Washington Post: Exposed, Influencer Dietitians Paid to Promote Diet Soda

Why dietitians promote diet soda on social media.

Washington Post has published exposed this industry secret…

that food corporations pay people on social media to promote certain foods, or discuss certain ingredients (like aspartame, or sugar).

Whilst this sounds terrible, I actually found the article very unsurprising.

Many of the people they featured openly disclosed that they had been paid (although not everyone believed the disclosures were obvious enough).

But, this does open an important conversation about funding bias.

Funding bias is everywhere. Everyone wants to make money somehow and every time you buy a food, someone benefits. Not just the big evil corporations people think of either.

If you buy dairy, some companies benefit. If you buy dairy alternatives, other companies benefit.
If you buy meat, some companies benefit. If you buy meat alternatives, other companies benefit.
If you buy sugary soda, some companies benefit. If you buy other soft drinks, other companies benefit.

You see the issue?

Dismissing someone because of funding bias is not smart, because you would have to dismiss pretty much everyone.

However, influencers on social media *secretly* promoting something without disclosing it, or lying about how healthy a food is because they are being paid are the behaviors that we absolutely do need to crack down on.

So, just be careful of who you trust.

P.S. my best-selling book, ‘Everything Fat Loss’ is currently on sale at Amazon with an extra 23% off in Canada and an extra 10% off in the USA. Feel free to grab it before the price goes up.

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References:
– Aspartame hazard and risk assessment results released
– Association of Industry Sponsorship With Outcomes of Nutrition Studies: A Systematic Review and Meta-analysis
– Food Industry Donations to Academic Programs: A Cross-Sectional Examination of the Extent of Publicly Available Data
– Reducing potential bias in industry-funded nutrition research
– Relationship between funding source and conclusion among nutrition-related scientific articles
– Corporate funding of food and nutrition research: science or marketing?

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