Authors	Year	Source title	Cited by	Purpose	Type of activity	Sustainability issues	Theoretical underpinnings	Perspective	Method	Author keywords
Beske P., Land A., Seuring S.	2014		321	Analyse how sustainable supply chain management tactics aid organizations in controlling their dynamic capabilities.	Link sustainable supply chain management and dynamic capabilities	Strategic management	Resource-based view and the knowledge-based view	Supply chain	Qualitative	Dynamic capabilities; food industry; literature review; sustainable supply chain management
Govindan K., Jafarian A., Khodaverdi R., Devika K.	2014		301	Analyse the effect of supply chain operations on environment, profit and people/society when creating a sustainable supply chain.	Integrate sustainability in decision-making, in the field of distribution in food supply chain management	Sustainable development	NA	Supply chain	Qualitative	Food supply chain; greenhouse gases emissions; perishable foods; robust multi-objective meta-heuristic; sustainability; sustainable supply chain design; two-echelon location-routing problem
Pullman M.E., Maloni M.J., Carter C.R.	2009		285	Analyse in the food industry, how sustainability impacts on environmental and society	Enhance quality performance and related cost performance	Performance management	NA	Manufacturer	Qualitative	Path analysis; social responsibility; supply chain management; survey methods; sustainability
Genovese A., Acquaye A.A., Figueroa A., Koh S.C.L.	2017		279	Integrate environmental issues into organizations' strategies, reducing negative effects of production and consumption processes	Highlight that integration of circular economy within sustainable supply chain management offers benefits from an environmental perspective	Circular economy	Circular economy	Supply network	Qualitative	Circular economy; decision support; environmental sustainability; green supply chain management; product life cycle analysis
Walker H., Jones N.	2012		246	Analyse what factors affect sustainable supply chain management	Explore sustainable supply chain management implemented by organizations leaders in their sector	Sustainable development	NA	Supply chain	Qualitative	Case studies; corporate responsibility; multiple retailers; supply chain management; sustainable development; sustainable supply chains; the United Kingdom
Van Der Vorst J.G.A.J., Tromp S.-O., Van Der Zee D.-J.	2009		216	Analyse food quality change, efficiency and responsiveness needs	Bond food quality and sustainability	Logistic management	NA	Conceptual	Qualitative	Food quality; logistics; simulation; supply chain; sustainability
Grimm J.H., Hofstetter J.S., Sarkis J.	2014		182	Analyse factors that aid to overcome challenges of sub-supplier management	Explore sustainability and critical success factors of sub-supplier management	Strategic management	Critical success factors	Supply chain	Quantitative	Corporate sustainability standards; field study; food industry; sub-supplier management; sustainable supply chain management; theory of critical success factors
Notarnicola B., Sala S., Anton A., McLaren S.J., Saouter E., Sonesson U.	2017		171	Analyse the challenges for life cycle assessment due to the complexity of food systems	Assess and improve food supply chain performance	Circular economy	Life cycle approach	Conceptual	Qualitative	Agri-food products; food lca; food supply chains; food waste; sustainable production and consumption
Erol I., Sencer S., Sari R.	2011		169	Analyse sustainability performance of supply chains	Evaluate and compare company performances in terms of sustainable supply chain.	Performance management	NA	Supplier/farmer	Quantitative	Fuzzy arithmetic; multi-criteria decision-making; performance analysis; sustainable supply chain
Georgiadis P., Besiou M.	2008		158	Analyse the effect of ecological motivation and technological innovations on the long-term behaviour of a closed-loop supply chain with recycling activities	Focus on closed-loop supply chain	Innovation	NA	Conceptual	Qualitative	Closed-loop supply chains; electronic and electrical equipment; recycling; sustainable development; system dynamics

Applied tools/research methods in the field of FSSCM

Tool/research methods	No. of articles (%)	Type
Case study analysis	46 (26%)	Case studies, multiple case studies, Delphi, focus groups, thematic analysis, etc.
Statistical analysis	38 (22%)	Regression analysis, structural equation models, econometric analysis, cluster analysis, analysis of variance (ANOVA/MANOVA), factor analysis, descriptive statistics, etc.
Conceptual analysis and/or frameworks	34 (19%)	Sustainability criteria, traceability, etc.
Mathematical models	23 (13%)	Algorithms, fuzzy, analytical tool, Decision making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) method, simulation, etc.
Quality tool	19 (11%)	Integrated quality management system, life cycle approach, transaction cost approach, etc.
Bibliometric analysis and/or literature review	16 (9%)	Bibliometric analysis, co-citation analysis, structured and unstructured literature review, etc.

Ahi , P. and Searcy , C. ( 2013 ), “ A comparative literature analysis of definitions for green and sustainable supply chain management ”, Journal of Cleaner Production , Vol.  52 , pp.  329 - 341 .

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Ashby , A. , Leat , M. and Hudson-Smith , M. ( 2012 ), “ Making connections: a review of supply chain management and sustainability literature ”, Supply Chain Management , Vol.  17 No.  5 , pp.  497 - 516 .

Asian , S. , Hafezalkotob , A. and John , J.J. ( 2019 ), “ Sharing economy in organic food supply chains: a pathway to sustainable development ”, International Journal of Production Economics , Vol.  218 , pp.  322 - 338 .

Beer , S. and Lemmer , C. ( 2011 ), “ A critical review of ‘green’ procurement: life cycle analysis of food products within the supply chain ”, Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes , Vol.  3 No.  3 , pp.  229 - 244 .

Beske , P. , Land , A. and Seuring , S. ( 2014 ), “ Sustainable supply chain management practices and dynamic capabilities in the food industry: a critical analysis of the literature ”, International Journal of Production Economics , Vol.  152 , pp.  131 - 143 .

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Brandenburg , M. , Govindan , K. , Sarkis , J. and Seuring , S. ( 2014 ), “ Quantitative models for sustainable supply chain management: developments and directions ”, European Journal of Operational Research , Vol.  233 No.  2 , pp.  299 - 312 .

Carter , C.R. and Rogers , D.S. ( 2008 ), “ A framework of sustainable supply chain management: moving toward new theory ”, International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management , Vol.  38 No.  5 , pp.  360 - 387 .

Chen , Y. , Wang , S. , Yao , J. , Li , Y. and Yang , S. ( 2018 ), “ Socially responsible supplier selection and sustainable supply chain development: a combined approach of total interpretive structural modeling and fuzzy analytic network process ”, Business Strategy and the Environment , Vol.  27 No.  8 , pp.  1708 - 1719 .

Chkanikova , O. ( 2016 ), “ Sustainable purchasing in food retailing: inter-organizational relationship management to green product supply ”, Business Strategy and the Environment , Vol.  25 No.  7 , pp.  478 - 494 .

Corallo , A. , Latino , M.E. , Menegoli , M. and Pontrandolfo , P. ( 2020 ), “ A systematic literature review to explore traceability and lifecycle relationship ”, International Journal of Production Research , Vol.  58 No.  15 , pp.  4789 - 4807 .

Cosimato , S. and Troisi , O. ( 2015 ), “ Green supply chain management: practices and tools for logistics competitiveness and sustainability. The DHL case study ”, The TQM Journal , Vol.  27 No.  2 , pp.  256 - 276 .

Croom , S. , Cox , A. , Chicksand , D. and Yang , T. ( 2007 ), “ The proactive alignment of sourcing with marketing and branding strategies: a food service case ”, Supply Chain Management: An International Journal , Vol.  12 No.  5 , pp.  321 - 333 .

Czinkota , M. , Kaufmann , H.R. and Basile , G. ( 2014 ), “ The relationship between legitimacy, reputation, sustainability and branding for companies and their supply chains ”, Industrial Marketing Management , Vol.  43 No.  1 , pp.  91 - 101 .

Dania , W.A.P. , Xing , K. and Amer , Y. ( 2018 ), “ Collaboration behavioural factors for sustainable agri-food supply chains: a systematic review ”, Journal of Cleaner Production , Vol.  186 , pp.  851 - 864 .

Danny , P.C. and Priscila , B.D.O.C. ( 2004 ), “ Coordinating B2B cross-border supply chains: the case of the organic coffee industry ”, The Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing , Vol.  19 No.  6 , pp.  405 - 414 .

Dora , M. ( 2019 ), “ Collaboration in a circular economy: learning from the farmers to reduce food waste ”, Journal of Enterprise Information Management , Vol.  33 No.  4 , pp.  769 - 789 .

Erol , I. , Sencer , S. and Sari , R. ( 2011 ), “ A new fuzzy multi-criteria framework for measuring sustainability performance of a supply chain ”, Ecological Economics , Vol.  70 No.  6 , pp.  1088 - 1100 .

Fahimnia , B. , Sarkis , J. and Davarzani , H. ( 2015 ), “ Green supply chain management: a review and bibliometric analysis ”, International Journal of Production Economics , Vol.  162 No.  c , pp.  101 - 114 .

Feng , Y. , Zhu , Q. and Lai , K.H. ( 2017 ), “ Corporate social responsibility for supply chain management: a literature review and bibliometric analysis ”, Journal of Cleaner Production , Vol.  100 No.  158 , pp.  296 - 307 .

Feng , H. , Wang , X. , Duan , Y. , Zhang , J. and Zhang , X. ( 2020 ), “ Applying blockchain technology to improve agri-food traceability: a review of development methods, benefits and challenges ”, Journal of Cleaner Production , Vol.  260 , 121031 .

Folkerts , H. and Koehorst , H. ( 1998 ), “ Challenges in international food supply chains: vertical co-ordination in the European agribusiness and food industries ”, British Food Journal , Vol.  100 No.  8 , pp.  385 - 388 .

Garcia-Buendia , N. , Moyano-Fuentes , J. , Maqueira-Marín , J.M. and Cobo , M.J. ( 2021 ), “ 22 Years of lean supply chain management: a science mapping-based bibliometric analysis ”, International Journal of Production Research , Vol.  59 No.  6 , pp.  1901 - 1921 .

Ghadge , A. , Kaklamanou , M. , Choudhary , S. and Bourlakis , M. ( 2017 ), “ Implementing environmental practices within the Greek dairy supply chain drivers and barriers for SMEs ”, Industrial Management and Data Systems , Vol.  117 No.  9 , pp.  1995 - 2014 .

Glover , J.L. , Champion , D. , Daniels , K.J. and Dainty , A.J. ( 2014 ), “ An institutional theory perspective on sustainable practices across the dairy supply chain ”, International Journal of Production Economics , Vol.  152 No.  C , pp.  102 - 111 .

Govindan , K. ( 2018 ), “ Sustainable consumption and production in the food supply chain: a conceptual framework ”, International Journal of Production Economics , Vol.  195 No.  C , pp.  419 - 431 .

Hassini , E. , Surti , C. and Searcy , C. ( 2012 ), “ A literature review and a case study of sustainable supply chains with a focus on metrics ”, International Journal of Production Economics , Vol.  140 No.  1 , pp.  69 - 82 .

Henk , F. and Hans , K. ( 1997 ), “ Challenges in international food supply chains: vertical co-ordination in the European agribusiness and food industries ”, Supply Chain Management: An International Journal , Vol.  2 No.  1 , pp.  11 - 14 .

Ilbery , B. and Maye , D. ( 2005 ), “ Food supply chains and sustainability: evidence from specialist food producers in the Scottish/English borders ”, Land Use Policy , Vol.  22 No.  4 , pp.  331 - 344 .

Joshi , S. , Singh , R.K. and Sharma , M. ( 2020 ), “ Sustainable agri-food supply chain practices: few empirical evidences from a developing economy ”, Global Business Review , Vol.  1 No.  24 .

Juettner , U. , Windler , K. , Podleisek , A. , Gander , M. and Meldau , S. ( 2020 ), “ Implementing supplier management strategies for supply chain sustainability risks in multinational companies ”, The TQM Journal , Vol.  32 No.  5 , pp.  923 - 938 .

Kahi , V.S. , Yousefi , S. , Shabanpour , H. and Saen , R.F. ( 2017 ), “ How to evaluate sustainability of supply chains? A dynamic network DEA approach ”, Industrial Management and Data Systems , Vol.  117 , pp.  1866 - 1889 .

Kamble , S.S. , Gunasekaran , A. and Gawankar , S.A. ( 2020 ), “ Achieving sustainable performance in a data-driven agriculture supply chain: a review for research and applications ”, International Journal of Production Economics , Vol.  219 , pp.  179 - 194 .

Khan , S.A.R. , Yu , Z. , Golpîra , H. , Sharif , A. and Mardani , A. ( 2020 ), “ A state-of-the-art review and meta-analysis on sustainable supply chain management: future research directions ”, Journal of Cleaner Production , Vol. 278 , 123357 .

Khan , S.A. , Mubarik , M.S. , Kusi‐Sarpong , S. , Zaman , S.I. and Kazmi , S.H.A. ( 2021 ), “ Social sustainable supply chains in the food industry: a perspective of an emerging economy ”, Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management , Vol.  28 No.  1 , pp.  404 - 418 .

Kumar , A. , Mangla , S.K. , Kumar , P. and Karamperidis , S. ( 2020 ), “ Challenges in perishable food supply chains for sustainability management: a developing economy perspective ”, Business Strategy and the Environment , Vol.  29 No.  5 , pp.  1809 - 1831 .

