Literature DB >> 33326431

The characteristics and extent of food industry involvement in peer-reviewed research articles from 10 leading nutrition-related journals in 2018.

Gary Sacks1, Devorah Riesenberg1, Melissa Mialon2, Sarah Dean1, Adrian J Cameron1.   

Abstract

INTRODUCTION: There is emerging evidence that food industry involvement in nutrition research may bias research findings and/or research agendas. However, the extent of food industry involvement in nutrition research has not been systematically explored. This study aimed to identify the extent of food industry involvement in peer-reviewed articles from a sample of leading nutrition-related journals, and to examine the extent to which findings from research involving the food industry support industry interests.
METHODS: All original research articles published in 2018 in the top 10 most-cited nutrition- and dietetics-related journals were analysed. We evaluated the proportion of articles that disclosed involvement from the food industry, including through author affiliations, funding sources, declarations of interest or other acknowledgments. Principal research findings from articles with food industry involvement, and a random sample of articles without food industry involvement, were categorised according to the extent to which they supported relevant food industry interests.
RESULTS: 196/1,461 (13.4%) articles reported food industry involvement. The extent of food industry involvement varied by journal, with The Journal of Nutrition (28.3%) having the highest and Paediatric Obesity (3.8%) having the lowest proportion of industry involvement. Processed food manufacturers were involved in the most articles (77/196, 39.3%). Of articles with food industry involvement, 55.6% reported findings favourable to relevant food industry interests, compared to 9.7% of articles without food industry involvement.
CONCLUSION: Food industry involvement in peer-reviewed research in leading nutrition-related journals is commonplace. In line with previous literature, this study has shown that a greater proportion of peer-reviewed studies involving the food industry have results that favour relevant food industry interests than peer-reviewed studies without food industry involvement. Given the potential competing interests of the food industry, it is important to explore mechanisms that can safeguard the integrity and public relevance of nutrition research.

Entities:  

Year:  2020        PMID： 33326431      PMCID： PMC7743938          DOI： 10.1371/journal.pone.0243144

Source DB:  PubMed          Journal:  PLoS One        ISSN： 1932-6203            Impact factor:   3.240


Introduction

Dietary risk factors are associated with more deaths and disability worldwide than any other modifiable factor [1]. A key driver of poor diets globally has been a nutrition transition characterised by increased consumption of ultra-processed packaged foods [2-4]. These foods are manufactured, marketed and sold by a diverse selection of companies and organisations, collectively referred to as the ‘food industry’ [5]. Importantly, global food systems are now dominated by a relatively small number of large transnational food companies [2, 6]. The continued generation of profit by these large food companies typically relies on aggressive marketing of their products and brands, as well as political strategies to create regulatory environments that facilitate their market power [7]. Nutrition research is fundamental to efforts to promote healthy eating behaviours and health. However, there is concern regarding how the involvement of the food industry in nutrition research affects the nature of studies conducted, the nutrition research agenda and the findings of individual studies [8-10]. The interests of many commercial food industry actors are misaligned with clinical and public health objectives as the legal mandate of corporations is to return profit for their shareholders, without explicit consideration of broader social impact [10, 11]. In recognition of the inherent risks and to preserve the scientific credibility of nutrition-related research, food industry involvement in research is increasingly scrutinized [12, 13]. Food industry involvement in research can take many forms. These forms of involvement include, amongst others, the provision of funding and the involvement of food company employees as part of research teams. There are many reasons why food companies might be involved in nutrition-related research. These reasons may include unobjectionable motives such as a willingness to develop new knowledge, assist in research translation and contribute expertise and resources [14]. However, from a public health perspective, several concerns have been identified regarding food industry involvement in research. These include: 1) the creation of increased marketing opportunities for industry products, many of which are harmful to population health [15]; 2) the establishment and nurturing of relationships between the food industry and nutrition researchers that serves to increase perceived industry credibility, reduce industry criticism, and encourage increased dependency on the food industry [16, 17]; 3) industry influence over research agendas to preferentially focus on topics likely to benefit industry interests, rather than topics of public health importance [18]; 4) industry influence on the methods, conclusions and impact of research in ways that are likely to favour industry interests over and above other factors [9, 19–21]; and 5) use of research for political purposes [22, 23]. An increased dependence on food industry funding by academics has been documented [9, 12, 16, 24], with food industry funding sometimes acknowledged as a strategically important funding source for the university sector [25]. Previous research has investigated the impact of food industry sponsorship on the findings of published research. Several studies have found that papers sponsored by the food industry typically favour industry interests [9, 21, 26], although a recent meta-analysis found that the quantitative difference in conclusions between food industry-sponsored and non–industry-sponsored nutrition studies was not significant [8]. To date, no study has comprehensively examined the extent and nature of food industry involvement in peer-reviewed research. Better information regarding the extent of food industry involvement, characteristics (e.g., industry sector, company size) of food industry actors that are involved in nutrition-related research, and the ways in which they are involved (e.g., study authorship, different types of funding provided) would assist efforts to assess and manage the potential impact and implications of food industry involvement in research. This study aimed to contribute to a growing body of empirical evidence related to food industry involvement in peer-reviewed published research by systematically identifying the extent of food industry involvement in research articles from a large sample of leading nutrition-related journals. In addition, this study examined the extent to which research findings support food industry interests for both articles with declared food industry involvement, and those with no declared food industry involvement.

Methods

Sample

The study examined articles published in 2018 in the top 10 nutrition and dietetics journals as defined by the SCImago Journal ranking (SJR) as at June 2019. The SJR is a measure of a journal’s impact, and expresses the average number of weighted citations received in a selected year by the documents published in the journal in the three previous years [27]. The selected journals included (in alphabetical order): Advances in Nutrition, Clinical Nutrition, International Journal of Behavioural Nutrition and Physical Activity, International Journal of Obesity, Nutrition Research Reviews, Nutrition Reviews, Obesity, Paediatric Obesity, The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and The Journal of Nutrition. Details of all articles (n = 1,732) published in the selected journals in 2018 were extracted from Medline, CINAHL, Global Health or PubMed. Article types included in the study were original research articles, reviews, short/brief reports and short communications. Article types excluded were errata/corrections, editorials, perspectives, letters to the editor and other related article types. We also examined the disclosed conflicts of interest of the editorial board of each of the selected journals (based on information provided on the website of each journal), links of the selected journals and their editors to the food industry (based on biographical information provided on the journal website and/or on the website of each editor’s primary affiliation), as well as each journal’s requirements for authors to disclosure conflicts of interest and any other related policies (based on information provided on the website of each journal).

