PHILADELPHIA –Call it a scientific food fight.
The incoming president of the nation’s leading group of obesity researchers has sparked a debate among his colleagues by taking the restaurant industry’s side in a court case to limit obesity.
At issue is the effort by the New York City health department to make restaurants with 15 locations or more post food calories on overhead menu boards.
The industry is fighting the effort as unconstitutional even as the idea is popping up in the Kings County area around Seattle and in Montgomery County, Md. A similar measure was introduced last week for the second time by Philadelphia City Councilwoman Blondell Reynolds Brown.
The fight over calorie labeling in New York escalated recently when David B. Allison, a nutrition professor at the University of Alabama, wrote a 43-page brief for the New York State Restaurant Association, stating that there wasn’t clear evidence that calorie postings would work.
The filing by Allison, president-elect of the Obesity Society, stunned some colleagues, who believe he had crossed the line into paid advocacy.
“He’s working as an advocate for a company against what I view as the public good,” said Barry M. Popkin, director of the Interdisciplinary Obesity Center at the University of North Carolina, who filed a brief in support of the health department.
“What he recommended flew against what all public health and obesity professionals have been promoting, which is more information” for consumers, said Popkin, who has consulted for cereal maker Kellogg’s, among others.
Allison said he was disappointed by the attacks. He said he didn’t write that the New York plan was bad, only that science didn’t yet support it. “I’m questioning what people don’t want to see questioned,” he said.
The relationship between academic researchers and industry is a front-burner issue in many fields. Several congressional inquiries are looking at drug firm support for the American College of Cardiology, the national cardiology group and the American Heart Association.
Compared to those groups, the Obesity Society, based in Silver Spring, Md., would seem like a tiny outpost with its $2.1 million budget. But the group’s 1,800 members include many influential researchers, physicians and dieticians.
The society relies heavily on industry money, raising about $1 million in the last year from various companies, said Morgan Downey, executive vice president. The biggest corporate donors were drugmakers sanofi aventis, GlaxoSmithKline and Allergan as well as the health care conglomerate Covidien, he said.
About $230,000 of the corporate money funded a conference in September for health advisors to presidential candidates, Downey said.
Current president Gary D. Foster, director of the Center For Obesity, Research and Education at Temple University, said Allison didn’t do anything wrong.
“There’s always some natural tension in taking money from anyone,” said Foster, who has consulted for GlaxoSmithKline and others. “Does it bias us? These kind of issues bring it to the fore.”
Thomas A. Wadden, Director of the Center for Weight and Eating Disorders at the University of Pennsylvania, said he was concerned that people would think Allison was speaking for the society.
Wadden, the society’s president in 2005-06, said he supported the New York City effort. “The first step in treatment is to have people become more aware of their calorie intake,” said Wadden, who has worked for sanofi aventis and Novo Nordisk.
Last week the society issued a statement of support for the New York City regulation.
That did little to mollify Allison’s critics.
Several expressed disbelief at the breadth of Allison’s industry connections. In a 2005 article for the New England Journal of Medicine, Allison listed 149 funders for grants, consulting or other payments. The donors ranged from Coca Cola and Archer Daniels Midland to drugmakers Merck and Wyeth.
Marlene B. Schwartz, deputy director of the Rudd Center for Food Policy and Obesity at Yale University, criticized Allison for appearing to require scientific studies that calorie labeling would work. Government officials didn’t wait for elaborate trials to take the lead out of gasoline or require nutrition labeling on packaged goods, she wrote in a court filing.
Simone A. French, a professor of Community Health at the University of Minnesota, said she was incensed that Allison would cite the society’s presidency in his credentials in his report supporting the restaurant industry. “That to me is unethical to use your position for personal financial gain,” she said.
Allison declined to say how much he received. “I don’t see companies or government agencies as inherently evil,” he said. “I’m willing to consult with whomever as long as it’s an interesting project and I have the freedom to speak my mind openly.”
Of his filings, he said, “I’m very straight. I’m not sure everyone is as open about listing things as I am.”
New York officials will face the restaurant industry on Thursday in federal court. The regulation could take effect as soon as Mar. 31.
One person watching the outcome will be Philadelphia councilwoman Brown, who believes that calorie labeling “will help consumers be better informed about what they eat.”
A spokesman for Philadelphia Mayor Michael Nutter said it was too early to know if he would support the bill.
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