Kumar Sharma , Y. , Mangla , S. , Patil , P. and Liu , S. ( 2019 ), “ When challenges impede the process: for circular economy driven sustainability practices in food supply chain ”, Management Decision , Vol.  57 No.  4 , pp.  995 - 1017 .

Kumari , S. , Raghuram , P. , Venkatesh , V.G. and Shi , Y. ( 2021 ), “ Future perspectives on progressive farming with adoption of virtual reality technology for sustainable quality in agriculture ”, The TQM Journal , Vol. ahead-of-print No. ahead-of-print , doi: 10.1108/TQM-06-2021-0191 .

Maditati , D.R. , Munim , Z.H. , Schramm , H.J. and Kummer , S. ( 2018 ), “ A review of green supply chain management: from bibliometric analysis to a conceptual framework and future research directions ”, Resources, Conservation and Recycling , Vol.  139 , pp.  150 - 162 .

Mangla , S.K. , Sharma , Y.K. , Patil , P.P. , Yadav , G. and Xu , J. ( 2019 ), “ Logistics and distribution challenges to managing operations for corporate sustainability: study on leading Indian diary organizations ”, Journal of Cleaner Production , Vol.  238 , 117620 .

Manning , L. ( 2013 ), “ Corporate and consumer social responsibility in the food supply chain ”, British Food Journal , Vol.  115 No.  1 , pp.  9 - 29 .

Manzini , R. , Accorsi , R. , Ayyad , Z. , Bendini , A. , Bortolini , M. , Gamberi , M. , Valli , E. and Toschi , T.G. ( 2014 ), “ Sustainability and quality in the food supply chain. A case study of shipment of edible oils ”, British Food Journal , Vol.  116 No.  12 , pp.  2069 - 2090 .

Massaroni , E. , Cozzolino , A. and Wankowicz , E. ( 2015 ), “ Sustainability in supply chain management-a literature review ”, Sinergie Italian Journal of Management , Vol.  33 , pp.  331 - 355 .

Matopoulos , A. , Barros , A.C. and van der Vorst , J.G.A.J. ( 2015 ), “ Resource-efficient supply chains: a research framework, literature review and research agenda ”, Supply Chain Management: An International Journal , Vol.  20 No.  2 , pp.  218 - 236 .

Morley , A. ( 2020 ), “ Procuring for change: an exploration of the innovation potential of sustainable food procurement ”, Journal of Cleaner Production , Vol.  279 , 123410 .

Naik , G. and Suresh , D.N. ( 2018 ), “ Challenges of creating sustainable agri-retail supply chains ”, IIMB Management Review , Vol.  30 , pp.  270 - 282 .

Pakdeechoho , N. and Sukhotu , V. ( 2018 ), “ Sustainable supply chain collaboration: incentives in emerging economies ”, Journal of Manufacturing Technology Management , Vol.  29 No.  2 , pp.  273 - 294 .

Pohlmann , C.R. , Scavarda , A.J. , Alves , M.B. and Korzenowski , A.L. ( 2020 ), “ The role of the focal company in sustainable development goals: a Brazilian food poultry supply chain case study ”, Journal of Cleaner Production , Vol.  245 , 118798 .

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Acknowledgements

Although the views and ideas expressed in this article are those of Maria Palazzo and Agostino Vollero; “sections 1; 3; 3.1; 3.2; 3.6; 3.8; 4” are attributed to Maria Palazzo; while “sections 2; 3.3; 3.4; 3.5; 3.7; 3.9; 5; 6” are attributed to Agostino Vollero.

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Open Access

Peer-reviewed

Research Article

The characteristics and extent of food industry involvement in peer-reviewed research articles from 10 leading nutrition-related journals in 2018

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing

* E-mail: [email protected]

Affiliation Global Obesity Centre (GLOBE), Institute for Health Transformation, School of Health and Social Development, Faculty of Health, Deakin University, Geelong, Victoria, Australia

Roles Formal analysis, Investigation, Writing – review & editing

Roles Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Writing – review & editing

Affiliation School of Public Health, University of Sao Paulo, Sao Paulo, Brazil

Roles Formal analysis, Writing – review & editing

Roles Conceptualization, Investigation, Writing – review & editing

• Gary Sacks, 
• Devorah Riesenberg, 
• Melissa Mialon, 
• Sarah Dean, 
• Adrian J. Cameron

• Published: December 16, 2020
• https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243144
• Peer Review
• Reader Comments

Introduction

There is emerging evidence that food industry involvement in nutrition research may bias research findings and/or research agendas. However, the extent of food industry involvement in nutrition research has not been systematically explored. This study aimed to identify the extent of food industry involvement in peer-reviewed articles from a sample of leading nutrition-related journals, and to examine the extent to which findings from research involving the food industry support industry interests.

All original research articles published in 2018 in the top 10 most-cited nutrition- and dietetics-related journals were analysed. We evaluated the proportion of articles that disclosed involvement from the food industry, including through author affiliations, funding sources, declarations of interest or other acknowledgments. Principal research findings from articles with food industry involvement, and a random sample of articles without food industry involvement, were categorised according to the extent to which they supported relevant food industry interests.

196/1,461 (13.4%) articles reported food industry involvement. The extent of food industry involvement varied by journal, with The Journal of Nutrition (28.3%) having the highest and Paediatric Obesity (3.8%) having the lowest proportion of industry involvement. Processed food manufacturers were involved in the most articles (77/196, 39.3%). Of articles with food industry involvement, 55.6% reported findings favourable to relevant food industry interests, compared to 9.7% of articles without food industry involvement.

Food industry involvement in peer-reviewed research in leading nutrition-related journals is commonplace. In line with previous literature, this study has shown that a greater proportion of peer-reviewed studies involving the food industry have results that favour relevant food industry interests than peer-reviewed studies without food industry involvement. Given the potential competing interests of the food industry, it is important to explore mechanisms that can safeguard the integrity and public relevance of nutrition research.

Citation: Sacks G, Riesenberg D, Mialon M, Dean S, Cameron AJ (2020) The characteristics and extent of food industry involvement in peer-reviewed research articles from 10 leading nutrition-related journals in 2018. PLoS ONE 15(12): e0243144. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243144

Editor: Quinn Grundy, University of Toronto, CANADA

Received: June 15, 2020; Accepted: November 16, 2020; Published: December 16, 2020

Copyright: © 2020 Sacks et al. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License , which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

Data Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.

Funding: GS and AJC were supported by Heart Foundation Future Leader Fellowships (102035 and 36357, respectively) from the National Heart Foundation of Australia ( https://www.heartfoundation.org.au/ ). GS and AJC are researchers within a National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC) ( https://www.nhmrc.gov.au/ ) Centre of Research Excellence in Food Retail Environments for Health (RE-FRESH) (APP1152968) (Australia). GS is also a researcher within a NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence entitled Reducing Salt Intake Using Food Policy Interventions (APP1117300). The authors are solely responsible for the opinions, hypotheses and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication, and they do not necessarily reflect their funders’ vision. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.

Competing interests: GS and AJC are academic partners on a publicly funded healthy supermarket intervention trial that includes Australian local government and supermarket retail (IGA) collaborators. GS has been involved in studies to benchmark the policies and commitments of food companies related to obesity prevention and nutrition in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Malaysia and Europe. The authors have not received funding from any organization in the food industry. The authors have no other potential competing interests to declare. The competing interests of the authors do not alter our adherence to PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

Dietary risk factors are associated with more deaths and disability worldwide than any other modifiable factor [ 1 ]. A key driver of poor diets globally has been a nutrition transition characterised by increased consumption of ultra-processed packaged foods [ 2 – 4 ]. These foods are manufactured, marketed and sold by a diverse selection of companies and organisations, collectively referred to as the ‘food industry’ [ 5 ]. Importantly, global food systems are now dominated by a relatively small number of large transnational food companies [ 2 , 6 ]. The continued generation of profit by these large food companies typically relies on aggressive marketing of their products and brands, as well as political strategies to create regulatory environments that facilitate their market power [ 7 ].

Nutrition research is fundamental to efforts to promote healthy eating behaviours and health. However, there is concern regarding how the involvement of the food industry in nutrition research affects the nature of studies conducted, the nutrition research agenda and the findings of individual studies [ 8 – 10 ]. The interests of many commercial food industry actors are misaligned with clinical and public health objectives as the legal mandate of corporations is to return profit for their shareholders, without explicit consideration of broader social impact [ 10 , 11 ]. In recognition of the inherent risks and to preserve the scientific credibility of nutrition-related research, food industry involvement in research is increasingly scrutinized [ 12 , 13 ].

Food industry involvement in research can take many forms. These forms of involvement include, amongst others, the provision of funding and the involvement of food company employees as part of research teams. There are many reasons why food companies might be involved in nutrition-related research. These reasons may include unobjectionable motives such as a willingness to develop new knowledge, assist in research translation and contribute expertise and resources [ 14 ]. However, from a public health perspective, several concerns have been identified regarding food industry involvement in research. These include: 1) the creation of increased marketing opportunities for industry products, many of which are harmful to population health [ 15 ]; 2) the establishment and nurturing of relationships between the food industry and nutrition researchers that serves to increase perceived industry credibility, reduce industry criticism, and encourage increased dependency on the food industry [ 16 , 17 ]; 3) industry influence over research agendas to preferentially focus on topics likely to benefit industry interests, rather than topics of public health importance [ 18 ]; 4) industry influence on the methods, conclusions and impact of research in ways that are likely to favour industry interests over and above other factors [ 9 , 19 – 21 ]; and 5) use of research for political purposes [ 22 , 23 ]. An increased dependence on food industry funding by academics has been documented [ 9 , 12 , 16 , 24 ], with food industry funding sometimes acknowledged as a strategically important funding source for the university sector [ 25 ].

Previous research has investigated the impact of food industry sponsorship on the findings of published research. Several studies have found that papers sponsored by the food industry typically favour industry interests [ 9 , 21 , 26 ], although a recent meta-analysis found that the quantitative difference in conclusions between food industry-sponsored and non–industry-sponsored nutrition studies was not significant [ 8 ]. To date, no study has comprehensively examined the extent and nature of food industry involvement in peer-reviewed research. Better information regarding the extent of food industry involvement, characteristics (e.g., industry sector, company size) of food industry actors that are involved in nutrition-related research, and the ways in which they are involved (e.g., study authorship, different types of funding provided) would assist efforts to assess and manage the potential impact and implications of food industry involvement in research.

This study aimed to contribute to a growing body of empirical evidence related to food industry involvement in peer-reviewed published research by systematically identifying the extent of food industry involvement in research articles from a large sample of leading nutrition-related journals. In addition, this study examined the extent to which research findings support food industry interests for both articles with declared food industry involvement, and those with no declared food industry involvement.

The study examined articles published in 2018 in the top 10 nutrition and dietetics journals as defined by the SCImago Journal ranking (SJR) as at June 2019. The SJR is a measure of a journal’s impact, and expresses the average number of weighted citations received in a selected year by the documents published in the journal in the three previous years [ 27 ]. The selected journals included (in alphabetical order): Advances in Nutrition , Clinical Nutrition , International Journal of Behavioural Nutrition and Physical Activity , International Journal of Obesity , Nutrition Research Reviews , Nutrition Reviews , Obesity , Paediatric Obesity , The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and The Journal of Nutrition .

Details of all articles (n = 1,732) published in the selected journals in 2018 were extracted from Medline, CINAHL, Global Health or PubMed. Article types included in the study were original research articles, reviews, short/brief reports and short communications. Article types excluded were errata/corrections, editorials, perspectives, letters to the editor and other related article types. We also examined the disclosed conflicts of interest of the editorial board of each of the selected journals (based on information provided on the website of each journal), links of the selected journals and their editors to the food industry (based on biographical information provided on the journal website and/or on the website of each editor’s primary affiliation), as well as each journal’s requirements for authors to disclosure conflicts of interest and any other related policies (based on information provided on the website of each journal).

Food industry involvement

Each included article was examined independently by two of the authors (DR and GS) to determine whether there was food industry involvement in the paper. For the purposes of this study, the “food industry” was broadly defined to include all organisations involved in food and non-alcoholic beverage production, distribution, marketing and retail, as well as relevant industry groups and trade associations [ 28 ]. We included manufacturers of dietary supplements and breast-milk substitutes in this definition. In recognition of the known industry tactic of establishing ‘front groups’ (defined as an organisation that purports to represent one agenda while in reality it serves some other party or interest whose sponsorship is hidden or rarely mentioned) [ 29 ], our definition of “food industry” also included organisations that received the majority of their funding from the food industry.

Food industry involvement was determined based on examination of author affiliations, declared funding sources, declarations of interests, and acknowledgements within each article. All organisations identified through these sections of each article were assessed to determine whether they could be classified as part of the food industry. All universities were considered as not part of the food industry. Organisations known by the authors to be part of the food industry as well as those on an established list of known food industry front groups were classified as such [ 30 ]. Searches of the primary websites of all other organisations were conducted to determine the nature of their operations and their funding sources, where relevant, in order to determine if they could be considered as part of the food industry [ 31 ].