Food industry involvement

Each included article was examined independently by two of the authors (DR and GS) to determine whether there was food industry involvement in the paper. For the purposes of this study, the “food industry” was broadly defined to include all organisations involved in food and non-alcoholic beverage production, distribution, marketing and retail, as well as relevant industry groups and trade associations [28]. We included manufacturers of dietary supplements and breast-milk substitutes in this definition. In recognition of the known industry tactic of establishing ‘front groups’ (defined as an organisation that purports to represent one agenda while in reality it serves some other party or interest whose sponsorship is hidden or rarely mentioned) [29], our definition of “food industry” also included organisations that received the majority of their funding from the food industry. Food industry involvement was determined based on examination of author affiliations, declared funding sources, declarations of interests, and acknowledgements within each article. All organisations identified through these sections of each article were assessed to determine whether they could be classified as part of the food industry. All universities were considered as not part of the food industry. Organisations known by the authors to be part of the food industry as well as those on an established list of known food industry front groups were classified as such [30]. Searches of the primary websites of all other organisations were conducted to determine the nature of their operations and their funding sources, where relevant, in order to determine if they could be considered as part of the food industry [31]. Food industry actors identified through the study were classified into one of nine different sectors: 1) dairy; 2) dietary supplement manufacturing; 3) food chemical suppliers and food technology companies; 4) food retail; 5) meat and livestock; 6) non-alcoholic beverage manufacturing; 7) primary production (non-dairy, non-meat); 8) processed food manufacturing; and 9) other food industry organisations (see for definitions of what was included in each sector). Categorisations were based on an assessment of the primary areas of activity of the actor, based on the knowledge of the authors and information provided on the website of the actor. In addition, we classified food industry actors into three categories based on the size and nature of their operations. These included large corporations (with annal global revenue > USD1 billion), trade/industry associations, and small corporations/other entities (annual global revenue < USD1 billion). This classification was based on information obtained from the Euromonitor Passport database [32], supplemented by internet searches of the name of the food industry actor where necessary. All categorisation of food industry actors was performed independently by two of the authors (DR and SD), with any discrepancies discussed and resolved with a third author (GS). Based on the information extracted, papers were categorised as having food industry involvement if: 1) any of the authors self-affiliated as an employee, member or representative of the food industry; 2) the authors declared funding from the food industry, including direct funding for the study, donation of products to be used for the study, or funding received for other activities (e.g., conference attendance) not directly related to the study; or 3) other stated food industry involvement (e.g., through conflicts noted in the acknowledgments sections or other involvement that did not fit within the other categories). Where an individual article included multiple forms of industry involvement, each form of involvement was noted.

Classification of principal findings

The ‘principal findings’ of all articles that had involvement with the food industry were classified according to whether the findings were: 1) favourable to the interests of the food industry actor; 2) unfavourable to the interests of the food industry actor; 3) mixed; 4) neutral; or 5) not applicable to the food industry actor/s involved (see Table 1 for definition of each classification). The principal findings were operationalised as the results that were reported in the ‘results’ section of the abstract of the paper. If the relevant section of the abstract contained insufficient information to deduce the nature of the principal findings, the ‘results’ and ‘discussion’ sections of the paper were also examined to understand the nature of the principal reported findings. This approach was based on methods previously used for similar types of analyses [8, 33].
Table 1

Definitions used to classify principal findings of articles examined.

Classification of principal findingsDefinitionExamples of how this was operationalised
Favourable to the interests of the food industry actorThe principal findings were favourable to a specific product (or group of products) relevant to the actor/s and/or they were favourable to the interests of the food industry actor/s more generally.The authors concluded that the product had beneficial health effects or cast doubts on the evidence linking the product to health harms e.g. for papers that reported involvement of the dairy industry, the principal findings focused on either the benefits of the consumption of dairy products or calcium on cardiovascular health.
Unfavourable to the interests of the food industry actorThe principal findings did not support the food industry actor/s and/or consumption of relevant products.The authors concluded that the product did not bring beneficial health effects e.g. for papers that reported involvement of the non-alcoholic beverage industry, the principal findings focused on either the harmful effects of sugar consumption or non-nutritive sweeteners.
MixedThe principal findings included both favourable and unfavourable results with respect to the interests of the food industry actor/s.The authors discussed both positive and negative health effects of the product e.g. papers that found that consuming a product (e.g. red meat or refined carbohydrates) has both positive and negatives effects on the consumer.
NeutralThe principal findings were neither favourable nor unfavourable to the food industry actor/s.Descriptive findings or trends in consumption of a particular product.
Not applicable to the food industry actor/s involvedThe research question and related findings had no apparent relevance to the involved industry actor/s.The paper did not focus on a product or a component of a product relevant to the food industry.
For each of the ten journals, a sample of randomly selected original research articles that did not report food industry involvement was also selected. The process for selection of these articles was that, first, the number of articles with food industry involvement for each journal was calculated. Then, the matching number of articles from each journal, but without food industry involvement, was selected randomly from the list of included articles using the RAND function in Excel. Accordingly, an equal number of articles with and without industry involvement in each journal was selected for analysis. The principal findings of all selected articles without food industry involvement were examined and classified in the same way as the principal findings of the articles with food industry involvement. As there was no specific industry actor involved in these articles, a broad interpretation of food industry interests was taken when assessing the extent to which articles favoured food industry interests. For example, a favourable finding for any food product or nutrient was considered favourable to the food industry, whereas a negative finding for any food product or nutrient was considered unfavourable. The primary topic area of each of the articles was noted, including the particular foods, food components or nutrients (as relevant). Assessments of principal findings were conducted independently by two of the authors (DR and SD), with any discrepancies discussed and resolved with a third author (GS). Results were analysed by type of food industry involvement and by journal. For the purposes of this analysis of ‘type of food industry involvement’, author affiliations with the food industry and direct funding for the study from the food industry were grouped together (as they were considered more direct involvement) and compared to other types of food industry funding (that were considered less direct involvement).

Statistical analysis

All articles with food industry involvement were identified from each of the ten included journals, with the frequency and percentage in each category of favourability calculated. For the randomly selected matched sample of research articles with no food industry involvement, we calculated 95% confidence intervals (CIs) for the proportion of articles in each category of favourability (e.g., favourable or unfavourable to food industry interests) using Stata 15.0 (StataCorp, College Station, TX, USA).

