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Black Eye
The Center for Science in the Public Interest has an entire program dedicated to what it calls “Integrity in Science” (in reality, a platform for bashing science it doesn’t like). But CSPI itself regularly perverts science for the sake of a scary press release. The group practices a kind of cooked-to-order “science” that twists evidence to support its radical agenda.“Like some evangelical Jack Spratt, [CSPI co-founder] Michael F. Jacobson seems to have made it his mission in life to warn society of the dangers of eating—and becoming—fat,” writes the Cleveland Plain Dealer. “The success of this apparently well-intentioned crusade may be giving rise to other, less obvious dangers to our collective health—those of desensitization, oversimplification and omission.” And sometimes, we might add, exaggeration and misrepresentation that abandon reality altogether.
Liquid candy?
In 1998 CSPI issued a report titled “Liquid Candy,” which claimed that some teenagers get up to 25 percent of their calories from soda. Just one week later, following massive media attention, CSPI admitted that it had overstated its figures by a whopping 100 percent. In fact, American boys drink less than half the amount of soft drinks initially claimed by CSPI’s flawed report.
While CSPI quietly made the correction (after the media fracas died down), it still heavily promotes its “liquid candy” report, using it as the basis of its efforts to ban soda from schools and slap extra taxes on all things fizzy and sweet.
Assault on Salt
According to CSPI, salt is a "silent killer" that takes the lives of 150,000 Americans a year. That number comes from a four-page commentary written by a member of CSPI’s own advisory board—hardly an unbiased source. And this commentary provides no explanation for how the death total was calculated.
Many rigorous scientific investigations have found little or no link between salt and mortality. A meta-study published in the prestigious British Medical Journal summarized the findings of a number of studies on the subject and found: "It is unclear what effects a low sodium diet has on cardiovascular events and mortality." Another study published in the American Heart Association journal Hypertension concluded:
[F]ew data link sodium intake to health outcomes, and that which is available is inconsistent. Without knowledge of the sum of the multiple effects of reduced sodium diet, no single universal prescription for sodium intake can be scientifically justified.
Hypocritical Trans-ition
In September 2004, CSPI executive director Michael Jacobson published an op-ed in The San Francisco Chronicle renewing his call to outlaw trans fats from the American diet. He wrote: “It’s time to dump partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, the quintessential symbol of modern food technology, into the garbage disposal of history.”
While he insists that trans fats are responsible for as many as 30,000 deaths a year (a highly questionable figure), Jacobson fails to mention that he is largely responsible for their heavier concentration in the American diet. In fact, CSPI was originally one of trans fats’ most vocal proponents.
According to trans fat opponent Dr. Mary Enig, a Ph.D. nutritionist who has edited both the Journal of the American College of Nutrition and Clinical Nutrition, the blame for trans fat falls largely on Jacobson and CSPI. She wrote in the fall of 2003:
It is impossible to measure the hazards and grief that [CSPI Director of Nutrition Bonnie] Leibman and Jacobson—the leaders of the major nutrition "activist" consumer organization—have inflicted on many millions of an unknowing public.
The story dates to the mid-1980s, when CSPI launched an all-out assault on fast food restaurants that used beef fat and palm oil to cook their French fries. Jacobson led protests in front of restaurants and organized a massive postcard campaign aimed at their corporate headquarters. By the early ‘90s, most chains had replaced CSPI’s hated beef fat and tropical oils with the only viable alternative: partially hydrogenated oil, which contained trans fats. Jacobson claimed victory.
Along the path to this "success," CSPI busied itself exonerating hydrogenated oils from a number of studies linking them to increased levels of blood cholesterol. In 1988 CSPI wrote in its Nutrition Action Healthletter: "All told, the charges against trans fat just don’t stand up. And by extension, hydrogenated oils seem relatively innocent." And in a second article a year later, CSPI’s Leibman wrote, "The Bottom Line ... Trans, shmans."
Acrylamide
A CSPI lab technician once described a “Michael Jacobson sandwich” as “ a piece of lettuce between pieces of bread.” But Jacobson is now on a vendetta against bread, thanks to a little known chemical called acrylamide, which is present in many foods, but is found at its highest concentrations in starches cooked at high temperatures.
In June of 2003, CSPI held a press conference to announce that it had formally petitioned the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, asking that agency to force food manufacturers to limit the amount of acrylamide in their products.
This petition is the mother of all black eyes.
Global public health bodies have reached no consensus on acrylamide’s potential human health effects. That didn’t stop Michael Jacobson from declaring “acrylamide probably causes on the order of a thousand new cases of cancer per year in the United States, perhaps as many as several thousand.” CSPI’s petition to the FDA is even more specific (and cavalier), claiming that “dietary acrylamide causes an estimated 8,900 cancers per year” among Americans.