Food industry actors identified through the study were classified into one of nine different sectors: 1) dairy; 2) dietary supplement manufacturing; 3) food chemical suppliers and food technology companies; 4) food retail; 5) meat and livestock; 6) non-alcoholic beverage manufacturing; 7) primary production (non-dairy, non-meat); 8) processed food manufacturing; and 9) other food industry organisations (see S1 Table for definitions of what was included in each sector). Categorisations were based on an assessment of the primary areas of activity of the actor, based on the knowledge of the authors and information provided on the website of the actor. In addition, we classified food industry actors into three categories based on the size and nature of their operations. These included large corporations (with annal global revenue > USD1 billion), trade/industry associations, and small corporations/other entities (annual global revenue < USD1 billion). This classification was based on information obtained from the Euromonitor Passport database [ 32 ], supplemented by internet searches of the name of the food industry actor where necessary. All categorisation of food industry actors was performed independently by two of the authors (DR and SD), with any discrepancies discussed and resolved with a third author (GS).

Based on the information extracted, papers were categorised as having food industry involvement if: 1) any of the authors self-affiliated as an employee, member or representative of the food industry; 2) the authors declared funding from the food industry, including direct funding for the study, donation of products to be used for the study, or funding received for other activities (e.g., conference attendance) not directly related to the study; or 3) other stated food industry involvement (e.g., through conflicts noted in the acknowledgments sections or other involvement that did not fit within the other categories). Where an individual article included multiple forms of industry involvement, each form of involvement was noted.

Classification of principal findings

The ‘principal findings’ of all articles that had involvement with the food industry were classified according to whether the findings were: 1) favourable to the interests of the food industry actor; 2) unfavourable to the interests of the food industry actor; 3) mixed; 4) neutral; or 5) not applicable to the food industry actor/s involved (see Table 1 for definition of each classification). The principal findings were operationalised as the results that were reported in the ‘results’ section of the abstract of the paper. If the relevant section of the abstract contained insufficient information to deduce the nature of the principal findings, the ‘results’ and ‘discussion’ sections of the paper were also examined to understand the nature of the principal reported findings. This approach was based on methods previously used for similar types of analyses [ 8 , 33 ].

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https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243144.t001

For each of the ten journals, a sample of randomly selected original research articles that did not report food industry involvement was also selected. The process for selection of these articles was that, first, the number of articles with food industry involvement for each journal was calculated. Then, the matching number of articles from each journal, but without food industry involvement, was selected randomly from the list of included articles using the RAND function in Excel. Accordingly, an equal number of articles with and without industry involvement in each journal was selected for analysis. The principal findings of all selected articles without food industry involvement were examined and classified in the same way as the principal findings of the articles with food industry involvement. As there was no specific industry actor involved in these articles, a broad interpretation of food industry interests was taken when assessing the extent to which articles favoured food industry interests. For example, a favourable finding for any food product or nutrient was considered favourable to the food industry, whereas a negative finding for any food product or nutrient was considered unfavourable. The primary topic area of each of the articles was noted, including the particular foods, food components or nutrients (as relevant).

Assessments of principal findings were conducted independently by two of the authors (DR and SD), with any discrepancies discussed and resolved with a third author (GS). Results were analysed by type of food industry involvement and by journal. For the purposes of this analysis of ‘type of food industry involvement’, author affiliations with the food industry and direct funding for the study from the food industry were grouped together (as they were considered more direct involvement) and compared to other types of food industry funding (that were considered less direct involvement).

Statistical analysis

All articles with food industry involvement were identified from each of the ten included journals, with the frequency and percentage in each category of favourability calculated. For the randomly selected matched sample of research articles with no food industry involvement, we calculated 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for the proportion of articles in each category of favourability (e.g., favourable or unfavourable to food industry interests) using Stata 15.0 (StataCorp, College Station, TX, USA).

Of the 1,732 articles published in the selected journals, 1,461 peer-reviewed research articles met our inclusion criteria (n = 271 excluded) ( Fig 1 ) . Amongst these, 196/1,461 (13.4%) were classified as having food industry involvement ( Table 2 ). Refer to S2 Table for details of food industry actors identified.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243144.g001

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243144.t002

The most common form of involvement was the provision of direct funding for the study (n = 120/196, 61.2%). Other involvement (including acknowledgments and information listed in the conflict of interests section and not related to other categories) represented the second most common form of involvement (82/196, 41.8%) followed by industry funding received for other research not directly related to the study (70/196, 35.7%) and authorship (59/196, 30.1%) ( Table 2 ).

Food industry involvement was noted across all 10 journals included in the sample. The Journal of Nutrition (28.3%), Nutrition Reviews (24.5%), and The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (16.7%) published the highest proportion of articles with food industry-involvement. Paediatric Obesity (3.8%), International Journal of Behavioural Nutrition and Physical Activity (4.0%), and International Journal of Obesity (4.9%) published the lowest proportion of articles with food industry involvement ( Table 2 ). Each journal had similar policies in place that required authors to disclose conflicts of interest. Four journals ( Advances in Nutrition , The Journal of Nutrition , Obesity , Paediatric Obesity ) included statements regarding conflicts of interest of their editorial board on the journal website. Editors from six journals ( The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition , Advances in Nutrition , International Journal of Obesity , Nutrition Reviews , The Journal of Nutrition , Obesity ) were identified as having involvement with the food industry (see S3 Table ). No other relevant policies regarding studies with food industry involvement were identified by any journal.

A diverse range of sectors of the food industry were involved in the research assessed ( Table 3 ). The sectors most often represented were processed food manufacturing (39.3%), dietary supplement manufacturing (28.6%) and dairy (27.0%). Food retailers (including supermarkets) were involved in the fewest papers (2.6%). Of the 161 food industry actors identified as involved in research articles, the highest proportion (41.6%) were classified as trade/industry associations, 35.4% were classified as small corporations/other entities, and 23.0% were classified as large corporations ( S4 Table ). However, these large corporations were the most frequently involved (47.8% of identified instances of food industry involvement), followed by trade/industry associations (36.4% of identified instances of food industry involvement) and small corporations/other entities (15.8% of identified instances of food industry involvement) ( S4 Table ). Refer to S5 Table for further information on the industry actors identified as being involved in more than 1% of articles.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243144.t003

The majority of papers with food industry involvement reported findings that were considered favourable to the food industry (n = 109, 55.6%) ( Table 4 ). The proportion of articles with findings considered favourable to the food industry was even higher (66.2%) where study authors reported either affiliations related to the food industry or direct funding for the study from the food industry ( Table 4 ). In contrast, of the 196 randomly selected articles with no identified food industry involvement, 19 (9.7%, 95% CI: 7.0–12.4) reported findings classified as favourable to the food industry. The vast majority (n = 15/19, 78.9%) of these articles related to particular nutrients and/or food components (e.g., protein, vitamins), with the remaining four articles (21.1%) relating to foods and food products (e.g., coffee, green tea) ( S6 Table ).

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243144.t004

Only a small proportion (n = 13, 6.6%) of papers with food industry involvement reported results that were unfavourable to the food industry ( Table 4 ). The percentage of articles with findings unfavourable to the food industry or mixed findings were similar for those articles with and without food industry involvement ( Table 4 ). 117 (59.7%, 95% CI: 54.5–65.7) articles with no food industry involvement had findings considered not applicable to the food industry, compared to 50 (25.5%) of the articles with food industry involvement. Similar patterns were observed across each journal ( S7 Table ).

This study found that 13.4% of peer-reviewed research articles in the top 10 most-cited nutrition- and dietetics-related journals from 2018 reported food industry involvement. Food industry involvement spanned a number of industry sectors, with processed food manufacturing, dietary supplement manufacturing and dairy most often represented. The vast majority of industry involvement was from large corporations and trade/industry associations, rather than smaller corporations. The proportion of articles with findings considered favourable to the food industry was substantially higher among those articles with food industry involvement (55.6%) compared to a random sample of those without (9.7%), with the difference even more marked where industry involvement in studies was more direct (author affiliations or direct funding for the study). The percentage of articles considered unfavourable to the interests of the food industry was similar among the articles with food industry involvement and the random sample of those articles without.

Considerable variation in the percentage of articles with industry involvement was observed between journals. The Journal of Nutrition and Nutrition Reviews published the highest proportion of articles with industry involvement. Both of these journals have declared connections to the food industry. Several members of the board of The Journal of Nutrition have declared conflicts of interest involving food companies [ 34 ]. The Journal of Nutrition is published by the American Society of Nutrition (ASN), which has formal partnerships with multiple food companies [ 35 ] and has been criticised for supporting food industry objectives over public health interests [ 24 ]. Other journals included in the sample ( The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and Advances in Nutrition ) are also published by ASN, and had lower proportions of articles with food industry involvement compared to The Journal of Nutrition . Nutrition Reviews is published by the International Life Science Institute (ILSI), who were founded and are solely funded by large food industry companies including Mars, Nestlé, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo with the majority of their members’ interests opposing public health policy and objectives [ 36 , 37 ]. Future research should explore the extent to which a journal’s connections to the food industry influence their publication priorities and editorial processes.

The findings in this study support existing evidence that research with food industry involvement is generally favourable to the interests of the food industry [ 8 , 11 , 15 , 18 , 21 , 24 , 26 , 38 , 39 ]. In particular, this study adds to the growing empirical evidence that food industry involvement in nutrition research likely influences research agendas to focus disproportionately on topics of importance to the industry, potentially at the expense of topics of greater public health importance [ 8 , 18 ]. A recent scoping review by Fabbri and colleagues [ 18 ] demonstrated the impact of industry involvement across a range of diverse sectors (including medicine and nutrition), finding that industry-funded research was more often focused on products, processes or activities that can be commercialised and marketed, rather than non-market based activities. They concluded that “corporate interests can drive research agendas away from questions that are the most relevant for public health” [ 18 ]. In addition, food industry-funded research has been noted as often focusing on a specific nutrient, potentially enabling the funder to market the benefits of particular nutrients [ 24 ]. While it has previously been reported that nutrition research funded by the food industry typically respects scientific standards for conducting and reporting scientific studies [ 17 ], the food industry was itself involved in that assessment, and the issue warrants further detailed exploration.

It has been well documented that a range of industries, including the food industry, seek involvement in research, develop research that is favourable to their interests, and make use of scientific evidence as part of broader efforts to influence public health policy [ 19 , 22 , 29 , 40 – 42 ]. Moreover, there is evidence that major corporations have pushed for policy making systems that provide a route for feeding corporate evidence into policy making [ 42 , 43 ]. There are several examples of topic areas in which research funded by the food industry favours particular products or diverts attention away from a public health issue. For example, with respect to sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs), a body of research suggests that the involvement of the SSB sector in research has resulted in research that reports favourable findings for the industry [ 11 , 44 ]. In addition, researchers have documented instances where Coca-Cola maintained control over study data and the disclosure of results for research it funded. Some research agreements between the company and their contracted researchers stated that Coca-Cola had the ultimate choice regarding publication of research findings [ 45 ].

Study limitations

To date, this is the first study to systematically examine the extent of involvement of the food industry in peer-reviewed research articles published in the leading nutrition and dietetics journals. Importantly, much peer-reviewed nutrition research is published outside of the selected nutrition and dietetics journals. Moreover, the study was not designed to identify research with food industry involvement that is published in topic areas outside of nutrition and dietetics, outside of peer-reviewed journals, or that is funded or conducted by the industry but remains unpublished. Accordingly, the study represents only a small and selected analysis of the extent of food industry involvement in nutrition research. Future studies should investigate nutrition-related articles from journals with both a nutrition and non-nutrition focus (including, for example, journals in medicine and public health). Ways to automate methods for comprehensively identifying different types of food industry involvement in published studies need to be explored.

The classification of the principal findings of studies as favourable or unfavourable to the interests of the food industry was based on the knowledge of the researchers involved, which may have led to instances of unintended misclassification. Given the magnitude of the differences observed between articles with and without food industry involvement, unintended misclassifications are highly unlikely to have impacted the overall conclusions.

We did not perform any analysis by study design of the included articles or in relation to the appropriateness and rigour of the research methods used in each article. Accordingly, we did not assess the influence of food industry involvement on scientific methods or the way in which they were applied. Aspects of study design and specific mechanisms by which food industry involvement may influence study focus areas and results should be included in future studies.

The analysis relied primarily on the self-disclosure of food industry involvement (through declared conflicts of interests, funding acknowledgments, and author affiliations), with different journals having different disclosure requirements. We did not conduct an analysis of the veracity of each journal’s conflict of interest disclosure requirements, but this warrants further exploration. Importantly, undisclosed food industry involvement cannot be captured using the approach we adopted in this study. There is evidence that the disclosure of conflict of interest is under-reported in research [ 45 , 46 ], indicating that the percentage of articles with food industry involvement may be larger than that observed here. In addition, our identification of food industry organisations involved in the included studies may have been incomplete. While we made use of an established list of food industry front groups as well as online searches of identified organisations to determine the nature of their operations and funding sources, it has previously been noted that financial links to the food industry are often not publicly available [ 30 ].

Finally, we did not conduct a detailed examination of the extent to which the editors of each journal have links to the food industry. Future research should further explore links between journal editors and the food industry and the role of journal editors in assessing conflicts of interest with the food industry.