Results

Of the 1,732 articles published in the selected journals, 1,461 peer-reviewed research articles met our inclusion criteria (n = 271 excluded) (. Amongst these, 196/1,461 (13.4%) were classified as having food industry involvement (). Refer to for details of food industry actors identified. 1 Food industry includes: (1) all private sector organisations involved in food and beverage production, distribution, marketing and retail; (2) manufacturers of nutrition supplements and breast-milk substitutes; (3) relevant industry groups and trade associations; (4) organisations that receive the majority of their funding from organisations in the food industry. 2 Articles with other involvement include involvement noted in acknowledgments and those that did not fit within the above categories. 3 Total does not represent the sum of the previous columns due to instances where food industry involvement occurred in a number of categories. The most common form of involvement was the provision of direct funding for the study (n = 120/196, 61.2%). Other involvement (including acknowledgments and information listed in the conflict of interests section and not related to other categories) represented the second most common form of involvement (82/196, 41.8%) followed by industry funding received for other research not directly related to the study (70/196, 35.7%) and authorship (59/196, 30.1%) (). Food industry involvement was noted across all 10 journals included in the sample. The Journal of Nutrition (28.3%), Nutrition Reviews (24.5%), and The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition (16.7%) published the highest proportion of articles with food industry-involvement. Paediatric Obesity (3.8%), International Journal of Behavioural Nutrition and Physical Activity (4.0%), and International Journal of Obesity (4.9%) published the lowest proportion of articles with food industry involvement (). Each journal had similar policies in place that required authors to disclose conflicts of interest. Four journals (Advances in Nutrition, The Journal of Nutrition, Obesity, Paediatric Obesity) included statements regarding conflicts of interest of their editorial board on the journal website. Editors from six journals (The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition, Advances in Nutrition, International Journal of Obesity, Nutrition Reviews, The Journal of Nutrition, Obesity) were identified as having involvement with the food industry (see ). No other relevant policies regarding studies with food industry involvement were identified by any journal. A diverse range of sectors of the food industry were involved in the research assessed (). The sectors most often represented were processed food manufacturing (39.3%), dietary supplement manufacturing (28.6%) and dairy (27.0%). Food retailers (including supermarkets) were involved in the fewest papers (2.6%). Of the 161 food industry actors identified as involved in research articles, the highest proportion (41.6%) were classified as trade/industry associations, 35.4% were classified as small corporations/other entities, and 23.0% were classified as large corporations (). However, these large corporations were the most frequently involved (47.8% of identified instances of food industry involvement), followed by trade/industry associations (36.4% of identified instances of food industry involvement) and small corporations/other entities (15.8% of identified instances of food industry involvement) (). Refer to for further information on the industry actors identified as being involved in more than 1% of articles. 1 See for food industry sector definitions and for a list of identified organisations within each food industry sector. 2 In many cases, multiple food industry actors were involved in a single article. See for further details of involvement of individual food industry actors. The majority of papers with food industry involvement reported findings that were considered favourable to the food industry (n = 109, 55.6%) (). The proportion of articles with findings considered favourable to the food industry was even higher (66.2%) where study authors reported either affiliations related to the food industry or direct funding for the study from the food industry (). In contrast, of the 196 randomly selected articles with no identified food industry involvement, 19 (9.7%, 95% CI: 7.0–12.4) reported findings classified as favourable to the food industry. The vast majority (n = 15/19, 78.9%) of these articles related to particular nutrients and/or food components (e.g., protein, vitamins), with the remaining four articles (21.1%) relating to foods and food products (e.g., coffee, green tea) (). 1 A random sample of articles without food industry involvement were selected to match the number of articles with food industry involvement for each journal included in the study. 2 95% confidence intervals are not provided for articles with food industry involvement because we identified all articles with declared food industry involvement from the population of articles in the selected journals. Only a small proportion (n = 13, 6.6%) of papers with food industry involvement reported results that were unfavourable to the food industry (). The percentage of articles with findings unfavourable to the food industry or mixed findings were similar for those articles with and without food industry involvement (). 117 (59.7%, 95% CI: 54.5–65.7) articles with no food industry involvement had findings considered not applicable to the food industry, compared to 50 (25.5%) of the articles with food industry involvement. Similar patterns were observed across each journal ().

Discussion

This study found that 13.4% of peer-reviewed research articles in the top 10 most-cited nutrition- and dietetics-related journals from 2018 reported food industry involvement. Food industry involvement spanned a number of industry sectors, with processed food manufacturing, dietary supplement manufacturing and dairy most often represented. The vast majority of industry involvement was from large corporations and trade/industry associations, rather than smaller corporations. The proportion of articles with findings considered favourable to the food industry was substantially higher among those articles with food industry involvement (55.6%) compared to a random sample of those without (9.7%), with the difference even more marked where industry involvement in studies was more direct (author affiliations or direct funding for the study). The percentage of articles considered unfavourable to the interests of the food industry was similar among the articles with food industry involvement and the random sample of those articles without. Considerable variation in the percentage of articles with industry involvement was observed between journals. The Journal of Nutrition and Nutrition Reviews published the highest proportion of articles with industry involvement. Both of these journals have declared connections to the food industry. Several members of the board of The Journal of Nutrition have declared conflicts of interest involving food companies [34]. The Journal of Nutrition is published by the American Society of Nutrition (ASN), which has formal partnerships with multiple food companies [35] and has been criticised for supporting food industry objectives over public health interests [24]. Other journals included in the sample (The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition and Advances in Nutrition) are also published by ASN, and had lower proportions of articles with food industry involvement compared to The Journal of Nutrition. Nutrition Reviews is published by the International Life Science Institute (ILSI), who were founded and are solely funded by large food industry companies including Mars, Nestlé, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo with the majority of their members’ interests opposing public health policy and objectives [36, 37]. Future research should explore the extent to which a journal’s connections to the food industry influence their publication priorities and editorial processes. The findings in this study support existing evidence that research with food industry involvement is generally favourable to the interests of the food industry [8, 11, 15, 18, 21, 24, 26, 38, 39]. In particular, this study adds to the growing empirical evidence that food industry involvement in nutrition research likely influences research agendas to focus disproportionately on topics of importance to the industry, potentially at the expense of topics of greater public health importance [8, 18]. A recent scoping review by Fabbri and colleagues [18] demonstrated the impact of industry involvement across a range of diverse sectors (including medicine and nutrition), finding that industry-funded research was more often focused on products, processes or activities that can be commercialised and marketed, rather than non-market based activities. They concluded that “corporate interests can drive research agendas away from questions that are the most relevant for public health” [18]. In addition, food industry-funded research has been noted as often focusing on a specific nutrient, potentially enabling the funder to market the benefits of particular nutrients [24]. While it has previously been reported that nutrition research funded by the food industry typically respects scientific standards for conducting and reporting scientific studies [17], the food industry was itself involved in that assessment, and the issue warrants further detailed exploration. It has been well documented that a range of industries, including the food industry, seek involvement in research, develop research that is favourable to their interests, and make use of scientific evidence as part of broader efforts to influence public health policy [19, 22, 29, 40–42]. Moreover, there is evidence that major corporations have pushed for policy making systems that provide a route for feeding corporate evidence into policy making [42, 43]. There are several examples of topic areas in which research funded by the food industry favours particular products or diverts attention away from a public health issue. For example, with respect to sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs), a body of research suggests that the involvement of the SSB sector in research has resulted in research that reports favourable findings for the industry [11, 44]. In addition, researchers have documented instances where Coca-Cola maintained control over study data and the disclosure of results for research it funded. Some research agreements between the company and their contracted researchers stated that Coca-Cola had the ultimate choice regarding publication of research findings [45].

