Department of Population Health, New York University School of Medicine, New York, NY 10016, USA.
Department of Nutrition, New York University School of Global Public Health, New York, NY 10012, USA.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2020 Mar 3;17(5):1624. doi: 10.3390/ijerph17051624.
No studies have documented the prevalence of the food industry's funding of academic programs, which is problematic because such funding can create conflicts of interest in research and clinical practice. We aimed to quantify the publicly available information on the food industry's donations to academic programs by documenting the amount of donations given over time, categorizing the types of academic programs that receive food industry donations, cataloguing the source of the donation information, and identifying any stated reasons for donations. Researchers cataloged online data from publicly available sources (e.g., official press releases, news articles, tax documents) on the food industry's donations to academic programs from 2000 to 2016. Companies included 26 food and beverage corporations from the 2016 Fortune 500 list in the United States. Researchers recorded the: (1) monetary value of the donations; (2) years the donations were distributed; (3) the name and type of recipient; (4) source of donation information; and (5) reasons for donations. Adjusting for inflation, we identified $366 million in food industry donations (N = 3274) to academic programs. Universities received 45.2% ( = 1480) of donations but accounted for 67.9% of total dollars given in the sample. Community colleges, schools (i.e., preschool, elementary, middle, and high schools), and academic nonprofits, institutes, foundations, and research hospitals collectively received 54.8% of the donations, but made up less than one-third of the monetary value of donations. Half of the donations (49.0%) did not include a stated reason for the donation. In our sample, donations grew from $3 million in 2000 to $24 million in 2016. Food companies in our sample donated millions of dollars to universities and other academic programs but disclosed little information on the purpose of the donations. Achieving transparency in donation practices may only be possible if federal policies begin to require disclosures or if companies voluntarily disclose information.
目前尚无研究记录食品行业为学术项目提供资金的普遍情况，这是有问题的，因为这种资助可能会在研究和临床实践中产生利益冲突。我们旨在通过记录一段时间内的捐款数额、对接受食品行业捐款的学术项目进行分类、编目捐款信息的来源以及确定捐款的任何说明理由，来量化可公开获取的食品行业对学术项目捐款的信息。研究人员从 2000 年至 2016 年，从公开来源（例如官方新闻稿、新闻文章、税务文件）在线记录了食品行业对学术项目的捐款情况。研究人员记录了：（1）捐款的货币价值；（2）捐款发放的年份；（3）受赠者的姓名和类型；（4）捐款来源信息；（5）捐款理由。经通胀调整后，我们发现食品行业向学术项目捐款 3.66 亿美元（N = 3274）。大学获得了 45.2%（= 1480）的捐款，但占样本中总捐款的 67.9%。社区学院、学校（即学前、小学、中学和高中）以及学术非营利组织、研究所、基金会和研究医院共收到了 54.8%的捐款，但仅占捐款货币价值的不到三分之一。一半的捐款（49.0%）没有说明捐款的理由。在我们的样本中，捐款从 2000 年的 300 万美元增加到 2016 年的 2400 万美元。我们样本中的食品公司向大学和其他学术项目捐赠了数百万美元，但很少透露捐款的目的。只有在联邦政策开始要求披露或公司自愿披露信息的情况下，才能实现捐款做法的透明度。