Implications of the findings

The finding that food industry involvement is commonplace in peer-reviewed research in leading nutrition-related journals has several implications. With increased recognition of food industry bias within research, it is important to consider ways of maximising the integrity of research published in respected peer-reviewed nutrition journals and ensuring that research focused on issues of public health relevance is prioritized. One option could be to limit industry funding of research to a government- or independently-controlled pool of money that supports a research agenda developed independent of industry, with strict processes to ensure freedom from industry influence [ 47 ]. A similar model for pharmaceutical research already operates in Italy [ 48 ], and in relation to the tobacco and alcohol industry in California and Thailand [ 49 ].

Further, it is important that research institutions have strict, regularly updated and transparent guidelines and policies to regulate and report on their engagement with industry, including specifying the level of engagement permitted with different actors. For those institutions with food industry involvement, processes need to be put in place to ensure that the potential influence of the food industry on research agendas and research methods are managed [ 50 ]. Example of guidelines for managing engagement with industry include those from the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney [ 51 ] and the Global Obesity Centre at Deakin University in Australia [ 52 ].

Journals could also consider adopting detailed policies regarding articles with declared food industry involvement. Such policies could place limits on the number of articles that the journal will accept for review, specific topic areas where food industry involvement is discouraged, or specific sections in journals for studies with industry involvement [ 24 ]. Based on the findings of this study, all articles that include any type of food industry involvement warrant close scrutiny from journals, with a particular focus on more direct types of involvement (e.g., author affiliations and direct funding for a study). Journals should also have clear policies on disclosing editorial conflicts of interest, including any links between editors and the food industry. Moreover, any such conflicts need to be actively managed or eliminated. Further, research that investigates appropriate standards of disclosure and involvement can guide policy and practice in this area.

Food industry involvement in peer-reviewed nutrition research is commonplace, and the results of the majority of studies with food industry involvement favour the interests of the food industry. Given the potential competing interests of the food industry on the one hand, and scientific and population health interests on the other, it is important to explore mechanisms that can safeguard the integrity and public relevance of nutrition research, and ensure they are not undermined by the influence of the food industry.

Supporting information

S1 table. definitions of categories used to classify organisations from the food industry..

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243144.s001

S2 Table. Food industry actors identified as involved in research studies in the top 10 most-cited nutrition- and dietetics-related journals in 2018, by food industry sector and actor classification.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243144.s002

S3 Table. The top 10 most-cited nutrition- and dietetics-related journals in 2018 and their declared involvement with the food industry.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243144.s003

S4 Table. Food industry actors identified as being involved in the top 10 most-cited nutrition- and dietetics-related journals in 2018.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243144.s004

S5 Table. Food industry actors identified as being involved in more than 1% of articles examined in the top 10 most-cited nutrition- and dietetics-related journals in 2018.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243144.s005

S6 Table. Primary topic area of the random sample of articles without food industry involvement 1 .

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243144.s006

S7 Table. Nature of the findings in articles with and without 1 food industry involvement, by journal.

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0243144.s007

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the contribution of Benjamin Sullivan, an Honours student in the School of Health and Social Development at Deakin University in 2015, whose research informed the design of this study.

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Application Research: Big Data in Food Industry

1 Key Laboratory of Aerospace Information Security and Trusted Computing, Ministry of Education, School of Cyber Science and Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan 430072, China; nc.ude.uhw@71oatq (Q.T.); nc.ude.uhw@gnidwh (H.D.)

Hongwei Ding

Huixia wang.

2 Hubei Provincial Institute for Food Supervision and Test, Wuhan 430223, China; moc.621@790xhw

Xiaohui Cui

Associated data.

Data sharing is not applicable for this article.

A huge amount of data is being produced in the food industry, but the application of big data—regulatory, food enterprise, and food-related media data—is still in its infancy. Each data source has the potential to develop the food industry, and big data has broad application prospects in areas like social co-governance, exploit of consumption markets, quantitative production, new dishes, take-out services, precise nutrition and health management. However, there are urgent problems in technology, health and sustainable development that need to be solved to enable the application of big data to the food industry.

1. Introduction

Consumers are no longer satisfied with having enough to eat; food quality has become a key factor in determining consumer choice [ 1 ], and their demands and preferences change with the season, time, weather, mood, and other factors [ 2 ]. However, food choice is a luxury not every person enjoys. The Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations reported that 88% of countries face a serious malnutrition burden and so has issued healthy dietary guidelines that cover a wide range of food and nutrition ( http://www.fao.org/nutrition/education/food-dietary-guidelines/regions/countries/united-states-of-america/en/ (accessed on 2 September 2021)). Traditional food science has been unable to satisfy increasing demand for food in a world where “healthy nutrition” has overtaken “well-fed” as the predominant paradigm of consumption ( https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1681293145359468742&wfr=spider&for=pc (accessed on 2 September 2021)) [ 3 ]. However, big data offers food science a new means of scientific analysis [ 4 ].

The food supply chain is composed of economic stakeholders from primary producers to consumers. It has the characteristics of large volume, many links, wide distribution, diverse types, and scattered data, and it is becoming more complex. Millions of tons of food move around the world every year, so no enterprise can promise that every risk node on the production line is absolutely safe. Any flaw in the supply chain could bring a disaster and huge regulatory difficulties for government departments. However, big data provides a solution to regulatory difficulties [ 5 ] by helping enterprises understand consumer demand better and uncover food industry trends through big data analysis. The food industry collects large datasets through real-time monitoring and can improve food safety if analyzed in conjunction with sample data [ 6 ]. When industry data is combined with data on consumer dietary behavior, food enterprises can optimize their investment and adjust the direction of research and development in a timely manner. [ 7 ].

This paper uses bibliometrics to analyze the research progress of big data in the food field. According to Bradford’s Law, a small number of core journals collect enough information to reflect the latest and most important advances in science and technology. The database of Web of Science Core Collection contains more than 12,000 core journals from more than 250 subject areas. It defined the search topic “Food & Big Data” and selected 1672 papers from its database. The research progress of big data on food is shown in Figure 1 It has increased significantly since 2014 because USD 35.8 billion was invested in global agrifood from 2010 to 2019, and after 2014 the scale of financing grown rapidly ( https://agfunder.com/research/agfunder-agrifood-tech-investing-report-2019/ (accessed on 2 September 2021)). This increased capital investment promoted research into big food data, and the rapidly rising trend is from 2010 to 2021 is shown in Figure 2 . China’s food industry has attracted global attention since 2012 because the country’s new government leaders stressed that they would pay more attention to food safety ( http://www.xinhuanet.com/politics/2017-01/03/c_1120239001.htm (accessed on 2 September 2021)). As the second largest economy and the world’s largest trading country, China has great international influence. ( https://www.brookings.edu/research/chinas-influence-on-the-global-middle-class/ (accessed on 2 September 2021)). Big data has been one of the focuses of research since 2013, mainly in food safety, food security and agriculture. Its application to food safety may still be in its infancy, but it is affecting the entire supply chain. The literature contains analyses on the feasibility and need for big data in the food industry [ 4 , 6 ], but there are no in-depth analyses. Therefore, this paper will mainly discuss the following three aspects in depth.

Research progress of data in the food field. From 1990 to 2010, the research papers of big data on food grew at a rate of 100% every five years, and since 2010 it has grown by nearly 300% every five years.

Analysis of the research direction of the data from 2010 to 2021 in the food field. Since 2013, food security and big data have become a focus of researchers interested in the potential value of big data on food. The research focuses on IoT-based data collection and its application to smart farming, supply chain management, food nutrition, and sustainable development.

• The major sources of big data in food industry and its challenges.
• The market application trends of big data in the food industry.
• The main challenges to applying big data.

The authors of this paper hope to help researchers develop a deeper understanding of the research progress of big data in the food field and to provide guidance for further research.

2. Big Data in Food Industry

Big data sources of food mainly include regulatory, food enterprise (including data generated at every link of the industrial chain from planting to restaurants), and media data (including food-related news, video, pictures and audio). High-quality big data analysis can help develop the food industry, whereas analyses from low-quality data can adversely affect managers’ prediction of market demand [ 8 ], and social stability [ 9 ].

2.1. Food Regulatory Data

Food regulatory data usually includes department regulatory and product sampling data. Marvin [ 4 ] has detailed public information about food safety supervision and sampling inspection in various countries. This information includes, reports on animal and plant disease monitoring, hazards, food-borne diseases, which provided support for researchers of deep-risk information. Rapid Alert System of Food and Feed (RASFF) is a commonly used online food safety database for industry and scientific research in the European Union (EU). Food safety databases in other countries include the Import Rejection Report (IRR) and the Inspection Classification Database (ICD) in the U.S. and the State Administration for Market Regulation (SAMR) alerts in China [ 5 ]. With the increasingly close connection between countries, the trend of “table globalization” has become increasingly prominent. In 2017, the amount of food China imported from Australia, the United States, Japan, Germany, Southeast Asia, and other countries exceeded RMB 1.5 trillion ( https://www.askci.com/news/chanye/20171212/084457113784.shtml (accessed on 2 May 2021)). As shown in Table 1 , the SAMR usually shares its sampling inspection results of imported and exported food on government websites, which allows consumers to know the quality of food on the market. The U.S. government shares food sample analysis reports through the FSIS system. The EFSA database contains data on food consumption habits and patterns across the European Union. Such statistical data allows users to quickly screen long-term and acute exposures to potentially hazardous substances in the food chain. In addition, the World Health Organization (WHO) established the Global Environmental Monitoring System (GEMS/Food) in 1976, in which participating institutions submit data on food pollutant concentrations and set up data centers to help governments, the Codex Alimentarius Commission(CAC) and other institutions to assess trends in food contaminants [ 10 ]. In 2015, the WHO integrated data from the fields of agriculture, food, public health and economics to build a big data services platform for food safety ( https://www.who.int/foodsafety/foscollab/en/ (accessed on 2 May 2021)) to improve risk monitoring.

The public regulatory database.

Database	Database Type	Data Description	Country	Organization	Link/Source
Import and export food sampling	Alerts/notifications	Results of food sampling	China	NMPA
Food sampling report	Alerts/notifications	Food sampling report	USA	FSIS
European Food Consumption Database	Alerts/notifications	European food consumption habits	European	EFSA	efsa-food-composition-db
Import food sampling	Alerts/notifications	Results of food sampling	Japan	MHLW

Challenges. The sharing and circulation of data among food regulatory departments is conducive to the construction of intelligent supervision of the food supply chain [ 11 ]. However, there are several challenges.

• Limited shared data. Government departments have not been able to fully disclose detailed monitoring and sampling data, leading to the repeated testing of product quality indicators by enterprises, which has resulted in serious waste of social resources and increased operating costs. How to encourage various departments to share data is an important research direction.
• Lack of system standards. Due to a lack of system standards, the independence of departments leads to the relative independence of food supervision system. In addition, the limitation of responsibilities further intensifies the independence of departments. So, it is urgent that a new mode of interdepartmental data sharing be explored.
• Due to inconsist food standards, there are differences in the names and categories of the same food , which is an obstacle to data sharing. The Estonian government has proposed X-Road architecture of data sharing among the basic sectors [ 12 ], and a few European governments will also be involved in international data sharing [ 13 ].

2.2. Food Enterprise Data

The food industry chain is composed of enterprises from agriculture, fishing, processing and restaurant and is characterized by many links and wide distribution. At present, all agricultural machinery is electronically controlled to improve operational performance [ 14 , 15 ]. Cloud computing, the Internet of Things, big data and blockchain can integrate isolated production lines in the food supply chain into data-driven interconnected intelligent systems. Through semantic active technology, each operation is automatically integrated, improving the efficiency of precision agriculture and enterprise management [ 16 ]. Using sensors and drones to collect data on weather, geography, and animal and crop behavior can help farmers optimize crop planting and animal growth cycles. Intelligent devices capture actionable data and make decisions that reduce equipment downtime [ 17 ].

In recent years, research on the IoT in the food industry has promoted the diversification of the IoT platform to address market needs, [ 18 , 19 ] different monitoring models [ 20 ], and unbalanced energy consumption [ 21 ]. IoT-integrated applications will help food companies create new data sources. Industry 4.0 not only promotes the rapid development of Agriculture 4.0, but also enables enterprises to transmit real-time information to identify and meet the changing demands of stakeholders [ 15 ]. According to the Eurostat report ( https://www.brookings.edu/research/chinas-influence-on-the-global-middle-class/ (accessed on 2 September 2021)), the application of smart agriculture will save 4–6% of agricultural costs and increase market value by 3% by 2026. The application of big data can not only enable businesses to deal with challenges in food production, but also to obtain more affordable raw materials to reduce production costs [ 14 ]. It also promotes the development of smart agriculture, which helps save water [ 22 ], preserve soil, limit carbon emissions [ 23 ] and improveproductivity [ 24 ]. Smart agriculture provides an opportunity for farmers, service providers, government and other stakeholders (such as financial institutions, investors, traders) to share their experiences in optimizing the agricultural supply chain with the production sustainability [ 25 ].

Challenges. The food industry can benefit from big data services, but there are challenges that need to be addressed, including data fairness such as the searchability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability of shared data, and a lack of information standards and data processing technology.

