Currently browsing posts about: Conflicts-of-interest

I learned about this one first from a reader, Kevin Mitchell, and later from Leslie Raabe of the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine.

Beef vs. Chicken: Surprising Results From New Prediabetes Study

A new randomized controlled trial (RCT) offers insight into one often-debated question: does eating red meat worsen metabolic health in people already at risk?  According to the findings, consuming 6 to 7 ounces (170 to 198 grams) of beef per day did not negatively affect markers linked to T2D or cardiovascular health in adults with prediabetes. The study appears in Current Developments in Nutrition.

To its credit, the source of this account, SciTechDaily, gives the complete reference.

“Effects of Diets Containing Beef Compared with Poultry on Pancreatic β-Cell Function and Other Cardiometabolic Health Indicators in Males and Females with Prediabetes: A Randomized, Crossover Trial” by Elizabeth Guzman, Indika Edirisinghe, Meredith L Wilcox, Carol F Kirkpatrick, Caryn G Adams, Britt M Burton-Freeman and Kevin C Maki, 30 October 2025, Current Developments in Nutrition.
DOI: 10.1016/j.cdnut.2025.107589

It also discloses the funding and conflicts of interest:

This research was funded by the National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, a contractor to the Beef Checkoff, which was not involved in the data collection or analysis, nor publication of the findings, except for reviewing a draft of the manuscript prior to submission.

Disclosures: MLW is an employee of Midwest Biomedical Research, which has received research funding and consulting fees from food and pharmaceutical companies. CFK is an employee of Midwest Biomedical Research, which has received research funding and consulting fees from food and pharmaceutical companies. CGA is an employee of Midwest Biomedical Research, which has received research funding and consulting fees from food and pharmaceutical companies. BMBF has received research grant support from the California Strawberry Commission, Gallo Inc., Hass Avocado Board, National Institutes of Health/Nutrition for Precision Health Common Fund, National Mango Board, USDA/National Institute of Food and Agriculture, and the Watermelon Promotion Board; received honoraria for lectures from the National Mango Board, Today’s Dietitian, and the University of Missouri; and served on advisory boards for the McCormick Science Institute, the Nutrient Institute, and NutriSciences Innovation, LLC. KCM has received research grant support from Cargill, General Mills, Global Organization for EPA and DHA, Greenyn Biotechnology, Hass Avocado Board, Helaina, Inc., Indiana University Foundation, Matinas BioPharma, MDLifespan, Medifast, Inc., National Cattlemen’s Beef Association/Beef Checkoff, National Dairy Council, Naturmega, NewAmsterdam Pharma, Novo Nordisk, PepsiCo, Pharmavite, and Ro; and received consulting fees from and/or served on advisory boards of 89bio, Acasti Pharma, Beren Therapeutics, Bragg Live Food Products, Campbell’s Company, Eli Lilly and Company, Esperion Therapeutics, Inc., Helaina, Inc., Lonza Group, Matinas BioPharma, MDLifespan, National Cattlemen’s Beef Association, National Dairy Council, NewAmsterdam Pharma, NorthSea Therapeutics, Novo Nordisk, and Seed Inc.

Leslie Raabe sent another account of this study from The Independent.  it points out that the study

was released shortly after the Trump administration’s dietary guidelines, that puts animal protein at the top of the food pyramid.  Three of the guideline’s authors had financial relationships with the [Cattlemen’s] association, the Physicians Committee for Responsible Medicine reported.

Comment

It is much to the beef industry’s advantage to find evidence that beef has no ill effects on health.  The Beef Board funds studies for that precise purpose; the results of the studies it funds find benefits or no ill effects more often than not.  Coincidence?  Hardly.  It’s not going to fund studies that might risk producing results that do not show benefits.  That’s why I consider industry-funded studies to be about marketing, not science.

If food companies were really interested in independent science, they could pool their funds and turn them over to a third party for soliciting research proposals and awarding grants.  That they are not interested in doing this tells you all you need to know.

I usually do posts about conflicts of interest on Mondays, but wanted to acknowledge the death of Carlo Petrini right away this week.  So here’s the Monday post.

David A Cleveland, Research Professor in the Department of Geography, and Environmental Studies, University of California, Santa Barbara, sent this one:

Skimming through this I found an emphasis on ‘nuance’, obscuring key distinctions, and calls for more research, while giving little attention to the fundamental basics that could be the basis for nutrition + env dietary guidelines, e.g. that same nutrients from animal-source foods have much higher climate and environmental impact than those nutrients from plant foods, or imported and off-season produce has higher impact than local in season.

The study: Conrad, Z. 2026. Should the Dietary Guidelines for Americans include sustainability? A critical perspective. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition:101309. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajcnut.2026.101309.

Its conclusion: “The federal government, which has responsibility for translating the scientific evidence into publicly accessible dietary guidance, is not currently well-positioned to communicate the nuances of nutrition-sustainability science to the general public.”

