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How safe is your food in their hands?

It’s fair to say that our trust in healthy eating advice – whether from government or NGOs – has hit an all time low.

Big Food has hijacked the world of nutrition advice both in the US (for an excellent précis see the report And Now a Word From our Sponsors) and in the UK (take a look at the ‘Sustaining Members’ of the British Nutrition Foundation) making it much harder to know what is true and what isn’t.

Staying healthy is hard enough these days without having to negotiate the minefield of  self-interested advice telling us saturated fat is bad for you (so buy these low fat alternatives instead) or that ‘healthy’ sugar in the diet isn’t really sugar at all  (so please keep buying the sweet stuff).

Never mind that lowering cholesterol too much has been linked to a greater risk of depression and suicide or that junk food can be as addictive as heroin or cocaine (and potentially more dangerous because of its cheap price and wide availability).

Recently a report by the UK’s National Audit Office (NAO) warned that budget cuts, which have weakened government oversight on food, coupled with a more than 60%  rise in reported food fraud, have increased the risks of another horsemeat scandal. Even when we want to eat well it’s impossible to trust what goes into our food.

But when it comes to lapses in regulatory oversight it’s hard to beat the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA).

EFSA, whose job it is to “ensure that Europe’s food is safe”, has come under increasing criticism as conflicts of interest of the scientists and other experts sitting on its advisory panels have been repeatedly exposed.

These advisors, who play a crucial role in decisions around Europe’s food supply chain, have repeatedly been shown to have ties to industry that hang like a dark cloud over the Authority’s decisions on issues such as food additives, GMOs and pesticides.

Although EFSA has recently implemented a new vetting policy designed to claw back some credibility, a startling new report, Unhappy Meal, from Corporate Europe Observatory (CEO), shows serious conflicts of interest remain.

Using only the information declared by the scientists themselves to CEO found that 122 out of 209 (58%) experts sitting on EFSA’s panels have direct or indirect ties with the industries they are meant to regulate.

Remember this was not a particularly rigorous assessment. CEO did not, for instance, dig deeper to uncover undeclared interests, nor did it add omitted interests that were found in the course of the research.

The stats show that experts with conflicts of interest dominate all panels but one, and it may come as no surprise that the panel most heavily stacked with industry infiltrators is the Dietetic Products, Nutrition and Allergies (NDA) panel – with 17 of its 20 members registering 113 conflicts of interest between them.

According to the  report: “An insufficient understanding of what conflicts of interest entail in practice undermines the screening process performed by EFSA’s staff.”

The agency’s idea of a conflict of interest seems to revole around a dramatic picture of corruption and infiltration by industry ‘moles’ with evil intent. In fairness that’s probably how most of us view these revolving door regulators.

But the truth, as the report concludes, is far shadier and “usually more subtle”:

“Industry influence tends to be exerted through long-term and structural processes of relationship-building within the scientific community itself, through culture, collective dynamics, accepted paradigms and group thinking – where it becomes natural to “think industry” – rather than through some kind of manipulation at the individual scientist level only.”

As we slide into this year’s season of overeating, let me be the first to wish you common sense, seasoned with a healthy pinch of scepticism and moderation – wrapped up in as much organic produce as your budget can stand. It’s probably the only sensible recipe for maintaining good health.

Pat Thomas, Editor