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The ACS doesn’t just receive funds from pharmaceutical and health insurance companies; the junk food industry is also a generous and energetic contributor. ACS’s Excalibur Donors list includes Wendy’s, McDonald’s, Unilever/Best Foods (maker of hundreds of food brands, including Rama margarine, Bertolli olive oil, Hellmann’s mayonnaise, Knorr soup mixes, and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream), and Coca-Cola. And, perhaps unsurprisingly, ACS does not take a hard stance on anything related to diet. ACS’s diet recommendations (buried several directories deep on their website
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) are vague and unthreatening to their funders’ bottom lines. Examples of current diet recommendations include:

• Read food labels to become more aware of portion sizes and calories.
  
• Eat smaller portions when eating high-calorie foods.
  
• Limit your intake of sugar-sweetened beverages such as soft drinks, sports drinks, and fruit-flavored drinks.
  
• Limit your intake of refined carbohydrate foods, including pastries, candy, sugar-sweetened breakfast cereals, and other high-sugar foods.
  
• Choose fish, poultry, or beans instead of red meat (beef, pork, and lamb).
  
• If you eat red meat, choose lean cuts and eat smaller portions.
  

These recommendations hold no real financial risk for the meat and junk food industries. The ACS’s recommendation to limit certain foods (not avoid them) is the equivalent of telling junkies to “limit your intake of cocaine.” Not serious enough to make an impact on anyone reading them, and definitely not strong enough to make a meaningful difference in anyone’s health. (How far this organization has strayed from its inception a century ago, when its founder, Frederick Hoffmann, advocated the study of nutrition as a key factor in cancer development! Hoffmann was removed from its board of directors three years later, then belittled at their first annual conference in Lake Mohonk, New York, in 1922.)

You may be wondering why I didn’t include some tepid ACS recommendation about “limiting intake” of dairy products. That’s because there is none. Despite all the evidence, the ACS doesn’t mention avoiding or reducing consumption of milk or cheese, or dairy of any kind, in its recommendations. In fact, according to the January-February 2008 Digest of the National Dairy Council, the ACS recommends that both men and women reduce their risk of colorectal cancer by increasing their calcium consumption “primarily through food sources such as low-fat or non-fat dairy products.”
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ACS doesn’t content itself with promoting surgical, pharmaceutical, and radiological approaches to cancer treatment and prevention. The society actively funds vicious attacks on those who promote “alternative” cancer therapies, treatments, and prevention recommendations. Their Subcommittee on Alternative and Complementary Methods of Cancer Management (originally called, and still informally known among its staunchest administrators and supporters as, the Committee on Quackery
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) denies funding to and in effect blacklists any practitioners who advocate natural, non-patentable, and nonmedical approaches to cancer treatment. (Just in case you’re wondering if a WFPB diet qualifies as “quackery,” two of ASC’s “Signs of Treatment to Avoid” are: “Does the treatment claim to offer benefits, but no side effects?” and “Do the promoters attack the medical or scientific community?” Talk about being paranoid!)

I’ve experienced this ACS animosity personally, via a smear campaign against me and my research. In the early 1980s, diet and nutrition topics were off their radar screen almost entirely. Only begrudgingly did they give a passing nod to nutrition, when the NAS produced the 1982 report on diet, nutrition, and cancer that I coauthored. About that same time,
a group of private fundraisers formed a new cancer research society, the American Institute for Cancer Research (AICR), for which I acted as the senior science advisor until 1986, and then again from 1990 to 1997. The AICR’s sole mission was to emphasize the dietary causes of cancer. At first, I naïvely believed that a society dedicated to the eradication of cancer would welcome any research or policy avenue that showed promise in slowing or reversing the progression of the disease. I was wrong, though; the ACS turned out to be highly hostile to the AICR. I was surprised to find myself personally vilified in a memo about the AICR that the ACS president sent to their local offices around the country. The National Dairy Council promoted this memo to the press; it was even mentioned by advice columnist Ann Landers!