Study limitations

To date, this is the first study to systematically examine the extent of involvement of the food industry in peer-reviewed research articles published in the leading nutrition and dietetics journals. Importantly, much peer-reviewed nutrition research is published outside of the selected nutrition and dietetics journals. Moreover, the study was not designed to identify research with food industry involvement that is published in topic areas outside of nutrition and dietetics, outside of peer-reviewed journals, or that is funded or conducted by the industry but remains unpublished. Accordingly, the study represents only a small and selected analysis of the extent of food industry involvement in nutrition research. Future studies should investigate nutrition-related articles from journals with both a nutrition and non-nutrition focus (including, for example, journals in medicine and public health). Ways to automate methods for comprehensively identifying different types of food industry involvement in published studies need to be explored. The classification of the principal findings of studies as favourable or unfavourable to the interests of the food industry was based on the knowledge of the researchers involved, which may have led to instances of unintended misclassification. Given the magnitude of the differences observed between articles with and without food industry involvement, unintended misclassifications are highly unlikely to have impacted the overall conclusions. We did not perform any analysis by study design of the included articles or in relation to the appropriateness and rigour of the research methods used in each article. Accordingly, we did not assess the influence of food industry involvement on scientific methods or the way in which they were applied. Aspects of study design and specific mechanisms by which food industry involvement may influence study focus areas and results should be included in future studies. The analysis relied primarily on the self-disclosure of food industry involvement (through declared conflicts of interests, funding acknowledgments, and author affiliations), with different journals having different disclosure requirements. We did not conduct an analysis of the veracity of each journal’s conflict of interest disclosure requirements, but this warrants further exploration. Importantly, undisclosed food industry involvement cannot be captured using the approach we adopted in this study. There is evidence that the disclosure of conflict of interest is under-reported in research [45, 46], indicating that the percentage of articles with food industry involvement may be larger than that observed here. In addition, our identification of food industry organisations involved in the included studies may have been incomplete. While we made use of an established list of food industry front groups as well as online searches of identified organisations to determine the nature of their operations and funding sources, it has previously been noted that financial links to the food industry are often not publicly available [30]. Finally, we did not conduct a detailed examination of the extent to which the editors of each journal have links to the food industry. Future research should further explore links between journal editors and the food industry and the role of journal editors in assessing conflicts of interest with the food industry.

Implications of the findings

The finding that food industry involvement is commonplace in peer-reviewed research in leading nutrition-related journals has several implications. With increased recognition of food industry bias within research, it is important to consider ways of maximising the integrity of research published in respected peer-reviewed nutrition journals and ensuring that research focused on issues of public health relevance is prioritized. One option could be to limit industry funding of research to a government- or independently-controlled pool of money that supports a research agenda developed independent of industry, with strict processes to ensure freedom from industry influence [47]. A similar model for pharmaceutical research already operates in Italy [48], and in relation to the tobacco and alcohol industry in California and Thailand [49]. Further, it is important that research institutions have strict, regularly updated and transparent guidelines and policies to regulate and report on their engagement with industry, including specifying the level of engagement permitted with different actors. For those institutions with food industry involvement, processes need to be put in place to ensure that the potential influence of the food industry on research agendas and research methods are managed [50]. Example of guidelines for managing engagement with industry include those from the Charles Perkins Centre at the University of Sydney [51] and the Global Obesity Centre at Deakin University in Australia [52]. Journals could also consider adopting detailed policies regarding articles with declared food industry involvement. Such policies could place limits on the number of articles that the journal will accept for review, specific topic areas where food industry involvement is discouraged, or specific sections in journals for studies with industry involvement [24]. Based on the findings of this study, all articles that include any type of food industry involvement warrant close scrutiny from journals, with a particular focus on more direct types of involvement (e.g., author affiliations and direct funding for a study). Journals should also have clear policies on disclosing editorial conflicts of interest, including any links between editors and the food industry. Moreover, any such conflicts need to be actively managed or eliminated. Further, research that investigates appropriate standards of disclosure and involvement can guide policy and practice in this area.

Conclusion

Food industry involvement in peer-reviewed nutrition research is commonplace, and the results of the majority of studies with food industry involvement favour the interests of the food industry. Given the potential competing interests of the food industry on the one hand, and scientific and population health interests on the other, it is important to explore mechanisms that can safeguard the integrity and public relevance of nutrition research, and ensure they are not undermined by the influence of the food industry.

Definitions of categories used to classify organisations from the food industry.

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Food industry actors identified as involved in research studies in the top 10 most-cited nutrition- and dietetics-related journals in 2018, by food industry sector and actor classification.

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The top 10 most-cited nutrition- and dietetics-related journals in 2018 and their declared involvement with the food industry.

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Food industry actors identified as being involved in the top 10 most-cited nutrition- and dietetics-related journals in 2018.

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Food industry actors identified as being involved in more than 1% of articles examined in the top 10 most-cited nutrition- and dietetics-related journals in 2018.

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Primary topic area of the random sample of articles without food industry involvement1.

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Nature of the findings in articles with and without1 food industry involvement, by journal.

