…whatever the industry “giant” wants to be proven. 

You see them everywhere - drink “product x” to help with “condition 1, 2 and/or 3″.  I was reading a report in USA Today with the headline “Industry-funded beverage research tends to support soda, milk, other drinks, study contends”.  So this is another study, do you believe its findings?

Heh… well, I guess you need to take everything you read in the news with a grain of salt.

Anyway, here are a few excerpts from the article:

“Does milk lower blood pressure? Does juice prevent heart disease? Beverage studies were four to eight times more likely to reach sweet conclusions about health effects when industry was footing the bill, a new report contends.

Its authors claim to have done the first systematic analysis of such studies published from 1999 through 2003 in hundreds of journals around the world.

“We found evidence that’s strongly suggestive of bias,” said Dr. David Ludwig, an obesity specialist at Children’s Hospital Boston who led the work, which was published Monday in the online science journal PLoS Medicine. The consumer advocacy group Center for Science in the Public Interest also participated.”

Not to be overshadowed, the industry did bite back and had this to say:

“

However, beverage industry folks say the authors have a slant, too.

“This is yet another attack on industry by activists who demonstrate their own biases in their review by looking only at the funding source and not judging the research on its merits,” says a statement by Susan Neely, president of the American Beverage Association. “The science is what matters — nothing else.”

Public health experts who promote dietary guidelines are biased toward their own advice, said Greg Miller, a nutrition biochemist who heads research for the National Dairy Council. The council requires its funded researchers to publish results in journals that require review by outside scientists and to disclose who pays for their work.

“Everybody brings a point of view to the table, and in the long run, that’s probably a good thing,” Miller said.”

The article goes on to say…

“But the authors say this point of view appears to influence results.

They used Medline, a compendium of scientific literature, to identify 538 studies about soda, milk or juice involving people, not animals. They targeted 206 that made a health claim directly related to the drink being studied — for example, bone fractures related to calcium and milk intake, or immune system benefits from anti-oxidants in juice.

Of the 206 studies, only 111 gave information on funding: 22% were fully funded by industry and 32% got some industry money.”

I recommend that you take a read at the full article by clicking on the title “Industry-funded beverage research tends to support soda, milk, other drinks, study contends.“

Enjoy!

Here is to Your Health!

Mohammed

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