Marion Nestle, the woman who challenges multinational food companies willing to pay for tame research

A rumor that scares the food industry's bigwigs. The case of Coca-Cola: it funded a research institute to demonstrate that obesity isn't caused by diet, or even sugary drinks. It's all about exercise.

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MARION NESTLE

A tough woman with a sweet smile. A high-ranking academic who dares to challenge, without prejudice or resentment, the excessive power of the multinationals American in the food sector. Marion Nestlé, born in 1936, had a meteoric career, after graduating in Microbiology at the University of California at Berkeley, until she became director of the Department of Food Sciences at New York University.

But it is precisely from this position that Marion, unlike many of her colleagues, instead of bowing to the interests of big industry and protecting it with her scientific authority, entered the field. on the side of consumers. And already in his first book Food politics he denounced the negative effects of advertising of food products on our health. Starting from the black hole of theobesity which in the United States is a mass disease.

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SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH ON THE NUTRITION OF MULTINATIONAL CORPORATIONS

But after the gray area of ​​advertising and marketing, Marion Nestlé is now focusing on another black hole of transparency between the market, consumers, and information. Namely, the way in which corporations influence scientific research, directing them, through generous financing, exclusively towards the interest of growing their turnover and their products. More than companies, they are industrial giants. Like the Coca-Cola, caught red-handed for its ties, including a $1,5 million grant, to the Global Energy Balance Network (GEBN), a research institute specializing in obesity. In its research, funded by Coca-Cola, GEBN has always maintained that obesity was linked exclusively tophysical exercise and not to food, starting with sugary drinks like Coca-Cola. Once the soft drink scandal broke, the multinational had to apologize to its customers, and Gebn closed.

NEGATIVE EFFECTS OF ADVERTISING

According to Nestlé, the real problem, the critical point of this mechanism, is not the fact that research is funded by industry. But rather the way in which the results are interpreted and then sold on the market. Another example: multinational corporations chocolate They funded research to demonstrate the benefits of this food, thanks to its high flavanol content. But when the research data were released to the market, the same scientists were careful not to add a detail to their interpretation: industrial chocolate contains, in abundance, sugars and fatsAnd this particular fact, the consumer, who often confesses to "not knowing what to eat", has the right to know.

(The images are taken from the Facebook page . di Marion Nestlé)

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