• Lack of Information standards. (a) The lack of standardized protocols has created incompatibilities among information management systems [ 26 ]; (b) The development of the IoT is still in its initial stages. As IoT manufacturers develop independently, the data generated may be difficult to interpret and share. In addition, there are other problems such as IoT security in food safety. Any insecure IoT node in the food supply chain can be a weak link in the entire system.
• Immature processing of food big data. Although cloud computing has been used by many organizations, its appplication to big data regarding food safety is still in its infancy. There as also problems such as system scalability, data fairness, data security, and legal issues, which have not been adequately addressed. Blockchain technology is expected to bring a safer and more transparent food supply chain, but it is still immature and difficult to apply. Currently, the blockchain applicationa to food safety is limited to traceability, and issues such as data integrity and data governance still need research.
• Improved supply-chain decision-making. There is still a need to help farmers make effective decisions in Agriculture 4.0, maintain effective connections among different complex networks, and identifythe dynamic needs of stakeholders.

2.3. Media Data

Social media has become the main way for users to obtain and share food information [ 27 , 28 ]. According to a statistical report on China’s Internet Network Information Center, the number of Internet users in China has reached 854 million, and 88.8% [ 29 ]. Social networks have gradually become the mainstream platform for disseminating information, a constant strem of videos, news, and other types of data [ 30 ]. Purcell et al. [ 31 ] found that two-thirds of Internet users get their news from Facebook and share news through social media. Through research into the generation, and promotion of social events on the Internet, the mode and characteristics of information transmission can be discovered, which provides support for practical application scenarios. In 2009, Google successfully predicted the spread of the H1N1 virus based on query data in its search engine and brought the public valuable time to prevent an outbreak [ 32 ]. Combining the real-time advantage of big data with the conventional and available advantages of traditional data will enable effective response to the transmission of public health events such as COVID-19 [ 33 ]. Singh et al. discovered supply chain management problems by using Twitter data to improve supply chain management in food industry [ 34 ].

The public participates in the discussion of events by different media, and it expresses clear opinions and attitudes in the form of public opinion [ 35 ]. The report ( https://baijiahao.baidu.com/s?id=1617643364060321280&wfr=spider&for=pc (accessed on 2 September 2021)) shows that food safety and food rumors were first among hot food events in 2018, and the topic has become one of the prime targerts for media rumors, and social media’s intensification of rumors can create a widespread crisis [ 35 ]. By analyzing and understanding the trend of food incidents based on social media data, regulators can formulate timely countermeasures like enhancing public awareness through science education and shaping public opinion [ 36 , 37 , 38 ]. However, the field of media data has its challenges that need to be overcome.

• Multi-source heterogeneous data fusion. Media data on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube and various information portals have complex formats and multiple sources, and there is a lack of technology to identify relevant data in one sources and link it to others. In the absence of a "fusion technology" for multi-source heterogeneous data further study is urgently needed to address social media rumors and their negative impact on public security.
• Rumor detection. Network rumors seriously impair the public’s ability to recognize authentic of network information. The generation, influence, and propagation mechanism of network rumors have been studied [ 35 , 36 , 37 , 38 ], but there is still no answer to the problem of improving the public’s abiity to evaluate network information. The ability to perceive a risk has a positive impact on users’ attitudes, but social media undermines it. Authoritative information on refuting rumors, such as government notices and mainstream media news, have a significant effect on reducing the public’s acceptance of network rumors and improving the willingness to identify network rumors.
• Rumor control. Many studies based on communication science and psychology analyze food rumors by the way they are transmitted, but there is a lack of relevant research on government management. Existing food rumors detection technology is mostly simulation, which rarely considers the responsibilities of government institutions. It will be necessary to consider the role of the government, social media, and human networks to establish an efficient, and authoritative information platform to dispel rumors in time. This will improve public risk and prevention awareness, strengthen and punishment mechanisms for rumormongers, and strengthen legal education and behavioral guidance for the public [ 35 ]. The study of social network interaction patterns will be used to explore how to promote and change the public’s perception, attitude, and behavior on rumors concerning food, health or other fields.

3. Application of Big Data in Food Industry

The food supply chain is from farm to table, where the main links are planting and breeding, storage, processing, circulation (transportation) and consumption [ 39 ]. The discovery of value information on original data needs to go through a continuous cycle: of “discrete data—integrated data—knowledge understanding—mechanism extraction—application effect analysis”, from which the potential value of data sets can be mined. The processing system of big data application in food industry is shown in Figure 3 . It is composed of five modules: big data collection of food industry, big data processing and fusion, big data mining and analysis, big data view and big data security. Each module is closely connected, and its functions are briefly described as follows.

The processing model of big data in food.

• Big data collection of the food industry. Based on sensors, web crawlers, near-infrared detection instruments, food-related data is collected from different sources.
• Multi-source data processing and fusion. The collected data contaiins a considerable anount of redundant and dirty data [ 40 ], but through cleaning and conversion they can be removd and the data can be put into a standardized format. Then data features are extracted, and fusion is performed using probability statistics [ 41 ], logical reasoning and machine learning [ 42 ].
• Big data mining and analysis. This is a discovery mode of mining valuable knowledge from massive data that can accuratetly predict activities through scaled data [ 43 ]. Some big data technology, including SVM(Support Vector Machine) [ 44 ], Random Forest [ 45 ] and Naive Bayes [ 46 ], are used to analyze fused dataset to discover potential patterns to create social value [ 47 , 48 ].
• Big data view. Due to the characteristics of the complexity and multidimensional of data, it is necessary to generate a data view that can be easily expressed and understood by users. These are usually parallel coordinate, scatter graph, and scatter graph matrix methods [ 49 , 50 ].
• Big data security. In the lifecycle of big data on food, there are security risks in each processing stage [ 51 ], so research into big data security technology has become an important research topic. This module provides security technical support for all big data processing to ensure the safety, reliability, and controllability of data.

3.1. Social Co-Governance in the Food Industry

Social co-governance in the food industry provides a feasible solution to the issues of food security and food quality by using public wisdom [ 52 ]. Social co-governance is usually based on crowdsourcing to cooperate with consumers or experts to create value [ 53 ]. The failure rate of new food product development exceeds 40%, and the failure of new products usually affects the continued operation of small and medium-sized enterprises [ 3 ]. Large food companies have tried to collect consumer preference data through crowdsourcing, and have decided the direction of product development based on an analysis of big data. The Danone company encouraged consumers to vote for a creamy dessert flavor, and the 400,000 participants in 2006 more than doubled to 900,000 in 2011. Lay’s used the wisdom of crowds to develop more than 245,825 flavors of potato chip [ 54 ]. Procter & Gamble, Starbucks and Unilever sought better product design based on collective intelligence [ 55 ]. Employees often have a wealth of heterogeneous expertise, and companies can gain insight from their workforce to help improve economic performance. In addition, crowdfunding is another form of social co-governance, sharing business risks and alleviating capital pressure through mutual assistance [ 56 ]. Social co-governance has great potential for food security. Combining the mobile data of consumer groups with food shelf life, the intelligent control of food inventory can be realized to prevent food spoilage and waste [ 57 ]. Social co-governance can also be applied to monitoring foodborne diseases [ 32 ], identfying contaminated products, reducing the risk rate of food rumors and enhancing food safety [ 58 ].

Although social co-governance can enable food enterprises to obtain consumer demand information through diversified channels, it is still difficult to obtain effective information in time due to the limitation of enterprise resources [ 53 ]. In addition, there is a lack of an incentive or fair evaluation method in the food industry to convince consumers to participate.

3.2. Exploit Consumption Markets

There is a huge amount of food-related data both inside and outside the food supply chain, and the collection and analysis can promote enterprises to expand their markets [ 59 ]: (1) By collecting commodity and retail information for analysis, they can appraise the market situation, grasp the business dynamics of their competitors, and define the market positioning of products, thereby grasping market opportunity. (2) Collecting consumer information (purchase lists and channels, commodity preferences, usage cycle, family information, working condition, values) will establish a customer database that can give enterprises portraits of their customers that reveal their preferences, consumption tendency, value orientation and commodity reputation. With this information, enterprises can develop efficient marketing strategies and develop trust, so they can continue to compete effectively. (3) Data clustering analysis of consumers’ food evaluations (advantages and disadvantages, quality, nutritional value) from social platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Sina Weibo, allows enterprises to anticipate potential problems and optimize the quality of goods and services.

3.3. Quantitative Production

By predicting future commercial demand based on historical sales’ data, agricultural and livestock products can be planned to reduce the probability of “cheap vegetables hurting farmers”. In addition, big data analysis can help predict weather more accurately, helping farmers and herdsmen to prepare for natural disasters. Analyses based on consumption and crop growth data help farmers decide which crops varieties to increase and which to reduce, improve crop yield, facilitate rapid sales, and achieve a return on capital. Big data can also optimize grazing area for local herdsmen and improve the usage rate of pasture. Fishermen can scientifically arrange fishing moratoria and locate fishing areas based on the results of big data analysis.

Consumption trends and habits provided by big data, enable governments to provide accurate guidance for agricultural and animal husbandry production, suggest production levels according to demand, and avoid unnecessary waste of resources and social wealth caused by excess capacity. When combined with drones, big data can promote the development of precision agriculture by allowing farmers to collect information on the growth of crops, diseases, and pests, at a much lower cost and with much higher accuracy than by hired aircraft [ 60 ].

3.4. New Dishes New Experience

In 1992, chefs Heston Blumenthal and Francois Benzi were deciding which ingredients with similar flavors would work well together, when someone created a combination of white chocolate and caviar. Due to the chemical differences, it tasted terrible. Today, because of food sciecne, there is a large amount of information about food chemicals [ 61 ] and how they make food taste. Consequently, Ahn et al. [ 62 , 63 ] developed a flavor network of ingredients connected by shared flavor compounds, in which flavors were limited by the type of raw materials. Garg et al. developed a flavor database with richer food materials [ 64 ]. Simas et al. promoted a flavor network and constructed the food-bridging network [ 65 ]. However, some well-known food combinations such as red wine and beef, do not share chemical compositions or flavor compounds, yet they are still very popular. Therefore, food pairings need to be seen in a broader spctrum, not just based on flavor compounds or chemical composition.

The future of food flavor design could be traced to 2019 when the company McCormick partnered with IBM to use Artificial Intelligence and big data to generate new flavor combinations by analyzing data from millions of datasets to meet the changing consumer demand.

3.5. Take-Out Service

In China, the number of online takeout users accounts for more than 44% of sales, and the scale has exceeded 398 million people ( https://www.qianzhan.com/analyst/detail/220/200512-65621d53.html (accessed on 2 September 2021)). The take-out markets with its large number of users and rapid growth has generated a huge amount of takeout data. The takeout big data service platform not only helps the government supervise the industry, but also creates huge economic and social value. First, it predicts and informs customers of the delivery time, thereby avoiding disrupting consumers’ daily plans and helping restaurants establish a good reputation. Second, it helps the take-out enterprise understand consumer demand. Third, the take-out big data platform promotes the transparency of the supply chain, which is conducive to establishing and improving customers’ trust. Fourth, the overall running of the city can be clearly understood by analyzing the take-out dataset [ 66 ].

Since take-out data involves sensitive private information (the customer’s location, preference, bank, identity, and communication), ensuring data security in the take-oout big data platform is a serious challenge.

3.6. Precise Nutrition and Health Management

The development of big data provides technical support for the processing of massive data, and scientific guidance for human nutrition and health management. In the past, people usually learned nutrition information from experts, books, and the Internet. However, there was a lack of accurate nutrition and health management for individuals because of the difference in individual health conditions [ 67 ]. In an example of applying big data to the people’s daily diet Teng et al. proposed to use a recipe recommendation algorithm to determine which food ingredients were necessary [ 68 ]. Grace et al. combined case-based reasoning and a deep learning algorithm to generate new recipes [ 69 , 70 ]. However, it may also generate "dark cuisine" due to the the uncertain factor of deep learning. Some scholars, like Freyne et al., focused on a diet therapy. They developed a personalized recipe recommendation system for obese people based on the suggestions from medical professionals and research on obese people [ 71 ]. In anoher instance, Yoshida et al. proposed a personalized recipe recommendation based on users’ food preferences [ 72 ]. Zeevi et al. broke with traditional experience-based nutritional recommendations by using machine-learning algorithms to combine data (e.g., blood parameters, dietary habits, and gut microbiota) to formulate personalized diets that optimize postprandial glucose levels and metabolites [ 73 ]. The combination of big data with Artificial Intelligence will provide a new approach for the research of precision nutrition.

4. Challenges

While the food supply chain can benefit from big data, the following challenges need to be addressed.

• Low data collection efficiency and poor data quality. Due to the lack of effective data collection technology, there are problems with applying big data to food: missing or insufficient data, and difficulties with data forensics. Therefore, it is of great significance to study the collection and verification methods of multisourced big data on food. In the future, edge computing technology will be used to link the food supply chain thereby superseding traditional collection, which is hard to apply to a complex collection environment and collection requirements. Intelligent web crawler technology can be used to collect public opinion data from the Internet, and associate it with data from the physical world to form a complete big data view of food safety. It will solve the dilemma of the separation between physical world and public opinion data found in traditional methods.
• Data islands. There is one are in the food industry where data is not shared: government. Since regulatory data usually involve state secrets, and enterprise data may involve trade secrets, they reluctance to share these data seriously hinders the application and promotion of big data. Moreover, the independent management systems of enterprises and government creates poor system compatibility, which inhibits data circulation. Therefore, a new business model is urgently needed, for example: the establishment of an incentive mechanism to explore new methods of data fusion to establish an effective privacy protection method and encourage data owners to share data.

