Junk Food Companies Sponsoring Nutrition Education

A food fight for integrity is happening among dietitians and Big Food companies. It impacts how our children and the public perceive foods which could be harming them. This issue is about integrity. It’s big, and we need support from you, the public.

You may already know that Registered Dietitians, or RDs lead the nation in medical nutrition therapy, public health and public perception about “health foods” (for better or for worse). One big problem is that our institution, the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND), accepts large corporate sponsorships from multi-billion dollar corporations, such as McDonalds, Pepsi, Coca Cola, Kraft, Nestle, the Dairy Council, and more. RDs receive “free” continuing education that reinforces corporate propaganda. The AND refuses to take a position on GMOs, as this would likely upset their stakeholders.

I am co-founding a group, Dietitians for Professional Integrity, which is strategically bringing to light the flaws with these conflicts of interest being embedded in the national nutrition industry.

One dietitian, Elizabeth Yakes, PhD, RD, remarked that the presence of junk food companies at our dietitian conventions is “like inviting Marlboro to a cardiology conference.” This conflict of interest where Big Food sponsoring nutrition education leads to misleading, slanted nutrition messages.

Would you please support this message by signing this petition and sharing it with your networks? This is a critical time to pressure the nutrition industry to make the right choice. There are other options for sponsorship that aren’t riddled with conflicts of interest. We need a STRONG VOICE from the public collective to help challenge the current perversions.

Here is the link to the Change.Org petition. Your support matters a lot. Please let me know if there are any other people who I can share this petition with, as I’d love to get this out to as many networks in the shortest amount of time possible.