A few years later, after the AICR had become successfully established (and the ACS finally recognized it was here to stay!), the ACS invited me to be one of the six permanent members of their new panel of experts for evaluation of research grant proposals focused on the role of nutrition in cancer control. (By “permanent,” I mean that I was allowed to hold the position as long as I wanted, based on their acceptance of my role in the initiation of the AICR.) I believed this represented a refreshing change of heart at the ACS, a new and sincere interest in the association of diet and nutrition with cancer. I served for a couple of years, then had to resign because of an overextended personal workload. Although I couldn’t articulate it well at the time, I was becoming disenchanted with their focus on highly reductionist research.

A few short years later, with some new management and another change of heart, the ACS returned to their anti-nutrition roots by sponsoring the 2003 “Cattle Barons Ball” in Atlanta (their headquarters) as part of their annual fundraising drive. I questioned their behavior, given the known links between consumption of animal protein and cancer, and received a response from the then-president of ACS. She said that this ball was “not about beef,” that the “event [had] no association or partnership with the beef industry or its interests nor does it articulate an endorsement of the beef industry by the Society.” It was just a “fun” event.

I suppose some might accept this explanation based on a narrow technicality; they weren’t suggesting those attending the event increase their consumption of beef. However, given the ACS’s expertise in public relations—that’s their business—it’s hard for me to imagine they believed
their own line. They’ve never held a “Marlboro Man Marathon” to raise money for cancer research.

The ACS may have avoided a formal partnership with the beef industry to avoid adverse publicity likely to arise from such a relationship, but it had a lot to lose if they were to advocate a plant-based diet, to the detriment of those cattle barons’ bank accounts. The ACS very much supports the treatment of cancer with chemicals, and animal-product-free nutrition does not fit into such plans. Given its coziness with those cattle barons, it’s not surprising that, to this day, serious research on the role of nutrition in cancer occurrence and treatment is an almost nonexistent priority for this all-American organization.

The MS Society provides another example of a disease organization whose impartiality and professed desire to improve human health is belied by the combination of its corporate funding and dogmatic anti-evidential stance.

Like the ACS, the MS Society depends on the food and pharmaceutical industries for the bulk of its donations. While direct donations from pharmaceutical companies total just 4 percent of the organization’s 2011 annual revenue of $165 million
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and other corporate donors provide another couple of million dollars each year, these companies are intimately involved with the events that drive the bulk of the MS Society’s fundraising: the hundreds of walks, runs, and bicycle rides organized by good people who believe in their contribution to the cause. The big website sponsors of the Bike MS project are Pure Protein, a company that makes nutraceutical bars, shakes, and powders—“nutrition” that promises health but delivers a scary mix of processed ingredients, including sucralose, hydrolyzed collagen, sorbitol, maltitol powder, and palm kernel oil—and the pharmaceutical company Novartis, which manufactures and markets the MS drug Gilenya.

Poking at random through the MS Society website, I kept stumbling upon the society’s financial dependence on companies that profit not from a cure but from the sale of processed foods that could contribute
to onset of the disease. A local North Carolina MS chapter is sponsored by the Golden Corral restaurant chain. Sara Lee raised $111,000 in 2011 through their “Summer Bun Program.” Sara Lee’s parent company, Bimbo Bakeries USA (no, I am not making that name up), ran a summer 2012 promotion in supermarkets across the country to raise money for the MS Society through the sale of its other brands of junk food, including Stroehmann, Freihofer’s, and Arnold breads and baked goods.

The MS Society clearly delineates the benefits of corporate sponsorship of its Women Against MS Luncheon as including “tangible marketing benefits,” including “product sampling, brand exposure, and media exposure.”
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What isn’t mentioned (but is understood loud and clear nevertheless) is that associating their corporate brand with the MS Society’s name implies to consumers that the brand’s products will aid in the “fight” against MS, or at the very least won’t contribute to the problem of MS in the first place—something that, in the case of all these processed food sponsors, is not the case.