Conflict of interest: “ZC has received research awards for diet sustainability projects from the United States Department of Agriculture (Pulse Crop Health Initiative), the Jeffress Trust Awards Program for Research Advancing Health Equity, American Pistachio Growers, the National Dairy Council, and the National Pork Board.”

Comment: The beef industry did not pay for this commentary and neither did the dairy industry, both big contributors to greenhouse gas emissions.  The author reports working on sustainability projects for the dairy and pork industries, and understands the financial connections as posing conflicted interests, which they most certainly do.

The study begins with a useful review of attempts to get sustainability into the dietary guidelines, starting with the groundbreaking 1980 paper by Joan Gussow and Kate Clancy, “Dietary Guidelines for Sustainability” [16].  It covers the valiant attempt by the 2015 Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee to recommend consideration of sustainability when making recommendations about intake of red meat. (here’s my version of that bizarre saga).  But the author concludes that we just don’t know enough about sustainability to make such recommendations.  I think we do.

As I endlessly repeat, industry-funded studies tend to favor the sponsor’s commercial interests.  The correlation between industry funding and study outcome is not 100% however.  Exceptions do occur.

Here’s one sent to me by a reader, Matthew Kadey: “Marion, a rare industry funded study with results that likely did not please the sponsors.”

The study: Effects of one avocado a day for six months on cognitive performance in overweight adults: A randomized controlled trial. The Journal of nutrition, health and aging. Volume 30, Issue 6, June 2026, 100847.  https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jnha.2026.100847.

Objective: “To determine if consuming one avocado per day for 6 months has cognitive benefits in adults with central obesity, addressing cognitive health early in the aging trajectory.”

Conclusions: “The consumption of one avocado per day without any additional lifestyle modifications for six months did not significantly alter cognitive function in adults with central obesity across all age groups. Additional work is needed to determine whether avocados, as part of dietary strategies initiated in midlife, contribute to healthy cognitive aging, particularly in normal weight and metabolically vulnerable populations.”

Funding disclosure: “This study was funded by the Hass Avocado Board in Mission Viejo, California”

Competing interests: Nine of the eleven authors report financial support from the Hass Avocado Board Avocado Nutrition Center.

Comment: I could not imagine why anyone would do this study in the first place.  It is a rare example of one that produced negative result from an industry-funded study, but note the positive spin in the conclusions: “Additional work is needed to determine whether avocados, as part of dietary strategies initiated in midlife, contribute to healthy cognitive aging, particularly in normal weight and metabolically vulnerable populations.”

Really?  Why?  I can’t think of any reason why more studies like this would be needed, except to get more funding from the Hass Avocado Board, which seems willing to spend lots on research aimed at positioning avocados as superfoods.

Note:  All fruits and vegetables have nutritional benefits.  By these criteria, all are superfoods.

I spotted this one in the Journal of Nutrition, and took a guess at who must have paid for it.

The study:  The Effect of Three Daily Servings of Full-Fat Dairy for 12 Weeks on Body Weight, Body Composition, Energy Metabolism, Blood Lipids, and Dietary Intake of Adults with Overweight and Obesity.  J Nutr 2026 Apr;156(4):101373. doi: 10.1016/j.tjnut.2026.101373. Epub 2026 Jan 22.

Objectives: This study aims to describe the effect of adding 3 daily servings of full-fat dairy to the diet of adults with overweight and obesity, counseled to follow Canada’s Food Guide (CFG).

Methods: participants were assigned to groups varying in energy restriction and amount of dairy.

Results: participants assigned to eating more dairy reduced weight and BMI and consumed more protein and calcium.

Conclusion: Frequent and daily consumption of full-fat dairy as part of a healthy diet is consistent with CFG [Canada’s Food Guide].

Funding: “This research was supported by Dairy Research Cluster 3 (Dairy Farmers of Canada and Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada) under the Canadian Agricultural Partnership AgriScience Program, and the Mitacs Accelerate program. The supporting sources were not involved and presented no restrictions in the publication of this research.”

Conflict of interest: “The authors report no conflicts of interest.”

Comment: I’m always fascinated that authors do not think industry funding poses a conflict of interest.  I think it does.  Much research demonstrates that industry-funding studies tend to produce results favoring the sponsor’s commercial interests.  This phenomenon has its own name: “the funding effect.”  Food companies are rarely interested in funding research that might risk yielding unfavorable results.

A reader, Betsy Keller, sent me this one.  Her question: Who funded this?  Take a guess!

The study: The Sweet Tooth Trial: A Parallel Randomized Controlled Trial Investigating the Effects of A 6-Month Low, Regular, or High Dietary Sweet Taste Exposure on Sweet Taste Liking, and Various Outcomes Related to Food Intake and Weight Status. The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, 2026; 123 (1): 101073 DOI: 10.1016/j.ajcnut.2025.09.041

Objectives: to assess the effects of a 6-mo low, regular, and high dietary sweet taste exposure on liking for sweet taste.