Analysis of data security protection technology in the whole life cycle of food data.

Life Cycle	Challenges	Protection Technology
Data collection	Data corruption, data loss, data leakage and data forgery	Data encryption [ ]
Data storage	Illegal intrusion and data disclosure	Storage encryption [ ], blockchain [ ]
Data transmission	Data leakage and data corruption	Data encryption [ ], privacy protection [ ], blockchain [ ]
Data usage	Information leakage and data abuse	Access control [ ], SMC [ ], data encryption [ ], differential privacy protection [ ]
Data Destruction	Privacy disclosure, destruct the data media	Data trusted deletion [ ]

• Security risks of crowdsourcing services. On one hand, food enterprises have a large amount of enterprise data, but it is difficult to discover the potential value of the information. On the other hand, in crowdsourcing, consumers are not enthusiastic enough to participate, and there is a risk that the crowd will get out of control. In the take-out market, unlicensed crowdsourcing deliverers have become the biggest uncontrollable factor in takeout distribution, and it is a serious risk for take-out food safety. (1) Since the equipment of deliverers is self-regulated, it is difficult to control whether delivery safety standards can be achieved. (2) It is difficult to guarantee the hygiene and health of the people involved in the delivery. If a deliverer carries an infectious disease or the food is contaminated on the way, food safety cannot be guaranteed at all. (3) Take-out deliverers increase the management difficulty of the platform. Recently, the platform can only discipline deliverers through a user account ban. But the deliverer only needs to register with a new mobile phone number and borrow a person’s ID card for real name authentication, and then he can continue to deliver. Therefore, the establishment of a fair, incentive, and perfect crowdsourcing service mechanism will be one of the important research topics.
• Healthy and sustainable development of the food industry. By 2050, the world’s population will exceed 9 billion, and only through a healthy and sustainable food industry can global food demand be met. [ 89 ]. However, resource waste and foodborne diseases are key factors restricting this sustainable development: excessive chemical residue in crops from the of chemical fertilizers and pesticides [ 90 ]; perishable food loss in developing countries and enormous food waste in developed countries [ 91 ]; high energy consumption and pollution from food processing and transportation; and the discarding of potentially contaminated food because of the iinability to quickly and efficiently trace the source of a contamination. Therefore, the economic and environmental sustainability of stakeholders are the core factors for promoting the sustainable development of the food industry chain.

5. Conclusions

Because big data can provide a large amount of effective business information, the development of data-driven industries has attracted attention from all countries [ 92 ]. In 2012, the United States promoted big data as a national strategy to promote the formation of new economic growth and enhance national competitiveness [ 93 ]. Subsequently, EU member states formulated big data development strategies to transform traditional national governance models [ 94 ]. Big data to promote the development of the food industry has become a main research topic. This paper introduced the application of big data in food industry and showed that the main data sources are regulatory, enterprise, and media data. The results showed the great potential for big data for the food industry. Big data has particularly broad application prospects in social co-governance of the food industry, quantitative production, exploitation of consumption markets, new dishes, take-out services, and precise nutrition and health management. But, to exploit this full potential of big data, technical, social, and health and sustainable development issues require further research.

Author Contributions

Q.T.: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Validation and Writing—Original Draft & Review & Editing. H.D.: Investigation. H.W.: Validation and Writing—Review. X.C.: Supervision, and Funding acquisition. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

The authors would like to acknowledge the support provided by the National Key R&D Program of China (No. 2018YFC1604000).

Institutional Review Board Statement

Not applicable.

Informed Consent Statement

Data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

The authors have no competing interest to declare.

Publisher’s Note: MDPI stays neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

• Open access
• Published: 20 April 2021

Beyond nutrition and physical activity: food industry shaping of the very principles of scientific integrity

• Mélissa Mialon   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-9883-6441 1 ,
• Matthew Ho 2 ,
• Angela Carriedo 3 ,
• Gary Ruskin 4 &
• Eric Crosbie 5 , 2  

Globalization and Health volume  17 , Article number:  37 ( 2021 ) Cite this article

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There is evidence that food industry actors try to shape science on nutrition and physical activity. But they are also involved in influencing the principles of scientific integrity. Our research objective was to study the extent of that involvement, with a case study of ILSI as a key actor in that space. We conducted a qualitative document analysis, triangulating data from an existing scoping review, publicly available information, internal industry documents, and existing freedom of information requests.

Food companies have joined forces through ILSI to shape the development of scientific integrity principles. These activities started in 2007, in direct response to the growing criticism of the food industry’s funding of research. ILSI first built a niche literature on COI in food science and nutrition at the individual and study levels. Because the literature was scarce on that topic, these publications were used and cited in ILSI’s and others’ further work on COI, scientific integrity, and PPP, beyond the fields of nutrition and food science. In the past few years, ILSI started to shape the very principles of scientific integrity then and to propose that government agencies, professional associations, non-for-profits, and others, adopt these principles. In the process, ILSI built a reputation in the scientific integrity space. ILSI’s work on scientific integrity ignores the risks of accepting corporate funding and fails to provide guidelines to protect from these risks.

Conclusions

The activities developed by ILSI on scientific integrity principles are part of a broader set of political practices of industry actors to influence public health policy, research, and practice. It is important to learn about and counter these practices as they risk shaping scientific standards to suit the industry’s interests rather than public health ones.

Actors in the tobacco, alcohol, and ultra-processed food industries use a broad range of political strategies to protect and expand their markets [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]. These practices include direct influence on public health policy, and more subtle actions like cultivating support from communities and the media [ 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 ]. The shaping of science is one of these political practices [ 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 ], as science can be used to influence policy [ 9 , 10 , 11 ]. Studies that link the consumption of harmful products to ill-health, or those which provide evidence on the effectiveness of a policy that limits consumption, are systematically questioned, attacked, or undermined by companies and third parties working on their behalf [ 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 ]. Industry actors are also shaping the research agenda by funding commercially-driven science (research supported by the industry) to support their products or practices [ 12 ].

When evidence emerged about cigarette smoking’s harmfulness in the 1960s, tobacco companies mounted an attack on science to bury that evidence [ 13 ]. However, the tobacco industry understood that it could not credibly question scientific evidence criticizing its products. In the 1980s and 1990s, tobacco companies developed a “ sound science ” program, hiring respected academics and scientists and using third parties to deny secondhand smoke’s harmful effects [ 14 , 15 ]. Through this program, tobacco companies intended to shape scientific proof standards so that no study could prove that secondhand smoking was harmful [ 14 , 15 ]. In response, in 2003, the World Health Organization adopted a Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, in which Article 5.3 insulated public health policymaking from the tobacco industry [ 16 ]. Although the implementation of Article 5.3 is successful in some contexts [ 17 ] and could serve as a model for other industries [ 18 ], the tobacco industry is still able to participate in the development of principles for using scientific evidence in policy along with academics and government officials [ 19 ].

Similar to the tobacco industry, the food industry also shapes science, through the funding and dissemination of research and information serving its interests and criticizes evidence that may thwart these interests [ 3 , 12 , 20 ]. The food industry established and funded scientific-sounding groups such as the International Life Science Institute (ILSI), set up in 1978 by a former executive from Coca-Cola, to push for its agenda in the scientific and policy spaces [ 21 ]. ILSI also represented tobacco companies in the 1980–90s [ 22 , 23 ]. ILSI is currently composed of fifteen branches [ 24 ], each with a broad range of industry and academic members. The global branch of ILSI is governed by a Board of Trustees that mixes employees from the food industry, including the agribusiness sector (Ajinomoto, PepsiCo, Cargill) and academics [ 25 ]. Industry-supported research is also subject to peer-review by the industry itself. ILSI has its own journal, Nutrition Reviews, amongst the most popular journals in nutrition [ 26 ]. A recent study found that Nutrition Reviews has the highest proportion of articles with industry involvement (a quarter of all articles from that journal) amongst the top top 10 journals in nutrition [ 26 ].

From a public health perspective, somehow, the food industry’s involvement in science and policy is not seen as controversial and harmful as that of the tobacco industry [ 27 , 28 ]. Some think there is a space for collaboration with that industry, as illustrated in a recent study that tried to build consensus on the interactions between researchers and the food industry [ 29 ]. When criticism of the food industry’s involvement in science grew in the 2000s [ 30 , 31 , 32 ], ILSI developed guidelines on conflicts of interest (COI) and scientific integrity [ 20 ]. These principles call for the involvement of all actors in science, including those from industry actors, and are, not surprisingly, silent on the risks associated with such engagement with industry actors [ 20 , 33 ]. While there is growing evidence of the food industry’s involvement in science on nutrition and physical activity, little is known of their broader influence on the very principles of scientific integrity.

Our objective was to study the extent of the food industry’s involvement in developing scientific integrity principles, with a case study of ILSI as a key actor in that space.

We conducted a qualitative document analysis between February–November 2020, where we triangulated multiple sources of information. We started with initial searches based on an existing scoping review on principles for the interactions between researchers and the food industry. MH conducted searches on the industry’s websites, their social media, and in the Food Industry Documents Library of the University of California, San Francisco [ 34 ], an archive containing previously secret internal industry documents. We also used documents from existing freedom of information (FOI) requests made by U.S. Right to Know, a nonprofit investigative public health group. MH and GR independently conducted an initial review of the material for their inclusion against our research objective. MM led the searches on Web of Science and data analysis for all sources of information.

We searched these sources for information related to the development of principles, codes of conduct, frameworks, standards, or other scientific integrity guidelines and responsible research. An analysis of the content and implementation of those principles was beyond the scope of our study.

For the present study, we used the definition of ‘scientific integrity’ from the U.S. National Research Council: “ Integrity characterizes both individual researchers and the institutions in which they work. For individuals, it is an aspect of moral character and experience. For institutions, it is a matter of creating an environment that promotes responsible conduct by embracing standards of excellence, trustworthiness, and lawfulness that inform institutional practices. For the individual scientist, integrity embodies above all a commitment to intellectual honesty and personal responsibility for one’s actions and to a range of practices that characterize responsible research conduct ” [ 35 ].

Initial identification of industry actors

In 2019, MM conducted a backward search, using a recent scoping review by Cullerton et al. and a commentary published in response to that review [ 36 , 37 ]. The scoping review was purposively selected for our initial searches because it represented the most recent and comprehensive summary of existing principles “ to guide interactions between population health researchers and the food industry ” [ 36 ]. The publications identified in the scoping review included work that was funded independently but also work that was supported by the food industry. A response to that review identified additional material from the review sponsored by the food industry [ 37 ]. These publications constituted our initial samples of scientific integrity documents developed with industry support (Table  1 ). This initial sample only included documents where the food industry had direct involvement, through the declarations of interest sections or funding acknowledgments sections or institutions to which the authors were affiliated. By ‘food industry’, we meant any actor along the food supply chain, in the production of raw material, manufacturing, marketing, retailing, and public relations sectors, as well as third parties working on their behalf. We only included those publications that proposed scientific integrity principles, not those broadly discussing the industry’s involvement in science, without providing any guidelines (such as [ 47 , 48 ]). We also excluded publications on the implementation of such principles at the organizational level, as falling outside the present study’s scope.

With these initial searches, we identified five documents: three scientific articles and two reports. The North American branch of ILSI published four of the five publications, with support from large US-based food manufacturers. Two authors from ILSI also published a fifth article with an author from DuPont Nutrition (DuPont), a dietary supplement manufacturer for the food industry. Therefore, we decided to restrict our following searches to ILSI and DuPont, as they were the only industry actors publishing in the peer-reviewed literature on the topic of scientific integrity.

Systematic searches on web of science

As a second step, we conducted a literature search to identify further publications on the topic by the ILSI and DuPont, based on the findings of our initial search. On 14 November 2020, MM searched Web of Science Core Collection (Web of Knowledge interface) (our search strategy is available in Additional file  1 ).

We used the terms (principle* or guid* or ‘codes of conduct’ or framework* or standard* or transparen* or fund*) AND (partner* or integrity or ethic* or inter*) as identified in the titles of publications. We refined the search to publications from ILSI and DuPont, as stated in the declarations of interest sections; funding acknowledgments sections; or institutions to which the authors were affiliated. We had no restriction on the publication time.

All data were extracted from WoS and managed on Mendeley. The publications retrieved from that search were screened for eligibility, based on their titles and abstracts. All data were independently double-screened by A.C. There was no disagreement on the inclusion of documents.

From these systematic searches, no relevant work by DuPont was identified; we, therefore, further restricted our searches for the next steps and focused on ILSI only.

Industry websites and twitter accounts

MH, with support from EC, identified all websites and Twitter accounts of ILSI Global and its fifteen branches. ILSI’s websites are presented in Additional file  2 . MH searched these websites, and social media accounts, for information related to the development of scientific integrity principles. MM then analyzed all data. Our data collection was limited to data available on these websites, and we did not use internet archives to retrieve data that may have been published and then subsequently deleted. In February 2021, ILSI North America transformed into the “Institute for the Advancement of Food and Nutrition Sciences” (IAFNS), a “a non-profit organization that catalyzes science for the benefit of public health” [ 49 ]. The URLs for ILSI NA’s webpages in Additional file 2 now redirect to the new IAFNS website. The webpages consulted during data collection could still be consulted using internet acrchives tools like the Wayback Machine [ 50 ].

