Public health demands reliable research


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Americans have long been struggling with obesity. In a report from earlier this month, researchers found that every single state has an obesity rate more than 20 percent, while four states maintain a rate over 35 percent. Even with the knowledge that the child obesity rate has leveled off (and the adult rate is beginning to do the same), this information is not easy to stomach. When diagnosing the root cause of the obesity epidemic in the United States, the first major culprit is food policy and the way that independent research meant to educate the public has been intentionally slanted by larger food industries with greater finances and political clout. Especially considering the arguably unhealthy options that are popular at USC (Panda Express, the Habit, California Pizza Kitchen), it is necessary for our students as well as the surrounding L.A. community to take nutritional information and health education into further consideration.

Recent events have brought this even closer to the forefront. A study was released just this week that found a pair of Harvard researchers were paid money by professionals in the sugar industry to “tone down” their findings and downplay the relationship between sugars and coronary heart disease. They accepted, and in 1967 their report was published. Shifting blame away from sugars, the study instead placed a majority of the blame on saturated fats. The implications of these lies, some 50 years later, call into question the integrity of the entirety of the food processing industry.

Nutrition science was essentially created to promote the best metabolic practices for people and to educate the public on those practices. If some of the most prominent nutrition professors go behind the scenes and rewrite the scripts even slightly, it becomes decidedly more difficult to decipher which statements are true and which are false.

In South Los Angeles, the results of the food industry influence ring loud and clear. The area around our own campus is a “food desert,” in which there are very few, if any, grocery stores with access to affordable and quality produce. Without correct information, the medical industry and insurance regulations also lead Americans to suffer consequences. Preventable health care has to recognize that sugar is a major player in problems like coronary heart disease, instead of just the saturated fats that took all the blame.

This evidence is pretty easy to come by, though. A study by the California Center for Public Health Advocacy in 2008 found that unsurprisingly, state counties “with the highest ratios of fast-food outlets also had some of the highest rates of obesity and diabetes.”

All of the doubt surrounding nutrition standards does not bode well for food deserts. This is not the first time, nor will it be the last, that the food industry is called into question. And even though this particular claim is new, there have already been dozens of speculations, from criticism to uncertainty. Nutrition expert Marion Nestle, Ph.D. explained that this level of sponsorship questions public trust, creates public confusion and muddles documents like the Dietary Guidelines, which are written with the purpose of advising the public on what to eat. There is no guarantee, without better counsel, that areas like South Los Angeles will improve their eating patterns on their own, and evidence of such harmful influence can only worsen the situation.

However, the situation can be solved through other means. Nonprofit research organization RAND Corp found a positive correlation between placing a grocery store in a food desert and better dietary intake among the inhabitants of the area. This data seems pretty intuitive, but the reasoning behind the change is anything but. According to the study conducted in Pittsburgh, patterns changed after the community (previously a food desert) built a grocery store, but that did not mean more people were actually shopping at the grocery store. Instead, this community benefited most from advocacy efforts that included marketing and awareness in addition to the grocery store’s broader selection of food items.

Obesity is a public health issue, and like most public health issues, it cannot be solved by just one action — even if that action is as well-meaning as introducing fresh food into an environment. Most public health issues must be tackled through public education, and obesity is no different.

Finally, it remains clear that this now-famous falsified study brings into question the conflicting roles of independent researchers. On the one hand, they are responsible to the public for unbiased information, but on the other hand, they serve individual interests. This reconciliation can often be concerning, especially if the long-term health and diet of the American public are at stake.