schleifer says.
Once the tide began to turn away from trans fats, trans
fat manufacturers and related trade associations did resist
by discrediting and downplaying damaging evidence. Some even engaged
in more unsavory tactics involving intimidating scientists who
produced the damaging findings.
The reasons for such activities are manifold, but it
usually boils right back down to money. New scientific claims can
trigger costly regulations, and can impact sales, of course.
So clearly, financial incentives are front and center when the food
industry meddles with nutritional research. However, conducting
research is also one of the ways that corporations “develop, adjust,
and redirect their courses of action,” Schleifer insists.
Dr. Kummerow’s Surprise
Schleifer’s article includes a summary of Dr. Fred Kummerow’s
lipid research, which is detailed in my previous
interview with him (featured above). Dr. Kummerow's work clearly
demonstrated that it's not cholesterol that causes heart disease;
rather it's the trans fats that are to blame. He was one of
the first to make this association, and the first to publish a
scientific article on it, in 1957.
Since then, research has repeatedly refuted the correlation
between high cholesterol and plaque formation that leads to heart
disease. Despite that, the saturated fat/cholesterol myth persisted
far longer than seems reasonable, and in my view, industry
resistance had an awful lot to do with that.
As a result, tens of thousands of lives have been cut short; the
death toll rising with each passing year of inaction... Schleifer,
on the other hand, is more forgiving in this regard, noting that:
“Kummerow’s story exemplifies the close connections
between academic and industrial science and the sometimes
hostile ways in which academics and industry interacted over
trans fats...
In an article...[Robert Hastert of the Harshaw Chemical
Company] discussed a contentious presentation by Kummerow at
the 1974 AOCS meeting that associated trans fats with disease.
'Shouting matches between industry- employed oil chemists
on the one hand and so-called ivory tower physiologists and
nutritionists on the other are definitely nonproductive,'
Hastert wrote.
But Hastert referred to Kummerow’s presentation as an
upsetting development 'from within,' rhetorically including
academics and industrial scientists as part of the same
world. The fats and oils industry looks to the health
professions for guidance. Tell us, with at least a reasonably
united voice, what you want and what you don’t want...While we
may appear grumpy at times, especially when we feel we have been
blindsided by ivory tower investigators, we are listening.”
Industry Scientists Try to Maintain the Status Quo
While Hastert claims the industry was listening, a number of
industry scientists have been accused of limiting research on trans
fats and aggressively refuting negative findings as they cropped up.
Two mentioned by Schleifer are J. Edward Hunter, employed by Crisco
maker Procter and Gamble, and Thomas Applewhite, who worked at
Kraft.
“Hunter, Applewhite,and others often argued that the
experimental diets in trans fats studies did not accurately
represent real American diets,” Schleifer writes. “Mary
Enig published studies that associated trans fats with disease.
Hunter, Applewhite, and others strongly criticized her
claims....
While still a graduate student, Enig published an
epidemiological article correlating trans fat consumption with
cancer rates. Note that trans fats are usually associated with
heart disease. Enig’s research associating trans fats with
cancer is not unique, but it is rare. She has claimed that after
her article was published, representatives from the major
American edible oils trade association, the Institute of
Shortenings and Edible Oils (ISEO), visited her office in person
to intimidate her...
More than two decades later, Enig told a Gourmet
magazine reporter, “They said they’d been keeping a careful
watch to prevent articles like mine from coming out in the
literature and didn’t know how this horse had gotten out of the
barn”...
A Study Impossible to Ignore...
Under pressure from CSPI and the National Heart Savers
Foundation, many food manufacturers began replacing saturated fats
with trans fats in the late 1980’s. Then, in 1990, a study that has
been retroactively regarded as the beginning of the end for trans
fats was published in the New England Journal of Medicine (NEJM)...
Schleifer writes:
“High levels of 'bad' LDL cholesterol are thought to
increase the risk of heart disease. But high levels of 'good'
high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol are also thought to
protect against heart disease. Some types of saturated fats,
such as stearic acid, for example, increase good HDL
cholesterol.
[Lead author of the NEJM study] Martijn Katan
was interested in whether and how trans fats affected good HDL
cholesterol. He said that he did not have sufficient funding to
address that question until Unilever hired a chief of nutrition
who was willing to fund the research that became the NEJM
study.
Katan and his graduate assistant Ronald Mensink fed diets
based on monounsaturated, saturated, and trans fats to human
subjects for three weeks per diet. Katan said the subjects’
cholesterol measurements 'came out totally different from what I
had expected and predicted.'
Trans fats raised bad LDL cholesterol and also 'turned
out to really lower HDL fairly dramatically.' Katan’s
experiment therefore suggested that trans fats increased the
risk of heart disease more than saturated fats did. As per his
agreement with Unilever, Katan showed them his results before
publication. Like him “they were surprised. But they never tried
to maneuver things or influence things... or to cover up.”
American organizations and trade groups, on the other hand, were
quick to criticize Katan’s study, arguing that “the types and
amounts of trans fats used in the Dutch study were not consistent
with those found in the American diets.” However, the dam had been
broken, and studies that followed only made the case against trans
fats stronger. A couple of studies that helped shift the position
in the US included Walter Willett’s 1993 study that related trans
fat consumption directly to heart disease.