Archive from industry documents library

Between February and July 2020, MH searched food industry documents in the Food Industry Documents Library of the University of California, San Francisco [ 34 ], using standard snowball search methods [ 51 ]. Initial keyword search terms included ‘ILSI’, ‘International Life Sciences Institute’, ‘research integrity’, and ‘research transparency’. Twenty-one documents between 2012 and 2018 were located, with most records dated between 2015 and 2017. Documents were screened (MH) and analyzed (MH and MM) for the direct mentioning of information outlining ILSI’s development of scientific integrity principles. Sixteen documents were deemed relevant based on how applicable their contents were to the research objective.

Documents from existing FOI requests

Additionally, we drew upon nine U.S. federal and state FOI data sets to triangulate our other sources of information: (1) Louisiana State University (Tim Church); (2) University of Colorado (John Peters); (3) Louisiana State University (Peter Katzmarzyk); (4) Texas A&M University (Joanne Lupton); (5) Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (Maureen Culbertson); (6) University of Colorado (James Hill); (7) University of South Carolina (Steven Blair); (8) Louisiana State University (Pennington Biomedical Research Center); (9) U.S. Department of Agriculture (David Klurfeld). U.S. Right to Know filed these FOI requests between 17 July 2015 and 27 December 2017. The requests covered issues regarding sugar sweetened beverages, candy and food companies, and their public relations firms, trade associations, and other allied organizations. The identification of relevant documents for our study was made by GR and his colleague Rebecca Morrison, for their relevance to our research objective.

In November 2020, MM reviewed all data from the sources mentioned above and mapped the actors, timeline of events, and other relevant information related to the food industry’s involvement in the development of scientific integrity principles. In the present manuscript, we present a narrative synthesis of our findings. All authors reviewed the analysis and presentation of findings in the manuscript. We had regular meetings during data collection and analysis, and any disagreement was resolved through discussion within the team. Our existing knowledge informed our analysis of industry influence on science. In the present document, we use the acronym ‘ILSI’ to refer to ILSI North-America, unless otherwise stated. In the results section, we use a code starting with the letter A to refer to our data, all available in Additional file  3 .

Our Web of Science systematic searches yielded 42 publications, 33 of which were excluded as not meeting our inclusion criteria. In addition, one article from 2014, by an author from DuPont, discussed funding by the food industry but did not provide any specific guidelines, so it was excluded [ 52 ]. There were eight publications relevant to our research objective on WoS, for our sample of food industry actors. Amongst these eight publications, five were already identified through our initial searches (Table 1 - [ 38 , 44 , 46 ]) with three copies of the same article by ILSI published in different scientific journals simultaneously. The three other studies were also published by ILSI [ 53 , 54 , 55 ]. With our searches in internal documents, we found two other publications from the food industry on scientific integrity, both supported by ILSI [ 56 , 57 ].

In total, we found eight scientific papers from ILSI on scientific integrity, published between 2009 and 2019. In Nov 2020, when writing the current manuscript, these documents were, when combined, cited 364 times (Google Scholar). ILSI also presented its principles in scientific events, reports, and other platforms, as described in Table 1 and below.

Additional file  4 presents a list of authors who published these scientific papers: 63 authors in total, 24 (38%) were from the food industry (as disclosed in the publications). Other authors were from academia, government agencies, and professionals associations, amongst other institutions (see Additional file 4 ). The majority of the authors were U.S.-based (70%). Five individuals authored four publications (the maximum for a single author), four of them from ILSI and one from academia.

Of note, ILSI promotes these publications on its website, stating, “ILSI North America has become a leader in scientific integrity and public-private research partnerships for the food and nutrition community. Our work has been published in peer-reviewed journals, endorsed by Federal agencies and professional nutrition and food science societies, and cited broadly throughout the scientific community ” [ 58 ].

Figure  1 summarizes our findings.

Food industry’s development of scientific integrity principles overtime

In the period 2009–2015, ILSI published articles on conflicts of interest that mainly covered food science, of relevance to food companies, and nutrition, a sub-field of health sciences. During that period, the target audience was researchers. In 2013, a shift occurred, from publishing recommendations on conflicts of interest and the good conduct of research, particularly at the individual and study levels, to proposing guidelines for public-private partnerships (PPP), assuming that PPP would benefit nutrition research. Then, from 2015, ILSI began to target a broader audience, outside academia, such as government agencies and civil society organizations, in its development of scientific integrity principles. At that time, ILSI also started targeting the entire scientific field, and not only the area of nutrition and health.

2007–2012: addressing COI in food science and nutrition research

Based on the information we collected, ILSI’s development of scientific integrity principles started in 2007. At that time, the organization “ initiated a program to address COI issues ”, with the rationale that “ despite a wealth of benefits industry sponsored research and science programs have provided, there continues to be significant public debate on the credibility of such support ” [A1]. Over the period 2007–2012, ILSI published COI principles focusing on food science and nutrition research. These publications resulted from different meetings of individuals from the food and agro-industries and academia. At that time, ILSI published on financial conflicts and scientific integrity in food science and nutrition research [ 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 ].

The first publication is from 2009. The paper originated from a working group at ILSI, the “COI and scientific integrity” working group, and was supported by ten food companies through “ educational grants ” to ILSI [ 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 ]. Its authors included a mix of employees from ILSI, food companies (Coca-Cola, Kraft, PepsiCo, Cadbury, and Mars), and academics in food science, nutrition, and pediatrics from the U.S. and Canada [ 38 , 39 , 40 , 41 , 42 ]. ILSI said it published this material in six different scientific journals [A2], although we found no trace of the publication in the Journal of Food Science. The article was published in Nutrition Reviews, a journal run by ILSI, the only one of the six journals where the article underwent peer-review. The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (formerly American Dietetic Association), who published one copy in its journal, and the American Society for Nutrition (ASN), who published three copies in its American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Journal of Nutrition, and Nutrition Today, are known to be industry-friendly and receive funding from the food industry [ 20 , 59 , 60 ], which may explain their willingness to publish the paper. The 2009 publication was also adapted, in 2012, into a report of the International Union of Food Science and Technology [ 38 ].

In 2011, the ILSI Europe’s Functional Foods Task Force published “ guidelines for the design, conduct and reporting of human intervention studies to evaluate the health benefits of foods ” [ 53 ]. The paper named 38 food (including agribusiness) and pharmaceutical companies as members of the taskforce [ 53 ]. Amongst the list of authors of the article, six were from the food industry (ILSI, Danone, DuPont (Danisco), Nestlé, and Beneo), three were consultants, and five were academics [ 53 ].

In a 2012 letter to ILSI members, Rhona Applebaum, then ILSI’s President and Coca-Cola’s chief health- and science officer, concluded ‘ the program has been highly successful in developing “guiding principles” for industry funding of research ’ [A2]. The success was in the guidelines being “ endorsed by the leadership of three major professional societies. Results of this work have been published in six different peer-reviewed journals and presented at numerous scientific conferences ” [A2]. In that same correspondence, Applebaum sent a list of ILSI’s publications on scientific integrity, where one additional article published in 2011 was included. The latter discussed funding in nutrition research and was published with support from ILSI [ 56 ]. The publication was written by four individuals: two from the AND, a consultant, and an academic [ 56 ].

2012–2015: pushing for public-private partnerships in nutrition research

The period 2012–2013 was a turning point for ILSI, where the discussion on COI in science shifted to the use of science in policy. In her 2012 letter mentioned above to ILSI members, Applebaum stated that there was a “ demand by some that all industry-funded research, whether conducted at contract research organizations or universities, be denied consideration in the formulation of public policy. Furthermore, scientists who have conducted industry-funded research have been barred from serving on public advisory committees ” [A2]. Applebaum, therefore, called ILSI’s food companies members for the “ development of criteria for participation on scientific advisory panels and establishment of appropriate protocols for successful public/private partnerships to advance public health ” [A2]. Food companies were asked to contribute to this task by paying a fee of US$10,000 each [A2].

Therefore, a series of ILSI’s publications on PPP appeared in the scientific literature between 2012 and 2015. In 2012, ILSI’s “ COI and scientific integrity ” working group produced two publications. The first provided suggestions on selecting experts to advise in public policy decision making [ 57 ]. The second publication, published in Nutrition Reviews, proposed “ principles for building public-private partnerships to benefit food safety, nutrition, and health research ” [ 44 ]. The authors of both publications were a mix of academic experts on the topic, industry employees, and ILSI’s staff.

In January 2014, in a personal communication to prominent physical activity researchers from the US, Applebaum explained that she “ asked ILSI to consider drafting a set of principles on civil discourse in science by scientists similar to what they have done for conflict of interest and public private partnerships .” She also mentioned: “ There must be a set of guidelines to avoid the current demonizing. They [ILSI] had also been asked to work on principles re selection on gov’t panels since our own U.S. gov’t has raised the issue of working w/ industry as a criterion for non-inclusion ” [A4].

This idea soon translated into concrete action. ILSI first published an article that “ offers counsel on meeting [challenges] in communicating about the work of emerging public-private partnerships ” [ 61 ]. This article does not set principles on scientific integrity per se. Still, it is to be understood as part of ILSI’s work in promoting PPP as a means to pursue industry interests.

In 2014, ILSI also started working with third parties on PPP principles, thus accelerating the translation of their work into practice and policy. ILSI proposed to “have a manuscript to share with FDA [U.S. Food and Drug Administration] on best practices for advisory committees”, when the FDA was developing its own COI guidelines [A9].

In parallel, during late 2013, the ASN “ approached ILSI North America to collaborate ” [A109] on activities that would “ stimulate the expansion, accessibility, and acceptance of PPPs by unifying and moving existing principles for food and nutrition research PPPs forward ” [A49]. The ASN convened representatives from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, ASN, Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, American Heart Association, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, FDA, Grocery Manufacturers Association, and National Institutes for Health, amongst others [A50]. An individual from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, Klurfeld, and Rowe, a consultant for ILSI, co-chaired a newly formed “ Working Group on Conflict of Interest & Scientific Integrity ” [a name similar to that of ILSI’s “COI and scientific integrity” working group] [A10–1, A14–5]. In 2014, the working group had regular emails, calls, and a face-to-face group meeting in December [later called the “ COI Summit Consortium ”], to agree on a set of PPP principles [A10–5, A29–30]. An ad-hoc steering group was also formed with three USDA staff and a consultant from ILSI, and an ASN staff member [A29].

The whole project was formally led through a “ U.S. government-wide Interagency Committee on Human Nutrition Research ” [A29]. It was formed in 2011 and included a component on PPP, “ in part in response to [a] 2011 Presidential memo directing agencies to develop public-private partnerships in areas of importance to an agency’s mission ” [A29]. In our FOI documents and when justifying the PPP, the ASN made further reference to President Obama, who “ issued a Presidential memorandum in July 2014 encouraging government at all levels to work with private partners on developing infrastructure to lay the foundation for future prosperity ” [A41].

In May 2014, an employee from ILSI sent an email to lead American researchers and employees of federal agencies (U.S. Government Accountability Office and National Institutes for Health), describing the proposed outcome of the newly formed PPP project, a “ summit or collection of major professional societies and federal agencies coming together in support of PPP principles ( … ). At the conclusion of the summit, the professional societies would agree to a consensus statement on private funding for research and general acceptance of principles for PPPs ( …). it might be helpful for societies who publish journals to have their editors participate in summit ” [A8].

Soon after, in 2015, a peer-reviewed paper outlining the PPP principles in food and nutrition research was published in the Journal of Clinical Nutrition [ 46 ] and “ an excerpt of the article appeared in the Journal of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, Journal of Food Science, Nutrition Reviews, and Nutrition Today ” [A66]. In the publication, the authors made clear that the group took “ the ILSI North America published principles as a starting point ” [ 46 ], given that “ most reports were not readily accessible in the public domain until, in 2013, a group organized by ( … ) ILSI North America ( …) published proposed criteria ” [ 46 ]. The principles were endorsed by the “ ASN, Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, American Gastroenterological Association, Institute of Food Technologists, International Association for Food Protection, and ILSI, collectively representing approximately 113,000 professionals ” [A31]. The American Public Health Association declined to endorse the principles but did not justify its decision [A24].

On 16 June 2015, the PPP principles were launched at the National Academy of Sciences. ILSI, in its internal communication, talked of the event and principles as its own: “ There is a meeting today at the National Academies to discuss [PPP] as defined by work that ILSI North America did. ASN and U.S. Department of Agriculture organized the meeting and we expect a number of scientific organizations to adopt the ILSI North America principles ” [A26, A34]. Speakers at that event included the U.S. Department of Agriculture Chief Scientist and Under Secretary, Research, Education, and Economics Dr. Catherine Woteki (keynote address), as well as an ILSI consultant, and an Institute of Medicine Senior Scholar, amongst others [A15, A31].

ILSI and the ASN also had other avenues for disseminating the PPP principles, as detailed in Table  2 . The ASN and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics were also keen to support a “ Conclave on public-private partnerships ”, where a Declaration would be issued “ to provide a transparent and actionable framework for interested public and private organizations that will minimize external criticism ” [A110].