(DOCX) Click here for additional data file. 23 Jul 2020 PONE-D-20-18349 The nature and extent of food industry involvement in nutrition research: an analysis of peer-reviewed research articles from leading nutrition-related journals PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Sacks, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. ============================== The reviewers felt that this paper makes an important contribution. However, there are a few major issues that require attention: First, the analysis feels incomplete. In providing a survey of the extent/prevalence of industry involvement in nutrition research, I would expect to see calculations of population proportions with confidence intervals, for example. In measuring the relationship between industry involvement and favourable results, the authors should perform statistical tests of these correlations. Sensitivity testing for non-disclosure, and also different types of industry involvement would strengthen the analysis. In the Introduction, the paper would be strengthened by adding discussion of the complexity of these issues. For example, unlike Big Tobacco, the 'food industry' encompasses a wide range of entities; it would be helpful to provide a lay of the land and point out that many of the negative public health impacts you describe pertain to multinational corporations. I would also suggest considering how the size/scope of entity (corporation vs trade association vs small company) might be incorporated into your coding. Similarly, greater specificity on the public health impacts and the nature of "food industry interests" would make the impetus for and impact of the study clearer. At points, the authors overstate the contribution this kind of analysis can make. Please clarify that the gap your study fills is the extent, nature and impact of food industry involvement in "published" or "peer reviewed" nutrition research. Presumably, a great deal of industrial research is conducted by the food industry. Clarification is requested by the reviewers for a number of the coding categories. I would suggest conducting a sensitivity analysis where you separate out industry funding/employment from financial conflicts of interest with industry. The current analysis seems to elide over some important differences in mechanisms for industry influence. I would expect the latter category to also be more common and yet, perhaps the least influential, thus overstating the findings. Please submit your revised manuscript by Aug 28 2020 11:59PM. 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The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #1: Yes Reviewer #2: Yes ********** 5. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #1: OVERVIEW Overall this is a useful and potentially important paper and should be published. I think it could be strengthened in a few ways. First, I think it is vital that clear definitions are given of “industry affiliated” and whether and how that was investigated. Second, I think the authors might be able to add a few further analyses that would strengthen the paper. I should note, however, that I don’t think these are essential. Finally, I think the tables could be improved to make the presentation simpler and clearer. I would also suggest greater attention be given to the variation in levels of favourable industry research by journal and role of journal editors – I see that as a key finding. Detailed comments follow by section. COMMENTS Abstract 1. Method needs some more specifics eg does not say how identified articles were assessed for inclusion and coded. 2. Result – I would consider including % by journal because I think that is one of the most interesting and important findings – ie journals with FI links publish more FI research favourable to the FI Methods 3. I think it would help to know each journal’s position on COI – are authors required to fully disclose COI? Do these journals have any policy on taking food industry-funded/linked research? 4. “food industry actors”: can you include the no. of article assessed (p 5) 5. Does the definition of food industry used have a source you can cite?– is it an accepted definition? 6. You then include “organisations affiliated with food industry organisations” - I think some clarity around definition here is needed: 1st a definition for “food industry organisations” is needed (this may simply be “ food industry” as you have just defined? Otherwise you need a new definition of “FI organisations”. 7. 2nd, I think you also need to define “affiliated” and clarify how you determine which additional organisations are ‘afffiliated’. Ie do you mean “funded by”? And did you need to investigate this? In my experience the funding to some of these organisations is hidden and there is a need to investigate financial links. Some tobacco industry research has developed systems for identifying these financial links which you could perhaps draw on. 8. Food industry involvement: You detail who did much of the coding – eg “two of the authors (DR and GS) to 112 determine whether there was food industry involvement in the paper” and “The categorisation was performed independently by two of the authors 128 (DR and SD), with any discrepancies discussed and resolved with a third author (GS).” But not who coded/double coded whether the findings were favourable. 9. You define a lot of coding categories in the text. It might be worth considering whether this would all be clearer in a table? 10. “The same number of articles with and without industry involvement in each journal was selected for analysis.” – was this overall or by journal? And, I assume this selection effectively came from the pile you had rejected in the 1st run through? Pls can you detail this and give numbers (fine if these go in results). Eg if 1450 articles published and assessed, 196 were food industry linked. The rest then you could select from as non-industry linked? 11. I’m wondering if there are a few minor things you could do to strengthen the paper: a. In my experience authors might identify themselves as working for a corporation, or funded by a corporation but then declare no COI even when the paper focuses on a topic that is directly in that corporations area of interest (ie where there is in fact a COI). Did you record whether declarations of COIs were consistent with your assessment of whether there was a COI? If not, could you add this? b. I’m interested in the varying percentages of industry linked papers by journal and am glad you present that. Just wondering if there is any evidence of certain editors having links to the FI and whether you would consider exploring and adding that? - Some of the percentages are very high. (I wrote this and then got to the discussion where you mention this! I wonder if it would be more powerful to more formally assess this and include it in the methods and results. Eg you coudl have a table with journals, % FI linked papers, the % of editors with Fi links, other journal links to FI etc.) Results 12. Can you clarify if 1450 is the total no. of articles once editorials, letters excluded? 13. Linked to my query about on transparency, you seem to have taken all statements of funding and COI at face value – is that correct? Or did you investigate whether, for example, unknown funders were linked to industry? 14. Table 1 – can you give %ages in the bottom (totals) line 15. Table 3 – ditto – pls give the N total and not just % in the bottom (totals) line 16. “Of the 196 randomly selected articles with no industry declared food industry involvement, 17. 207 138 (70.4%) had findings considered not applicable to the food industry, 24 (12.2%) reported findings classified as favourable to food industry interests, and 13 (6.6%) reported findings categorised as unfavourable to food industry interests (Table 3).” – I think it is hard to see where these data are in table 3. Pls consider changing the structure of and/or headings in table 3 to make this clearer Discussion 18. “It has been well documented that a range of industries, including the food industry, seek involvement in research and make use of scientific evidence as part of broader efforts to influence public health policy [16, 26-28].” – I think there are some other important papers to include there. In particular Ulucanlar’s Policy Dystopia Model which identifies “information management” as a key industry tactic – this includes producing & disseminating favourable research. You could also flag that diverse major corporations (including FI) have pushed for policy making systems that provide a route for feeding corporate evidence into policy making https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article/comments?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1000202 and indeed have gone on to use those systems (eg https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article/comments?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.1000202). Ie the development of favourable evidence is part of a broader system of policy influence. 19. In terms of policy suggestions there is work by Joanna Cohen which explores models through with corporate (in this case tobacco) money can be used to fund research while avoiding COI. https://tobaccocontrol.bmj.com/content/18/3/228?ijkey=141181f5dd20d7990a3e6b5dbefa6957116251eb&keytype2=tf_ipsecsha. There are examples of these systems in California and Thailand (mentioned here https://www.bmj.com/content/353/bmj.i2161) 20. In terms of journal recommendations – if you explored whether COIs are actually declared when they exist you could make a recommendation of making clear COI statements. Surely you also need to recommend editors should not have FI links? Reviewer #2: Bias in nutrition science is an important topic and an under-explored area of research. This article makes a contribution by examining food industry sponsorship/ author conflicts of interest in the top 10 nutrition/dietetics journals. My first reaction to the abstract and introduction is that the authors have overstated the scope of the manuscript. For example, the authors state that "This study aimed to identify the extent of food industry involvement in peer-reviewed nutrition articles." Food industry involvement seems to be operationalized as the relationship between article sponsorship and author conflict of interest compared to favorable/unfavorable "principle findings." This manuscript does not evaluate methodological quality, nor does it evaluate the relationship between sponsorship/COI and study results --therefore it is not analyzing the full extent of food industry involvement. (Furthermore, it may not be possible to know the full extent of industry involvement without access to internal documents). This manuscript would be improved by clearly stating what is analyzed and how it contributes to the overall literature. Introduction: Line 63 - -It is not clear that the authors are aware of food industry involvement in influencing guidelines for evaluating integrity in nutrition science. For example, citation #8 here is partly sponsored by ASN and ILSI. Paragraph at Line 67 -- the list of objectionable motives don't seem very objectionable. Why shouldn't a business entity conduct marketing research? What's wrong with sponsoring research that benefits industry interests? Line 82-86: This is a superficial review of the literature and would benefit from more explanation and detail--to set the context for the current study and explain how it fits in with current literature. Line 86: "To date, no study has comprehensively examined the extent, nature and impact of food industry involvement in nutrition research." --Again, this is an overstatement. No one study could possibly do this. Line 88: "This study aimed to fill this significant evidence gap by systematically identifying the extent of food industry involvement in peer-reviewed research articles from a large sample of leading nutrition-related journals." Again -- no one study could fill this gap. This manuscript contributes to a growing body of empirical analysis. It is also important to acknowledge that much "nutrition research" takes place outside of nutrition/dietetics journals. Sample: The current SJR list has Annual Review of Nutrition as #1 and Pediatric Obesity at #14 – recommend clarifying at what point in time list was accessed. Line 144: the use of "principal findings" is a bit confusing and does not conform with past evaluations (to my knowledge). If the authors are using an established methodology -- should be referenced. Otherwise -- it is unclear to talk about results contained within conclusions. Results are results. Conclusions are conclusions. See Citation #5 Results: Line 183: Results would be improved with inclusion of a study flow diagram. Did the authors really assess 1450 articles, or were they screened for food industry involvement and article type? A flow diagram would make it easier to understand the random sample of non-industry involved articles which right now reads like an add on requested by a previous reviewer. The results would also benefit from aligning the flow of tables to match flow of text. Results/tables would also be easier to follow if both n/% are included in Total rows. Discussion: Line 214 -- would be more accurate to specify that articles without food industry involvement = a random sample. Line 226--"importantly, however" -- it is not clear what distinction is being made here. Line 236 -- "It has previously been reported that nutrition research funded by the food industry typically respects scientific standards for conducting and reporting scientific studies [14]" This is an industry sponsored study. It should not be taken at face value. Line 276 - is this a limitation or a continuation of the discussion? ********** 6. