About This Project

Require that any nutrition research cited in support of federal dietary guideline recommendations must have been independently replicated in at least one study with no financial relationship to the food or beverage industry. The current Dietary Guidelines Advisory Committee process reviews available evidence but has no mechanism to systematically weight for funding source. Bes-Rastrollo et al. documented a 7.6x publication bias ratio between industry-funded and independently funded nutrition studies. A guideline-setting process that treats these two categories of evidence as equivalent is not applying appropriate scientific standards. The specific mechanism: any study where industry funding constitutes more than 25% of the research budget is classified as industry-affiliated; industry-affiliated studies require independent replication before being cited in guideline recommendations. This does not prohibit industry-funded research. It treats it as a hypothesis generator rather than a conclusions generator. That is the appropriate scientific relationship.

Timeline