There is impressive evidence that high levels of milk consumption correlate with high rates of MS prevalence, and long-term studies show much lower death rates among MS patients who ate a plant-rich diet (5 percent, compared with 80 percent for those who consumed an unhealthy diet).
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But the MS Society website has almost nothing to say about the role of nutrition in preventing and ameliorating the disease. The sum total of its general advice about nutrition:

Maintenance of general good health is very important for persons with MS or any chronic disorder. A well-balanced and carefully planned diet will help to achieve this goal. MS specialists recommend that people with MS adhere to the same low-fat, high fiber diet that is recommended for the general population.
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In more detailed documents, the MS Society recommends lots of low-fat dairy (for calcium!) and lean meat (for protein!) as part of its MS diet, along with the usual lip service about eating fruits and vegetables. Not a peep about the demonstrated correlation between dairy consumption and MS. Not a word about the profound impact diet has been shown to have on MS survival rates. In short, the MS Society is all about whitewashing the causes of MS, coincidentally absolving its
junk food sponsors of culpability while promoting its pharmaceutical sponsors’ products and research initiatives as our best, only hopes of defeating this dread disease.

Unlike the ACS and MS Society, the AND (until 2012, the American Dietetic Association) focuses not on a disease, but on a professional constituency. It exists to serve registered dietitians: those who advise hospitals, schools, clinics, daycare centers, government agencies, and the general public about what constitutes a healthy diet. The result is a substantial amount of influence over the way we think about nutrition in this country. Unfortunately for dietitians and the public they mostly misinform, the AND recommendations are tailored to the financial interests of its junk food industry sponsors.

While the AND gets much of its operating capital from member fees for services (including publications, accreditation, continuing education, and discounted attendance at annual meetings) and tax-deductible donations, they also solicit the for-profit private sector for donations. According to its 2011 annual report,
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its generous “partners” include Aramark, The Coca-Cola Company, the Hershey Center for Health & Nutrition; and the National Dairy Council. “Premier” sponsors are Abbott Nutrition; Coro-Wise (a supplement-making arm of Cargill); General Mills; Kellogg; Mars, Incorporated; McNeil Nutritionals; PepsiCo; Soyjoy; Truvia (marketer of a sweetener manufactured by Cargill and Coca-Cola); and Unilever. The National Cattlemen’s Beef Association and the National Dairy Council, along with many junk food manufacturers like Mars, PepsiCo, and Coca-Cola, were specially thanked in the report for donating at least $10,000 each to the AND.

I’ve lectured at the very large AND national meetings three times, at the request of a specialty group within the organization interested in vegetarian nutrition. The last time, in Chicago, prominently displayed on the outside of my registration bag were the names of the ADA partners, a veritable rogues’ gallery of food and pharmaceutical interests. It was a nice mix of partners, with highly synergistic agendas:
one group (food industry sponsors) serves up soft drinks and milk products for school lunch programs across the country, while the other (pharmaceutical sponsors) peddles drugs for the ailments that these programs cause.

What I find especially repugnant about the AND is its stifling influence over nutrition education. The AND controls the content of the courses required for the registered dietitian degree in colleges and universities, as well as the criteria by which individual states license registered dietitians. The AND is also responsible for the training and licensing of other nutritionists across the country, through the Commission on Dietetic Registration (CDR). Only those nurses and dietitians who participate in AND’s mandatory Professional Development Portfolio recertification system can maintain “registered” status, and the CDR determines who is allowed to provide this ongoing education, so crucial to those who wish to work in healthcare settings and be eligible for insurance reimbursement.

My friend and colleague, Dr. Pamela Popper, has experienced the AND’s vicious anti-free-speech actions firsthand. She tells the story in harrowing detail in her excellent book
Solving America’s Healthcare Crisis.
In 1993, she started a company that taught classes on plant-based nutrition in her home state of Ohio, thus incurring the ire of the Ohio Board of Dietetics. They investigated her, subpoenaed her to “name names” of other “non-dieticians” who were teaching nutrition so they could also be investigated, and actually threatened her with jail time. Beth Shaffer, the Board’s compliance specialist, informed Popper that there are no First Amendment Rights in the State of Ohio when it comes to discussions about food and nutrition.
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