Eating from the hand that feeds you

A report sharply critical of links between Harvard's Department of Nutrition and the food industry has drawn a spirited attack from the department's recently retired chairman, one of the study's prime targets.

Issued in mid-August by Rep. Benjamin Rosenthal (D-N.Y.) and the Center for Science in the Public Interest, the analysis characterizes the School of Public Health's Nutrition Department as "riddled with corporate influence," noting that its benefactors include the Kellogg Co., Gerber Products, Coca-Cola, Oscar Mayer & Co., and the Amstar Corp.

Specifically the report criticizes the corporate connections of Dr. Fredrick J. Stare, the professor of nutrition who chaired the department from its birth in 1942 until last June, and Jean Mayer, professor of nutrition until his departure this summer to become president of Tufts University in Medford.

The study charges that "eminent nutritionists" at the nation's most prominent universities "have traded their independence for the food industry's favors . . . [and] prostituted their professional independence to curry the favor of the food magnates."

In an interview last week, Stare called the report "a bunch of nonsense" and labeled Rosenthal a "loudmouthed, ultra-liberal consumer advocate politician who's looking for publicity." Stare defended his fund raising efforts, arguing that the department cannot depend solely on federal monies and that it has "never accepted one penny if there are any kinds of strings attached."

The 66-year-old professor also explained his remarkably successful fund raising methods, including the limits he puts on the advice he will provide corporations that do not contribute to the department.

Stare dismissed the study's suggestion that his ties with the food industry--which include a seat on the board of a major food packaging company and retainers with two cereal companies--have compromised his work. "To the best of my ability," Stare said, "I always speak and write the truth."

In publicizing Stare's industry connections, the Rosenthal-Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) report let loose the latest salvo in a long-running battle between Stare and consumer groups suspicious of the outspoken nutritionist.

These groups have often warred with Stare because he has prominently and repeatedly pooh-poohed warnings about excess sugar consumption in the United States, contradicting, the report says, "one of the few accepted nutritional principles, namely, that Americans eat far too much sugar." In an interview published in January 1974, for example, Stare said that most people could healthily double their daily sugar intake. Stare's defense of food additives has similarly riled those who argue that many of the chemicals are unsafe.

Thus while ex-professor Jean Mayer also has ties to the food industry, including board directorships on Monsanto and Miles Laboratories, which make food flavorings and other additives--he is criticized less forcefully than Stare in the study for lending his "prestige" to food and chemical companies. Indeed Mayer is praised for "repeatedly [voicing] his concern over food industry advertising and the quality of the American diet."

Mayer has refused to comment on the Rosenthal-CSPI report.

After examining the corporate ties and nutritional writings of academics in several universities, including Stare and Mayer, the authors of the Rosenthal-CSPI study suggest that the "moonlighting for industry" of academics like Stare "impinges on professors' commitment to their students and their allegiance to professional objectivity. The report continues:

But an even more serious concern than creating a professional advocate is the gag-effect of company money. Intimate working relationships between professors and executives inevitably lead to friendships, sympathy, and reluctance to alienate future sources of grants or job possibilities for oneself and one's students.

The authors of the report offered two steps to stem these phenomena:

Compile a list of faculty members' outside activities and make it available to the public, allowing it a chance to detect conflicts of interest; and

Encourage greater suspicion on the part of the public, press and government officials of the industrial connections of professors who write syndicated columns on nutrition (as do Stare and Mayer), who testify at legislative and executive hearings (as Stare has done extensively), and who sit on government advisory committees.

As a result of the Rosenthal-CSPI, the School of Public Health will begin this fall to consider asking its faculty members for some kind of catalogue of their outside work. Howard H. Hiatt '44, dean of the School, said earlier this month he plans to raise the suggestion before the administrative board, a panel which includes all departmental chairmen. Hiatt said having the list might be a "very health thing," although he added that making it public may not be wise. Both Stare and the acting chairman of the Nutrition Department, Robert P. Geyer, also said they have no objection to such a listing if it is not made public. Geyer added that he might support declassifying the forms if the data is used "in a responsible way." "If there is information that the food faddist types would use in some detrimental way, that would be bad," he added.