The study: Efficacy of 42-month oral administration of glucoraphanin in preventing cognitive decline in individuals at elevated risk of dementia, including those with mild cognitive impairment: a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled pilot study. Frontiers in Nutrition.  DOI: 10.3389/fnut.2026.1740494

To many people, full-fat milk tastes better and is more satisfying, which is reason enough to prefer it.  But the “drink full-fat milk” advice in the new dietary guidelines doesn’t make much sense to me.  Most of the nutrients in milk are in the whey portion and vitamins A and D are added to low fat milk.  This makes low- and full-fat milk pretty much equally nutritious.   Also, full-fat milk is just as processed as skim milk; the dairy industry removes the fat and adds it back to the desired percentage.

But the dairy industry wants to sell more full-fat milk and sponsors research demonstrating its superiority.  This recent example replaced their typical dairy consumption with whole milk.  If they had the right kind of intestinal bacteria, they lost weight.

The study: Qin P, Berzina L, Geiker NRW, Sandby K, Krarup T, Kristiansen K, Magkos F. Associations Between Gut Microbiome Enterotypes and Body Weight Change During Whole Milk Consumption. Nutrients. 2026; 18(4):563. https://doi.org/10.3390/nu18040563

Background: Evidence is accumulating that gut bacterial communities modulate the outcome of dietary interventions.

Objective: To assess how gut microbial enterotypes correlate with obesity-related outcomes during one month of whole milk consumption.

Methods: This post hoc analysis used data from a previously published trial, which included a lead-in phase during which men with abdominal adiposity replaced habitual dairy product consumption with 400 g/day of whole milk for one month. We compared body weight, urinary metabolites, fecal metabolites, and gut microbiome composition and function based on shotgun metagenomic sequencing at the beginning and at the end of the lead-in phase between individuals with the two most prevalent enterotypes, the Bacteroides1 (B1) enterotype (n = 24) and the Ruminococcaceae (R) enterotype (n = 38).

Results: Individuals with the B1 enterotype, but not those with the R enterotype, exhibited decreases in body weight and the relative abundance of Streptococcus thermophilus. Multiple linear regression analysis identified enterotype as a strong predictor of body weight change (p = 0.0034). In addition, urinary taurine level change was positively associated with body weight change in B1 individuals, not in R individuals.

Conclusions: Our findings reveal an enterotype-specific response to an identical dietary modification, underscoring the value of integrating enterotype information into nutrition-intervention design and personalized nutrition strategies.

Funding: The FerMetS study and analyses were funded by research grants from Arla Food for Health and the Danish Milk Levy Fund. Dairy products were provided by Arla Foods amba.

Conflicts of Interest: NRWG has received grants from the Danish Agricultural and Food Council. FM has received grants from Arla Foods A/S. The funder had no role in the study design, data collection, data analysis, data interpretation, or the decision to publish the results. The remaining authors declare that they have no conflicts of interest.

Comment

I checked the Arla Foods website.  It says: “Arla Foods is the 4th largest dairy company in the world and a cooperative owned by more than 12,700 dairy farmers.”  The relationship between the microbiome and body weight is truly fascinating and this study suggests that some kinds of bacteria are better than others for maintaining a healthy weight.  The authors make the point of this study clear in their conclusion: “In summary, our findings suggest that individuals with the B1 enterotype may be more prone to weight loss in response to whole milk consumption…..”  They view whole milk as a diet aid.

The study: Effects of replacing solid fats and added sugars with avocado in adults with elevated cardiometabolic risk: a randomized, double-blind, controlled feeding, crossover trial.  American Journal of Clinical Nutrition Volume 123, Issue 2101137 February 2026.

Objective: to assess the effects of replacing energy from solid fats and added sugars with equivalent energy from 1 avocado daily on cardiometabolic risk factors.

Methods: Study subjects were given a diet with or without an avocado a day to replace energy from saturated fatty acids and added sugars.

Results: While on the avocado diet, subjects improved their lipoprotein profiles.

Conclusions: Replacing solid fats and added sugars with avocado in a typical American diet improves the lipoprotein lipid profile in adults with
elevated triglycerides.

Funding: “The Avocado Nutrition Center of the Hass Avocado Board funded this research. The sponsor was allowed to comment on the study design as part of the application process. The sponsor had no role or involvement in the collection, analysis, or interpretation of the data; in the writing of the manuscript; or regarding the submission of the manuscript for publication, regardless of the results of the study.”

Conflict of interest:  The list of disclosed conflicts is much too long to bother to reproduce.  At least 3 of the 12 authors specifically disclose financial support from  from the Hass Avocado Board.

Comment: The disclosure statement is unusally forthcoming.  The funder had input into the study design, the part of the research process where industry influence is most likely to show up.  Funders are most likely to fund research that has the best chance of giving them the answers they want.  This was a cooperative effort to demonstrate the benefits of eating avocados.

I like avocados and appreciate that their fats are largely monounsaturated and benign or good for health.  But the purpose of this research is not about science; it is about avocado industry-sponsored research to market avocados.

I have no doubt the Hass Board would respond to this by saying, “if we don’t fund this kind of research, who will?”

That’s my point.