If the Heart Foundation and Dietitians Association didn’t exist, would the food industry need to invent them?

The Dietitians Association of Australia and the Australian Heart Foundation spend quite a bit of their time attacking what they call “Fad Diets”.  Unfortunately, their flat out disregard for the evidence is making their statements sound more and more like press releases issued by the processed food industry.

I don’t pretend to know what is motivating either of them, but I do know that both have financial backing from the industries which stand to lose the most if there is widespread adoption of many of the diets they declare to be fads (for example reducing sugar, seed oils, or more recently paleo).

The Dietitians Association’s sponsors include Nestle (the second largest manufacturer of breakfast cereals in Australia and no slouch when it comes to moving other forms of sugar either), Unilever (largest margarine manufacturer in Australia) and the Grains & Legumes Nutrition Council (a lobby group funded by all the major breakfast cereal manufacturers)

The Australian Heart Foundation is not overtly sponsored by anyone.  But the processed food industry has found a way to rent the Heart Foundation’s healthy halo.

It’s called the Tick Program. Processed foods can gain endorsement from the Heart Foundation by doing what they were going to do anyway. They wanted to use seed oils instead of animal fats because they are loads cheaper. Tick – foods that use seed oils are given preference. They wanted to use tons of sugar because food with sugar sells better than food without. Tick – sugar is not a criteria. They want to sell breakfast cereals because they are vehicles for sugar (and the margins are stupendous). Tick – whole grains are encouraged for their fibre.

The program is a nice little earner for the Heart Foundation, pulling in $2.8m in 2013 alone. The only problem is that, through the Tick Program, the Heart Foundation now finds itself in the position of having endorsed hundreds of products that the science says are very dangerous to our health.

The World Health Organisation, the Canadian Heart Foundation and the American Heart Association all regard sugar as a dangerous additive to food because there is convincing evidence that it is “associated with heart disease, stroke, obesity, diabetes, high blood cholesterol, cancer and tooth decay.”  But the Australian Heart Foundation is earning millions from its endorsement of products like ‘Mayonnaise’ that has more sugar than Coke, a children’s snack which is 73% sugar and spreads made of the very oils which science says almost doubles the risk of heart disease death.

That is what we lawyers call a conflict of interest. When doctors experience a conflict of interest (say by accepting gifts from pharmaceutical companies), the regulators tighten the rules and (no matter how much it hurts the doctors) attempt to put the brakes on the gravy train.

The same thing happens in just about any profession we depend upon for expert knowledge. We have to be able to trust paid specialists. And no matter how morally astute they believe they are, we cannot allow them be led into temptation by conflicts of interest. If we do, we can never be sure if they are giving us advice based on the best evidence or on their own financial interest.

And if by chance you think that the existence of, say, a tick program makes no difference to the advice being dispensed, you need look no further than the Canadian Heart Foundation.  In June, they killed off their tick program.  Before June, they were happily handing out ticks to Slush Puppies and children’s snacks where sugar was the primary ingredient.  After June they were attacking the sugar sellers like they were on commission for the sale of Sweet Poison.

So when the Dietitians Association and the Heart Foundation fly into a frenzy to decry a diet which asks people to avoid processed food, any thinking person would ask, why?  Is there science behind this or have these two venerable organisations simply become mouthpieces for the processed food industry that provides them with such significant financial support?  Such is the corrosive power of conflicts of interest.

There are now very persuasive reasons to worry about their advice that we should consume seed oils (vegetable oils). And there is just as compelling evidence that ignoring sugar is taking a daily toll on the health of all Australians.

We need the Heart Foundation to follow the lead of the Canadian Heart Foundation and immediately trash its Tick program. And we need our dietitians to throw off the yoke of corporate sponsorship and provide evidence based dietary advice untainted by the smell of food industry money.

We don’t need the guardians of our health attacking a scientifically (and logically) defensible aversion to processed food. We need them guarding our health without fear or favour (especially without favour).

Join the discussion 7 Comments

  • Kaye Chalmers Gooey says:

    Fantastic piece David.

  • Tina Ransley says:

    Excellent article. It is concerning that big business appears to be influencing the professionals that are supposed to help average citizens cut through the spin.

  • Chris Lynch says:

    Well written with no ‘mud slinging’ thank you David. There are so many voices singing out loud now about who is financially in whom’s pocket that it is becoming deafening. I often think of Galileo speaking out against the popular beliefs of his time – it took time, but science won out in the end, as it will here as well, I’m sure.

  • Jaz says:

    Please sign the petition asking the Heart Foundation to change it’s ways, lets let them know that people care and aren’t going to be fed this bs anymore

    https://www.change.org/p/heart-foundation-stop-giving-advice-and-promoting-food-that-causes-heart-disease

  • antony carter says:

    Great David. This petition that is doing the rounds is great in concept but the extremely poor and bad language used by it’s promoter is going to do us more harm than good. Please talk to the girl and try and knock some sense into what we believe is an intelligent head.
    The establishment – with whom we are going to be dealing/convincing – will shoot us all down in flames.
    Now Chef Pete Evans is doing a great job with his LCHF Paleo Way promotions – take some guidance from him – he has 300k followers.

  • Andrew says:

    Might be time for the Heart Foundation to put their tick on some humble pie

  • Rhonda says:

    Whilst some of what you are saying is correct I think most Dietitian’s do promote whole foods over processed. I see first hand what some of these FAD diets are doing to peoples health and the expectations people have around weight loss none of which is evidenced based. From a personal point of view I state that if it has a label then it’s not real food (especially if you need a magnifying glass to read it) then put it back on the shelf as it’s shelf life will out last yours if you eat it. Most in my profession believe that the food industry is about jumping on a FAD or weight loss concept and milking it for all it’s worth, hence we have low fat products pumped with sugar that are energy higher which leads to ‘low fat diets don’t work’. Low fat diets were never about commercialization but about removing fat prior to cooking, using better cooking techniques and were shown to work well but then convenience came into being and people got lazier and stopped cooking and started purchasing commercial products and this is were the major problem is!

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