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #1: No Reviewer #2: No [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. 31 Aug 2020 Please refer to point by point response and detailed comments in 'response to reviewers' file attached. Submitted filename: PLOS ONE response to reviewers FINAL.docx Click here for additional data file. 9 Oct 2020 PONE-D-20-18349R1 The nature and extent of food industry involvement in nutrition research: an analysis of peer-reviewed research articles from leading nutrition-related journals PLOS ONE Dear Dr. Sacks, Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process. ============================== While one reviewer confirmed that their previous comments had been addressed, unfortunately, not all of the original reviewers were available to re-review the manuscript. Thus, I invited additional reviewers to review the re-submission and ask that you attend to their comments. Particularly, I ask that you re-consider and/or justify the approach to classify a "favourable" conclusion among non-industry-sponsored studies. Second, two reviewers have raised concerns about the adequacy of the sampling methods and their reporting and whether these constitute a 'systematic' assessment of the literature; at minimum, please address this in the study's limitations, or, consider revising these methods. The third reviewer raised the question of conducting a regression analysis to infer a causal relationship, which I suggest is beyond the scope of this design, however, I would appreciate your response. ============================== Please submit your revised manuscript by Nov 23 2020 11:59PM. If you will need more time than this to complete your revisions, please reply to this message or contact the journal office at plosone@plos.org. When you're ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file. Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript: A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). You should upload this letter as a separate file labeled 'Response to Reviewers'. A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'. An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. You should upload this as a separate file labeled 'Manuscript'. If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter. Guidelines for resubmitting your figure files are available below the reviewer comments at the end of this letter. If applicable, we recommend that you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io to enhance the reproducibility of your results. Protocols.io assigns your protocol its own identifier (DOI) so that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript. Kind regards, Quinn Grundy, PhD, RN Academic Editor PLOS ONE [Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.] Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #3: (No Response) Reviewer #4: (No Response) ********** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: Partly ********** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: Yes ********** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: Yes ********** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #2: Yes Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: Yes ********** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #2: (No Response) Reviewer #3: In an important contribution to understanding of the role of commercial actors in science, the authors map the extent and nature of food industry involvement in the area of nutrition research. They identify peer-reviewed articles which declare food industry funding or links, in 10 leading nutrition journals, and categorise whether their findings are favourable the food industry. They compare the latter to a sample of articles which do not declare industry involvement, concluding that articles with industry involvement are more likely to be favourable to the food industry than those without. They also find that the extent of food industry involvement nutrition-related research is substantial, though it varies between journals. Overall, the paper is well written, a pleasure to read, and fills a crucial research gap. The rationale is clear and, for the most part, the authors explain very well what they did. The classification of food industry involvement is very clear and detailed, which provides interesting insights into which parts of the industry are most involved in nutrition research and will be useful for other researchers looking to classify food industry actors. The key point I would like to raise pertains to the analysis of the articles without food industry involvement for favourability. The definition used for the industry-funded/linked articles seems appropriate as the favourability of their findings can be assessed in relation to the associated food industry actor. Favourability for the articles without industry involvement, however, is defined as follows: “a favourable finding for any food product or nutrient was considered favourable to the food industry, whereas a negative finding for any food product or nutrient was considered unfavourable” (line 188 onwards). This approach to operationalising favourability to the food industry is very broad and raises the question whether articles supporting the consumption of nutrients and products widely considered as healthy, such as whole grains, fruits, and vegetables, would be included as favourable to the food industry. I suggest that the authors refine this part of the paper accordingly. This could be done, for example, by clarifying or revisiting the definition of favourability for articles without food industry involvement, or by expanding the reporting of results on favourability for articles without industry involvement (i.e. which products/nutrients did the findings support). Additionally, it would be helpful to have more detail regarding the process behind the selection of the random sample of articles without food industry involvement (line 183). Reviewer #4: Sacks and colleagues have conducted an important piece of work to describe characteristics, such as authors' affiliations, funding source from food industry, and research findings regarding the food intervention/exposure, in academic articles published in the top 10 nutrition journals. While it is important to describe these characteristics, it is also important to understand whether there is any causal inference can be established in this setting. Specific comments in the text of the manuscript: Abstract The study has used nature and extent in the objective of the study frequently. However, this is not clear to the readers what the authors are trying to measure. Suggest using more precise wording to describe what the study measured. Methods: if a systematic search was applied to identify the articles, please state it here. Otherwise, please describe how the articles were selected and what are the principal search articles and a random sample of studies. Results: some of the values should be provided. For example, please provide values for the variation related to “196/1,461 (13.4%) articles reported food industry involvement, with large variation by journal.” and values of proportion for “Journals with declared links to the food industry published a higher proportion of papers with food industry involvement.” Conclusion: it needs more substantive evidence, such as regression analysis, to substantiate the conclusion: “This study, in line with previous literature, has shown that the results of peer-reviewed studies involving the food industry are more likely to favour relevant food industry interests than peer-reviewed studies without food industry involvement.” Main text: Introduction: line 93 on page 11: Again, I find it hard to understand what it means or what is measured here by using "extent" and "nature" in the objective of the study. Line 95: “Better information in this area” – please be specific about what “better” information means here. This will also help the readers understand the research gap in the literature. Methods: Please provide rationale of only looking into 10 nutrition journals rather than conducting a systematic review to identify nutrition studies. I would also recommend describing the study design and intervention/expsoure of the included studies. Details are needed to describe how the information was obtained in line 119-123. Since the authors are assessing how industry involvement in nutrition research may affect “favorable” findings, is it possible to conduct a regression analysis to infer a potentially causal relationship? Results Table 2: can the authors provide 95% CI for the articles with food industry involvement, so that it is comparable with the results in Table 4? Table 3: what does “other” include? Discussion I think one of the major limitations of the study is the selection of articles. The current inlcuded studies may not be complete, as many nutrition-related research articles are not necessarily published in nutrition journals but in other journals with a broader category in health. These may include high-impact medical journals and science journals. ********** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #2: No Reviewer #3: No Reviewer #4: No [NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files.] While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email PLOS at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step. 27 Oct 2020 Please refer to separate document (attached) that has a point by point response to each comment Submitted filename: PLOS ONE Round 2 - response to reviewers 27Oct.docx Click here for additional data file. 17 Nov 2020 The characteristics and extent of food industry involvement in peer-reviewed research articles from 10 leading nutrition-related journals in 2018 PONE-D-20-18349R2 Dear Dr. Sacks, We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements. Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication. An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org. Kind regards, Quinn Grundy, PhD, RN Academic Editor PLOS ONE Additional Editor Comments (optional): Reviewers' comments: Reviewer's Responses to Questions Comments to the Author 1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation. Reviewer #3: All comments have been addressed Reviewer #4: All comments have been addressed ********** 2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions? The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented. Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: Yes ********** 3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously? Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: N/A ********** 4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available? The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified. Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: Yes ********** 5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English? PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here. Reviewer #3: Yes Reviewer #4: Yes ********** 6. Review Comments to the Author Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters) Reviewer #3: (No Response) Reviewer #4: Thank you for putting the efforts to address my comments, which I am satisfied. Perhaps in future studies, consider a statistical regression model to see whether COI and conclusions in favor of sponsors would hold in these studies. This will definitely strengthen the argument and support the hypothesis. ********** 7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files. If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public. Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy. Reviewer #3: No Reviewer #4: No 20 Nov 2020 PONE-D-20-18349R2 The characteristics and extent of food industry involvement in peer-reviewed research articles from 10 leading nutrition-related journals in 2018 Dear Dr. Sacks: I'm pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been deemed suitable for publication in PLOS ONE. Congratulations! Your manuscript is now with our production department. If your institution or institutions have a press office, please let them know about your upcoming paper now to help maximize its impact. If they'll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team within the next 48 hours. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information please contact onepress@plos.org. If we can help with anything else, please email us at plosone@plos.org. Thank you for submitting your work to PLOS ONE and supporting open access. Kind regards, PLOS ONE Editorial Office Staff on behalf of Dr. Quinn Grundy Academic Editor PLOS ONE
Table 2