But the fine print of CSPI’s petition makes several remarkable admissions. First, CSPI used data from 1994-96 to estimate the average Americans’ intake of acrylamide, even though less doom-and-gloom-oriented data from 1998 were available.
Second, CSPI admits it “adjusted” the government nutrition data so it could claim that Americans eat 37 micrograms of Acrylamide each day—27 percent more than the 1994-96 data indicate, and 42 percent more than the 1998 numbers show.
Third, CSPI underestimated the average American’s weight by more than 7 percent, artificially increasing the effect of acrylamide on the “average” American body. This is particularly amusing, considering that CSPI has gone out of its way in recent years to claim that America is in the throes of an “obesity epidemic.”
Fourth, CSPI concedes that “using more recent EPA methods for projecting cancer-risk findings may result in estimates several-fold less.” How CSPI justifies using an outdated and retired EPA risk-assessment model is never explained.
And fifth, CSPI claimed “an epidemiological study” has “provided the first evidence that acrylamide might cause (pancreatic) cancer in humans” [parentheses in the original]. But CSPI admits in a footnote that the authors of its cited 1999 study “did not find an association between acrylamide and cancer.”
In 2002, despite its heavy reliance on junk science (or perhaps because of it), CSPI was more than willing to provide ammunition to a group of California lawyers who sued food companies over acrylamide in their products. The lawyers’ petition, which was initially filed weeks before CSPI issued its list of foods containing “disturbingly high levels” of acrylamide, included a list of targeted foods identical to CSPI’s. CSPI has yet to explain how a bunch of California trial lawyers knew exactly which products it was testing, nearly a month before the rest of us.
Olestra
“Someone [might] wake up in the middle of the night with severe pain and try to run to the bathroom and break her neck.” That’s how the fat substitute Olestra might kill someone, according to Michael Jacobson. CSPI’s war on fat is matched only by its war on this fat substitute. Its animus towards Olestra is so great that it is perfectly willing to bend reality to attack it.
CSPI crowed loudly in 1999 when Rosie O’Donnell declined to endorse Frito-Lay’s products containing the fat substitute Olestra. When it turned out that Rosie merely had a scheduling conflict, and that food safety issues had nothing to do with the decision, Michael Jacobson refused to remove his version of the “truth” from CSPI’s website. “Let’s say it’s not true,” he told the Dallas Observer. “In one way, the Web is history and one could argue that organizations should leave a public record of everything they’ve done and said.” The respected Tufts University Nutrition Navigator wrote in 1998: “We take issue with [CSPI’s] sensational and alarmist tone. ‘The Facts About Olestra,’ with its blacklist of brand names, ‘anal leakage’ humor, and numerous CSPI press releases seemed to be more of a vendetta than an objective presentation of the facts. And if you are to avoid as many processed foods and additives as they advise, what else is left to eat?”
Considering CSPI’s years-long jihad against fatty foods, it may seem incongruous that the group attacks a perfectly safe fat substitute. If you want Americans to slim down, isn’t a fat substitute a good thing? Not if you accept grant money from foundations specifically to attack Olestra. CSPI did just that in 1998 and 1999—to the tune of at least $65,000.
Additives
In 1999, CSPI released a report that blamed Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and other childhood behavioral problems on food additives, particularly food coloring. It also suggested that Ritalin may cause cancer and should no longer be proscribed. Instead, CSPI said, hyperactive children should simply change their diets. Thankfully, this bit of junk science was immediately refuted by real experts. A spokesman for the National Institute of Mental Health, which studies hyperactivity among children, called CSPI’s proposal “a very troublesome and harmful suggestion” and “very irresponsible.”
Unfortunately, CSPI doesn’t seem to care if it suffers from a science “deficit.” After all, even if additives don’t cause hyperactivity, CSPI still disapproves of their use. The group argues that “because colorings are used almost solely in foods of low nutritional value (candy, soda pop, gelatin desserts, etc.), you should simply avoid all artificially colored foods.” This is typical CSPI strategy: Cook up a bogus report about some previously unknown food danger, and when cornered about the scientific validity, insist—even if the report is hopelessly flawed—that you shouldn’t eat the food anyway.
Integrity in Science
CSPI’s “Integrity in Science” project is ostensibly concerned with the potential conflict of interest that researchers might have when their funding comes from industry. But many of CSPI’s own campaigns—including those heavily reliant on junk science—are equally susceptible to conflict of interest charges. In addition to its $65,000 incentive to bash the fat substitute Olestra, CSPI accepted over $100,000 from the Park Foundation to work on its food additives project. And in 2001, the reliably anti-alcohol Robert Wood Johnson Foundation gave CSPI’s campaign against social drinkers $749,999.