Therefore, by having built its own literature on COI principles, scientific integrity, and PPP, and by reaching out to potential allies outside the industry, ILSI naturally became a central and pivotal actor in that discussion.

Hereafter, ILSI took yet another step in disseminating its principles into the scientific and policy spheres, beyond that of nutrition research.

2015–2019: beyond nutrition, influencing the very principles of scientific integrity

Hence, after having developed principles for research, and having these principles used to create PPP, ILSI started to evaluate the efforts made by a range of actors to implement scientific integrity principles.

Indeed, in parallel to the work undertaken by the “ U.S. government-wide Interagency Committee on Human Nutrition Research ” working group, ILSI, in 2015, through its own working group, proposed to “ seek a broader group of collaborators than we have previously worked with in order to have a greater impact; ones that have impeccable reputations and are not focused on only one area of science. Possible candidates are: a. American Association for the Advancement of Science; b. Association of Public and Land-grant Universities; c. Association of American Universities; d. The National Academies ” [A80]. ILSI’s working group also suggested that ILSI’s focus “ should be on implementation of these principles/best practices” [A80]. The group also proposed that when the COI Summit Consortium “reconvene [s] in two years to reassess the PPP principles ( …) ILSI North America could introduce the principles/best practices for scientific integrity and seek endorsement from the nutrition, food science, and food safety professional societies ” [A80].

As part of that work, in 2017, ILSI set up an “ Assembly on Scientific Integrity ”, whose steering committee included three academics from the University of Illinois, the University of Wisconsin, and Tufts Medical Center, and five employees from Coca Cola, General Mills, Abbott Nutrition, Ocean Spray Cranberries and Biofortis [A79]. The Assembly was made of “ ILSI North America Board of Trustees, all Member Companies of ILSI North America, and the ILSI North America Canadian Advisory Committee ” [A58, A84]. The Assembly was also “ hoping to include government liaisons in the Assembly on Scientific Integrity and it is likely that the ILSI North America Mid-Year meeting in Washington, DC is a better location for government officials to be able to join in-person ” [A107]. In 2017, the budget of the Assembly was US$122,000 [A107].

Then, two authors from ILSI and one from academia, also on the newly formed steering committee and author of other ILSI publications, produced a review of “ efforts by federal agencies, foundations, nonprofit organizations, professional societies, and academia in the United States ” [ 54 ]. The review was then translated into a Resource Guide and regularly updated, and similar activity was planned for Canada [A85–6, A98]. Here, the focus was not on food science and nutrition anymore, and the article reported on efforts made by a broad range of institutions like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the Committee on Publication Ethics, the Institute Of Medicine, and the Laura and John Arnold Foundation [ 54 ]. The article was published in Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition. ILSI seems to have opened a discussion that is meant to last in that space by inviting readers to “ help keep this document current by pointing out areas that need to be expanded or updated or additional organizations that should be included ” [ 54 ].

ILSI’ scientific integrity working group also proposed to “develop and publish a second paper in collaboration with [the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the Association of Public and Land-grant Universities, and the Association of American Universities] that builds on the first manuscript ( …) to establish the first” rulebook “ on scientific integrity ” [A81]. ILSI convened a meeting in March 2017, where a broad range of actors would discuss the new scientific integrity principles [A86, A101]. The new “ Scientific Integrity Consortium ” was made of “ representatives from four U.S. government agencies, three Canadian government agencies, eleven professional societies, six universities, and three nonprofit scientific organizations ” [A57, A86, A101]. The meeting was organized at the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine as part of the “ Government University Industry Research Roundtable ” [A86, A101], in the same venue used for the launch of the 2015 PPP principles. The group then continued to meet virtually and in-person in 2017 and 2018 [A57, A69, A86]. The “ Scientific Integrity Principles and Best Practices ” were finally published in 2019 in Science and Engineering Ethics [ 55 ], reaching a broader audience than merely the nutrition space. ILSI was satisfied that “ the convening of the Scientific Integrity Consortium was a significant step for ILSI North America in building upon our work on scientific integrity and engaging the scientific community beyond the nutrition and food safety community ” [A86]. The long COI section in that publication reports on the many interactions between several of its authors and industry actors [ 55 ]. Here again, the Consortium used ILSI’s 2017 findings “ as the basis of the discussion and reconstructed them to form the final set of recommended principles and best practices for scientific integrity ” [ 55 ], in combination to some work of the American Society for Microbiology on that topic.

The scientific integrity principles, like those for PPP, were disseminated through different scientific events, in what ILSI called a “ roadshow ” [A104] (see Table  3 for a list of events), with the goal of “ educating attendees (with a focus on young researchers/post docs) on the components of scientific integrity ” [A81]. This time, the audience reached beyond that of nutrition.

In some of these events, ILSI’s official role in developing the principles was presented as a Consortium member, not its convener [A71]. In October 2017, ILSI shared its Resource Guide directly with the World Conferences on Research Integrity Foundation, who considered using the material for their work [A73, A87]. ILSI, at that time, was seeking to collaborate with the Foundation to further expand its principles globally [A73, A87]. ILSI also planned to develop a training module to implement the new scientific integrity principles and “ a certification program or accreditation ( …) for individuals or organizations to certify their use of the principles and best practices. ( …). It would be beneficial if government agencies would require the certification or accreditation in order to apply for a grant ” [A106].

ILSI is now planning to “ share what we’ve learned with the entire federation of global ILSI entities ” [A67]. ILSI NA’s 2019 Mid-Year Science Program included a presentation on the “ Benefits of More Transparent Research Practices and Bias Reduction Tools ” from a speaker from the Center for Open Science [A59]. ILSI started collaborating with that Center in 2017 [A74, A78]. In 2017 as well, ILSI Argentina formed a new Scientific Integrity Group [A107]. In 2019, the Brazilian branch of ILSI put the question of scientific integrity in the food area as the main topic of its annual congress [A64], with speakers from different Brazilian federal agencies and universities. That same year, an academic from Chile gave a presentation on scientific integrity for the South Andean branch of ILSI [A65].

ILSI continues to try to drive the discussion on scientific integrity in the present COVID-19 pandemic context. In November 2020, ILSI held a webinar where “ invited experts [discussed] some of the challenges that exist for scientists and journals when attempts are made to correct the scientific record - through retractions, corrections or letters/commentaries ”, in response to the “ heightened visibility of retracted publications during the COVID-19 pandemic ” [A68]. The experts in question included some of the authors of the ILSI’s publications presented in our study.

In our study, we found that ILSI is a leading actor, not only in the food industry but more broadly in the scientific community, on the development of scientific integrity standards and principles. Internal and FOI documents revealed the food companies’ motives in developing scientific integrity principles. Food companies have joined forces through ILSI, funded its first activities on COI, and have 38% of the authorship of its scientific integrity publications. We have shown that ILSI built a niche literature, one that would become useful for the food industry, when criticism of its funding of researchers emerged in the U.S. in the mid-2000s [ 30 , 32 ]. ILSI first focused on COI in food science and nutrition at the individual and study levels, from 2007. Because the literature was scarce on that topic, its publications were used and cited in ILSI’s and others’ further work on COI, scientific integrity and PPP, beyond the field of nutrition and food science. In the past few years, ILSI started to shape the very principles of scientific integrity then and to propose that government agencies, professional associations, non-for-profits, and others, adopt these principles. In the process, ILSI built a reputation in the scientific integrity space. Our study found that ILSI proposed a compulsory certification or accreditation, based on the adoption of its scientific integrity principles, for anyone willing to apply for a research grant. If that were to happen, then ILSI could make it impossible to avoid adhering to its principles. Transparency is often prioritized as per ILSI’s current scientific integrity principles and by government agencies and scientific journals. Transparency should, however, be understood as only one aspect of scientific integrity. It is reasonable to promote the involvement of a broad range of actors in science and to promote good principles for the use of evidence in policy, but ILSI’s work on scientific integrity ignores the risks associated with accepting industry funding [ 20 , 37 ] and fails to provide guidelines to protect from these risks [ 19 , 37 ].

It may be that not all individuals and organizations cited in our manuscript were aware that ILSI was founded and is funded by food companies, and that it is food companies that are shaping scientific integrity principles. ILSI, in its publications and communications, presents itself as an independent organization. However, in several of the documents consulted for our study, such as minutes of meetings and emails, and in the scientific publications mentioned here, industry actors were omnipresent. This reveals a state of affairs where the food industry is seen as a legitimate actor in science and policy and where academics see no problem in working with industry actors [ 28 ]. In the very process of developing scientific integrity principles, food companies may use their connections with these reputable individuals and organizations to further their influence on science and policy [ 62 , 63 ].

What we describe here will not be a surprise for ILSI, as they are transparent on these activities, the researchers they fund and indeed promote these principles widely. Some of the information we found during our study was indeed made public. However, internal and FOI documents revealed the true intentions of ILSI behind their development of scientific integrity principles.

This study is novel and builds on several sources to triangulate its findings. Internal industry documents provide a unique behind the scenes look at industry activity and reveal and expose industry behavior rather than speculating about it. This study also has limitations. First, it was beyond the article’s scope to examine all the COI that the individuals identified in our study had with ILSI or other actors in the food industry. Hence, it is highly likely that their relationships extend beyond their authorship on the publications identified here. It is also possible that these authors have published on scientific integrity elsewhere without disclosing their links with ILSI and the food industry. For example, Rowe, a consultant for ILSI on scientific integrity since 2009, published in 2015 a summary of the activities undertaken by ILSI in that space, in one of the chapters, entitled “Principles for Building Public/Private Partnerships to Benefit Public Health”, in the book “Integrity In The Global Research Arena” [ 64 ]. In the chapter, there is no reference to the fact that Rowe worked for ILSI and that ISLI has ties with food industry actors. Nevertheless, a broader extent of industry participation would not change the essence of the current findings. Second, this study neither evaluated the content and scientific merit of the scientific integrity principles developed by ILSI and others, nor their implementation. Lastly, our primary focus was ILSI’s work, as our initial searches pointed in that direction, hence potentially leaving out some other work on scientific integrity from other companies and industries, like the pharmaceutical industry. This could be the subject of future investigations.

Our study goes beyond what we know of the food industry’s nutrition and physical activity research funding. It shows that the food industry, like the alcohol and tobacco industries [ 19 ], tries to influence science’s very principles, such as scientific integrity and the good conduct of research. Similar to the findings of Ong and Glantz, published 20 years ago on the tobacco industry, the activities described in our paper reflect “ sophisticated public relations campaigns controlled by industry executives ( …) whose aim is to manipulate the standards of scientific proof to serve the corporate interests of their clients ” [ 14 ]. Importantly, public health professionals should understand the activities presented here as only one of many practices through which the food industry tries to influence science and policy [ 15 ]. This reinforces the call for considering researching the political practices undertaken across industries [ 65 ].

ILSI’s work on scientific integrity, conflicts of interest and public-private partnerships waters down independent work in that space, puts profits before science, and undermines efforts to address undue influence of industry actors on public policy, research, and practice. The industry-established principles have already shaped the evidence on scientific integrity. In the scoping review we identified as a starting point for our searches by Cullerton et al. [ 36 ], 14 of the 54 documents included in the review were funded or had involvement of the food industry, despite the clear vested interests that the food industry has in that discussion [ 37 ]. Mc Cambridge et al. recently wrote that “ calls for research integrity reflect core values of the research community. They should not be used as instruments to undermine science or to assist harmful industries ” [ 19 ]. Therefore, it is crucial that the public health community monitors this work done by ILSI and others and recognizes that seemingly independent organizations like ILSI may represent industry’s interests [ 15 , 19 ]. This is even more crucial now that ILSI North America transformed itself nto the “Institute for the Advancement of Food and Nutrition Sciences”, a new organization that lacks transparency about its ties with the industry and whose current and future activities remain to be studied [ 49 ]. It risks shaping public agencies’ work, which may not be aware of the issues discussed in our paper. The literature we have described here must be understood not to have emerged from within the dietetics or nutrition or even medical professions, but rather from the food industry [ 14 ].

Availability of data and materials

All data generated or analyzed during this study are included in this published article [and its supplementary information files].

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This work received funding from U.S. Right to Know, via a grant from the Laura and John Arnold Foundation. The sponsor had no input in the study design; in the collection, analysis, and interpretation of data; in the report’s writing; and in the decision to submit the article for publication. All authors are independent of funders and had full access to all of the data in the study. They can take responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis.

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MM led the conception of the work. MH, GR, and MM led data collection, with support from EC and AC. MM led data analysis, with support from all authors and the manuscript’s writing. All authors have substantively revised it. All authors have approved the submitted version. The corresponding author attests that all listed authors meet authorship criteria and that no others meeting the criteria have been omitted.

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Mialon, M., Ho, M., Carriedo, A. et al. Beyond nutrition and physical activity: food industry shaping of the very principles of scientific integrity. Global Health 17 , 37 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12992-021-00689-1

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DOI : https://doi.org/10.1186/s12992-021-00689-1

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Globalization and Health

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Quantitative microbiological risk assessment in food industry: Theory and practical application.

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• Published in Food Research International 1 November 2017
• Agricultural and Food Sciences, Environmental Science

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