Original research articles with food industry involvement in the top 10 nutrition-related journals in 2018.

JournalArticles included in the sampleArticles with authors reporting affiliations related to the food industry 1 (n, % of row total)Articles with declared funding from the food industryArticles with other 2 stated involvement from the food industry (n, % of row total)Total number of articles with food industry involvement (n, % of row total) 3
Direct funding for the study (n, % of row total)Donation of products to be used for the study (n, % of row total)Funding received for other research not directly related to the study (n, % of row total)
The Journal of Nutrition22322, 9.9%46, 20.6%8, 3.6%12, 5.4%35, 15.7%63, 28.3%
Nutrition Reviews535, 9.4%7, 13.2%0, 0.0%6, 11.3%12, 22.6%13, 24.5%
The American Journal of Clinical Nutrition22111, 5.0%25, 11.3%9, 4.1%20, 9.0%8, 3.6%37, 16.7%
Clinical Nutrition2129, 4.2%20, 9.4%10, 4.7%16, 7.5%11, 5.2%35, 16.5%
Obesity2313, 1.3%8, 3.5%5, 2.2%8, 3.5%8, 3.5%22, 9.5%
Advances in Nutrition643, 4.7%4, 6.3%1, 1.6%2, 3.1%2, 3.1%6, 9.4%
Nutrition Research Reviews211, 5.8%0, 0.0%0, 0.0%0, 0.0%1, 4.8%1, 4.8%
International Journal of Obesity2063, 1.5%3, 1.5%0, 0.0%4, 1.9%3, 1.5%10, 4.9%
International Journal of Behavioural Nutrition and Physical Activity1241, 0.8%4, 3.2%0, 0.0%1, 0.8%1, 0.8%5, 4.0%
Paediatric Obesity1061, 0.9%3, 2.8%0, 0.0%1, 0.9%1, 0.9%4, 3.8%
Total146159, 4.0%120, 8.2%33, 2.3%70, 4.8%82, 5.6%196, 13.4%

1 Food industry includes: (1) all private sector organisations involved in food and beverage production, distribution, marketing and retail; (2) manufacturers of nutrition supplements and breast-milk substitutes; (3) relevant industry groups and trade associations; (4) organisations that receive the majority of their funding from organisations in the food industry.