According to Willett’s team, consumption of partially
hydrogenated vegetable oils causes more than 30,000 deaths per year,
courtesy of the trans fats these oils contain. Joseph Judd’s study,
commissioned by the US soybean industry and performed by USDA
researchers, also played a key role in shifting perception about
trans fats. Judd’s team reconfirmed Katan’s findings. This USDA
study also appears to have been a key piece of evidence that finally
changed CSPI’s stance on trans fat as well.
Industry-Funded USDA Study Shifts Industry Stance in the US
According to Schleifer, the edible oil industry immediately began
pondering solutions when Katan’s study came out, should it be proven
correct by other studies. Many food manufacturers had traded
saturated fat for trans fat in the 80’s, and were now unsure of what
to do next.
“How did suppliers, manufacturers, and trade groups
persuade themselves that trans fats really were a problem?”
Scheifer writes. “A trade association representative told me
that she brought food manufacturers, oil suppliers, and trade
associations together into a group that she called the Trans Fat
Coalition specifically in order to coordinate research that
would address Mensink and Katan’s study. She emphasized that
collaborating across corporations is a normal part of how
industries 'develop strategies on how to manage an issue.'
Another industry professional said that interfirm
collaboration allows companies and trade associations to set
industry-wide priori ties and to pool research funds. He
explained that research committees meet regularly to talk about
shared problems and opportunities, but that they exclude
discussion of business in favor of science.
One industry professional who participated in the Trans
Fat Coalition explained to me, 'The industry itself wanted to
get to the bottom on what’s going on with trans fat and they
spent several millions of dollars through USDA in order to get
the best science.' The Trans Fat Coalition funded an existing
USDA nutritional science laboratory to replicate Mensink and
Katan’s experiment. This became known as the Judd study, after
its lead author.
The industry coalition assisted Judd’s lab with research
design and provided experimental materials meant to accurately
represent the types and amounts of trans fats found in American
diets. As one industry professional said, 'It was completely the
belief of this group that the Mensink and Katan study was not
well done... and [Judd] would show that it wasn’t true.'
However, the Judd study in fact confirmed Mensink and Katan’s
results.”
'We Spent a Million Bucks, and Then We Had to Do Something'
The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition published the
Judd study in April 1994, which concluded that: “trans fats raise
LDL cholesterol to a slightly lesser degree than do saturates,
and... may result in minor reductions of HDL cholesterol... The
present study, together with that of Mensink and Katan and other
recent investigations, indicates that dietary transfatty acids may
adversely affect plasma cholesterol risk factors for heart disease.”
One food industry employee interviewed by Schleifer claims that
as soon as they were reasonably convinced about the health risks,
they immediately set about to find a suitable replacement. According
to Schleifer’s account, the interviewee stated that: “We spent a
million bucks and... proved that the science was right, and then we
had to do something.”
“Industry actors initiated the USDA Judd study
specifically in order to disprove the Mensink and Katan study.
This is troubling. But industry actors apparently felt they
needed a scientific study, carried out in a nonindustrial
laboratory, in order to know whether trans fats were a problem.
This indicates the extent to which industry actors believe
science matters,” Schleifer writes.
Should Industry Meddle with Science?
Schleifer believes the trans fat case shows two sides of the same
coin. First, it confirms that industry indeed “meddles in science in
order to defend their products.” But it also demonstrates that
sometimes corporations will use negative findings to
“persuade themselves that a product needs to be changed.” That’s a
good thing. It’s unfortunate it doesn’t happen quicker, and more
often, and in more branches of industry. I personally feel there
are a number of industries that have and continue to fight tooth and
nail against evidence showing their products to be very harmful. The
tobacco- and chemical technology industries are but two examples
where you’d be hard-pressed to find any real shifts in position
based on their own research.
“This returns us to the question of why industrial actors
recalculated their positions on trans fats instead of digging in
and resisting,” Schleifer writes. “Trade associations,
suppliers, and manufacturers apparently expected to profit or at
least to avoid trouble by replacing trans fats. The Unilever
chief nutritionist who facilitated the NEJM study
commented to the Washington Post about trans fats,
'Unilever found that if you make yourself vulnerable by not
being able to defend your product, you have big problems.'
But firms may be less likely to fight damning scientific
findings when they can swap out troublesome aspects of their
products and profit by doing so... Food companies may be
particularly prone to introduce 'new and improved' products as
part of their efforts to 'grow' their brands. Corporations may
change products in order to get ahead of regulators and
competitors. They may try to create new desires among consumers,
whether for products free of trans fats, fortified with
probiotic flora, or flavored with the latest antioxidant
'superfruit.'
Other industries may be less able to be flexible than the
food industry... Social scientists cannot assume that industrial
involvement in science skews the truth...Industrial involvement
in science can have a variety of consequences.
These include disturbing instances of suppression but
they also include changing how firms manufacture their products.
Social scientists have to closely follow how scientific claims
matter to industrial action. We have to be vigilant in watching
not only what corporations do to scientific claims but also what
they do on the basis of those claims. All commercial products
are manufactured and marketed by economically interested and
presumably greedy corporations. But interestedness does not mean
that industrial actors will necessarily prefer to keep their
products unchanged.”
Copyright 1997- 2015 Dr. Joseph Mercola. All Rights Reserved.
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