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Hearing of transnational food corporations like Nestlé funding health research in African countries should raise a few red flags.

One has to question how it works exactly if researchers are getting bags of money from a company to afford the ins and outs of rigorous health research when that same company happens to sell sweets and chocolate. What the company loses in sponsorship funds they might easily make up for in findings that are swayed in their way, while the people on the ground suffer from rotting teeth and diabetes.

If you look at history, and follow the money, a conflict of interest and biased research shows that this dynamic is indeed toxic.

In 2021, the director of the African Research University Alliance Centre of Excellence in Food Security at the University of Pretoria was appointed to the board of Nestlé. Since Nestlé’s portfolio of foods, by its own admission, includes more than 60% that don’t meet the definition of healthy products, a group of more than 200 senior academics wrote an open letter about the conflicts of interest, which could produce worrying results in research.

But the centre just responded two years later with an announcement that it had signed a memorandum of understanding with Nestlé, signalling their intent to “forge a transformative partnership” to shape “the future of food and nutrition research and education” and transform “Africa’s food systems”.

As nice as it is to receive funds, internships, seminars and training programmes as well as sponsorships for graduate research students, the truth of the matter is that financial links between corporations and academic institutions are well known to lead to conflicts of interest.

This is bad as it means the corporation may be favoured even when its product is incompatible with the research. No matter how hard one tries, a bias will exist and muddle the findings, per The Conversation.

A 2017 paper, Industry sponsorship and Research Outcome, found that “industry funding leads researchers to favour corporations either consciously or unconsciously”.

Those advising governments and charities on dietary policy warn how “current or past financial or personal associations with interested parties make it difficult to distinguish subtle, unconscious bias from deliberately concealed impropriety.”

Other research found that of 168 industry-funded studies, 156 (93%) showed biased results, all in favour of industry sponsors.

The globe is grappling with a surge in non-communicable diseases—hypertension, diabetes, cardiovascular issues, cancer—all tied to inadequate nutrition. For World Obesity Day, March 4, the World Health Organisation released a grim alert that obesity claims 2.8 million lives annually and ranked South Africa among the nations with the highest levels of this prevalent and easily avoidable disease.

Meanwhile, Nestlé is earning bank by selling its unhealthy product range all over Africa. In fact, a 2023 Lancet Commission reports that “just four industry sectors already account for at least a third of global deaths”, one of which is unhealthy food.

These four industry sectors are expanding their markets in Africa and elsewhere in the global south where the inadequate regulation of the sales and marketing of unhealthy foods, drinks, alcohol, tobacco and agrichemical products provides opportunities for corporations to exploit.

Hark back on the antics of the tobacco industry, which pulled similar strings to stay afloat in the market. The tobacco industry employed various tactics to impede regulation and financed research and entire institutions to generate “evidence” favouring the industry or casting doubt on the harmful effects of tobacco.

In 2019 public health academics at the University of Cape Town in South Africa discovered that the psychiatry department had accepted funding from the Philip Morris Foundation for a Smoke-Free World.

The department must have caught on to the irony and subsequently cancelled the contract.

Similarly, scientific research published in 1967 implicated saturated fat as the main cause of heart disease, but this focus ended up downplaying the role of sugar. It took over 40 years to uncover that this research was paid for by the sugar industry.

UCT won’t accept funding from the tobacco industry anymore, but I suppose the nefariousness of the sugar industry is still a green light.

No matter how desperate an institution is for sponsorship to carry through vital research, academics need to remain vigilant and protect higher education institutions from research bias.

[source:theconversation]