2 Articles with other involvement include involvement noted in acknowledgments and those that did not fit within the above categories.

3 Total does not represent the sum of the previous columns due to instances where food industry involvement occurred in a number of categories.

Table 3

Food industry involvement in research articles in the top 10 nutrition-related journals in 2018, by food industry sector.

Food industry sector1Number of articles specifying food industry involvement, % of total2
Processed food manufacturing77, 39.3%
Dietary supplement manufacturing56, 28.6%
Dairy53, 27.0%
Primary production (non-dairy, non-meat)43, 21.9%
Other30, 15.3%
Non-alcoholic beverage manufacturing23, 11.7%
Meat and livestock12, 6.1%
Food chemical suppliers and food technology companies6, 3.1%
Food retail5, 2.6%

1 See for food industry sector definitions and for a list of identified organisations within each food industry sector.

2 In many cases, multiple food industry actors were involved in a single article. See for further details of involvement of individual food industry actors.

Table 4

Nature of the findings in articles with and without food industry involvement, by type of food industry involvement.

Articles with food industry involvement 2Articles with no food industry involvement 1 n, % of column total (95% Confidence Intervals)
Articles with authors reporting affiliations related to the food industry OR direct funding for the study from the food industry n, % of column totalArticles with no reported author affiliations related to the food industry AND no direct finding for the study from the food industry n, % of column totalTotal n, % of column total
Articles with findings favourable to the food industry86, 66.2%23, 34.9%109, 55.6%19, 9.7% (7.0%-12.4%)
Articles with findings unfavourable to the food industry6, 4.7%7, 10.7%13, 6.6%12, 6.1% (3.1%-10.6%)
Articles with mixed findings with respect to the food industry8, 6.2%11, 16.7%19, 9.7%20, 10.2% (6.8%-13.9%)
Articles with neutral findings with respect to the food industry2, 1.5%3, 4.6%5, 2.6%28, 14.3% (10.9%-17.8%)
Articles with findings not applicable to food industry interests28, 21.5%22, 33.3%50, 25.5%117, 59.7% (54.5%-65.7%)
Total130, 100%66, 100%196, 100%196, 100%

1 A random sample of articles without food industry involvement were selected to match the number of articles with food industry involvement for each journal included in the study.

2 95% confidence intervals are not provided for articles with food industry involvement because we identified all articles with declared food industry involvement from the population of articles in the selected journals.

  41 in total

1.  Food industry front groups and conflicts of interest: the case of Americans Against Food Taxes.

Authors:  Swati Yanamadala; Marie A Bragg; Christina A Roberto; Kelly D Brownell
Journal:  Public Health Nutr       Date:  2012-06-12       Impact factor: 4.022

2.  Ethics opinion: conflicts of interest in presentations and publications and dietetics research.

Authors:  Catherine E Woteki
Journal:  J Am Diet Assoc       Date:  2006-01

Review 3.  Effects of soft drink consumption on nutrition and health: a systematic review and meta-analysis.

Authors:  Lenny R Vartanian; Marlene B Schwartz; Kelly D Brownell
Journal:  Am J Public Health       Date:  2007-02-28       Impact factor: 9.308

Review 4.  The Influence of Industry Sponsorship on the Research Agenda: A Scoping Review.

Authors:  Alice Fabbri; Alexandra Lai; Quinn Grundy; Lisa Anne Bero
Journal:  Am J Public Health       Date:  2018-09-25       Impact factor: 9.308

5.  Food Industry Funding of Nutrition Research: The Relevance of History for Current Debates.

Authors:  Marion Nestle
Journal:  JAMA Intern Med       Date:  2016-11-01       Impact factor: 21.873

6.  Should we welcome food industry funding of public health research?

Authors:  Paul Aveyard; Derek Yach; Anna B Gilmore; Simon Capewell
Journal:  BMJ       Date:  2016-04-20

7.  Scientific journals and conflict of interest disclosure: what progress has been made?

Authors:  Kathleen Ruff
Journal:  Environ Health       Date:  2015-05-30       Impact factor: 5.984

Review 8.  How does the tobacco industry attempt to influence marketing regulations? A systematic review.

Authors:  Emily Savell; Anna B Gilmore; Gary Fooks
Journal:  PLoS One       Date:  2014-02-05       Impact factor: 3.240

9.  "Working the system"--British American tobacco's influence on the European union treaty and its implications for policy: an analysis of internal tobacco industry documents.

Authors:  Katherine E Smith; Gary Fooks; Jeff Collin; Heide Weishaar; Sema Mandal; Anna B Gilmore
Journal:  PLoS Med       Date:  2010-01-12       Impact factor: 11.069

10.  Pushing partnerships: corporate influence on research and policy via the International Life Sciences Institute.

Authors:  Sarah Steele; Gary Ruskin; David Stuckler
Journal:  Public Health Nutr       Date:  2020-05-18       Impact factor: 4.022
View more
  5 in total

1.  Commercial use of evidence in public health policy: a critical assessment of food industry submissions to global-level consultations on non-communicable disease prevention.

Authors:  Kathrin Lauber; Darragh McGee; Anna B Gilmore
Journal:  BMJ Glob Health       Date:  2021-08

Review 2.  Beyond nutrition and physical activity: food industry shaping of the very principles of scientific integrity.

Authors:  Mélissa Mialon; Matthew Ho; Angela Carriedo; Gary Ruskin; Eric Crosbie
Journal:  Global Health       Date:  2021-04-20       Impact factor: 4.185

3.  The nutrition transition to a stage of high obesity and noncommunicable disease prevalence dominated by ultra-processed foods is not inevitable.

Authors:  Barry M Popkin; Shu Wen Ng
Journal:  Obes Rev       Date:  2021-10-10       Impact factor: 10.867

4.  Corporate political activity in the context of unhealthy food advertising restrictions across Transport for London: A qualitative case study.

Authors:  Kathrin Lauber; Daniel Hunt; Anna B Gilmore; Harry Rutter
Journal:  PLoS Med       Date:  2021-09-02       Impact factor: 11.069

5.  Governing evidence use in the nutrition policy process: evidence and lessons from the 2020 Canada food guide.

Authors:  Isaac Weldon; Justin Parkhurst
Journal:  Nutr Rev       Date:  2022-02-10       Impact factor: 7.110
  5 in total

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