Academy Of Nutrition And Dietetics Took Millions Of Dollars From Junk Food And Sugar Companies To Shape National Food Policy

There's no doubt that we have an obesity epidemic in the US that is causing millions of Americans to be sick, die early, and live in pain. Meanwhile, public health organizations and medical experts will either completely ignore this epidemic or will offer incorrect information to citizens about improving their health. We're told to eat processed grains, vegetable oil instead of butter, and cereal for breakfast. We're also told to avoid meat and eggs. It's certainly not crazy to wonder whether these health organizations actually care about our health. Recent documents show that the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics has been corrupt for years.

Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Took Millions of Dollars from Junk Food and Sugar Companies To Shape National Food Policy

In October, the Washington Post reported on a paper that was shared by Public Health Nutrition called "The corporate capture of the nutrition profession in the USA: the case of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics." It covers the academy’s financial records, tax returns, and internal emails between 2014 and 2020, outlining all the ways the organization has been financially compromised by large junk food corporations.

"The involvement of unhealthy commodity corporations in health policy and research has been identified as an important commercial determinant contributing to the rise of non-communicable diseases," the paper reads. "In the USA, health professional associations have been subject to corporate influence. This study explores the interactions between corporations and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND), and their implications for the profession in the USA and globally."

The AND is the largest organization of nutrition and dietetics professionals, and it represents over 112,000 credentialed practitioners. But this supposedly credible organization has a long history of being bought off by the food industry. The AND is on record for accepting quid pro quos with companies that create and sell seed oils, junk food, sugar, fake meat, soda, etc., accepting at least $15 million from corporations between 2011 and 2017. Companies that contributed to this amount include Hershey, Kellogg's, General Mills, Nestle, PepsiCo, and Abbott Nutrition (baby formula producer). In 2015 alone, Abbott made a $300,000 sponsorship deal.

A 2015 email revealed that an AND employee defined a sponsorship as "when a company pays a fee to the Academy/Foundation in return for Academy/Foundation defined specific rights and benefits.”

Furthermore, the AND has also invested money in food industry stocks. Documents reveal that the organization possessed more than $1 million worth of stock in Nestle, J.M. Smucker, and PepsiCo between 2015 and 2016.

Nutrition expert and author Max Lugavere shared the information on his Instagram: "Is it any wonder people are so confused about what to eat? And is it any wonder why novel, high margin food-like products continue to be so fiercely defended and promoted by the establishment?⁣"

"To be clear there are many great RDs out there. RDs who are independent thinkers and who really care about nutrition and science and helping their clients. Many of them follow me! (You can find some in the comments.) In fact, this isn’t even meant to indict the AND. The whole situation kinda… is what it is," he continues.

But it's important to know who funds these health organizations, as these are the so-called experts who instruct Americans on what to eat. It's no wonder there are few to no studies about the dangers of seed oils. Academies and public health organizations like the AND have been paid off by junk-food companies to lie to us about what our daily nutrition should look like.