The authors of the Rosenthal-CSPI report argue against keeping such information confidential. Michael Jacobsen, co-director of the center, said earlier this month that such private records have proven useless, with lax standards and cronyism limiting enforcement.

Defending the Nutrition Department's use of corporate funds, Stare said virtually all such gifts are offered without restriction: a grant from a sugar company, for example, would not be for a particular research project.

As chairman, Stare said, he allocated the gifts either to the department's 19-year-old endowment, which now totals about $7 million, or to its fund for research and teaching, which is part of the department's annual operating budget. According to Stare, this constituted between 5 to 7 per cent of the operating budget of about $3 million, and much of it is used for student scholarships. Later in the year, after the department's budgetary needs grew more certain, Stare would transfer more of the gift money into the endowment. The total effect of this method, Stare argued, was to launder the funds. "Hardly anyone in the department knows where their money is coming from, except me," he said last week.

As chairman, Stare had an involved set of steps and strategies for deciding what outside funds and commitments to accept. He gave the department royalties from his books (such as Panic in the Pantry, whose sequel will be titled Danger in the Dining Room,) payment for his syndicated nutrition column, and editorial fees larger than about $500. The total given, he says, has amounted to about $100,000 over the last ten years.

But Stare retains the money he receives as a director of the packaging company, Continental Can (between $6000 and $7000), and as a retainer for Kellogg, Nabisco and the industry-supported Cereal Institute.

This money, which Stare says totals about $10,000 a year (a quarter of his University salary of $40,000), is the most controversial he handles: consumer advocates criticized these ties after his report to a Senate subcommittee in 1971 calling breakfast cereals "good foods" because they contain less saturated fat and cholesterol than other breakfast foods.

In fact, Stare does not jump at the chance to reveal his work for Kellogg and Nabisco. In the interview early last week he said he accepts no consulting fees and that he had received only travel expenses for his appearance before the Senate committee. When queried later in the week about the two retainers, Stare explained that he sees retainers as different from consulting fees; the latter are one-time payments, not a supplementary salary, he said. While he technically may not have accepted a fee for testifying at the hearings on behalf of Kellogg and Nabisco, he was on the companies' payrolls at the time.

Almost as controversial as these payments are Stare's fund raising methods, which have unquestionably made him the best fund raiser on the School of Public Health's faculty. In his attempts to get corporate grants, Stare said, he tells companies seeking more than a small bit of advice, "very bluntly, 'You know, I get so damn many requests for advice and consultation that I can only really devote my time to those companies that are willing to help our department. Now, if you'd like to make an initial gift of $1000, I'll be glad to talk with you and see what advice or help I can give to you." This may happen, Stare said, about ten times a year.

Sometimes, Stare said, he will tell companies asking him to appear at congressional or executive branch hearings that he is willing to do so if they send their fee for testifying--which he says he would never accept personally--to the department.

Stare's quid pro quo works the other way, too. If a company that has given funds to the department--and he cites Kellogg as one such corporation--requests his time, he will not seek a consulting fee for the department. "The companies that help support the department, I am perfectly willing to try to help them when I can do so in all honesty and without asking for any extra fees. I mean, after all, if a company is giving you $10,000 or $15,000, why try to get a few more pennies out of them? I'd much rather have the $10-$15,000 keep on coming every year ..."

Stare's fund raising strategy extends to his fairly extensive writing. He writes on occasion for magazines like Harper's Bazaar, he explains, for a very specific reason: "... you might wonder what the hell [I] have an article in Harper's Bazaar for, but it's a very influential magazine because women read it sitting under hair dryers, and many of these women are wives of important people and foundation executives."

Stare, who stepped down as chairman this year under a School of Public Health ceiling on the age of those performing administrative duties, sees no danger that his concern with raising money for the department might color his writing, teaching and testimony on nutrition. All corporations can expect from him, he says, is the truth.

Nor does he see his colleagues in the department restraining their criticism of donors or restricting their research into sensitive areas. "Sure, like every profession there are a few rotten apples in the barrel...that would sell their soul" for support, he says, "but there are damn few."CrimsonSandy O. SteingardHOWARD H. HIATT, dean of the Harvard School of Public Health, said earlier this month he will ask the school's administrative board to consider asking faculty to list their outside work. This grows out of a recent report criticizing links between the school's Department of Nutrition and the food industry.