The Academy’s corporate financial contributions and its corporate investments The AND has maintained financial ties to food, pharmaceutical and agribusiness corporations, despite criticism and the potential reputational risks identified by some ex-Academy members(32). We found three main types of financial ties.

First, FOI documents revealed the corporate financial contributions to the AND for the years 2011, and 2013 to 2017 (Table 1). In 2011, the AND received more than US$300 000 from Hershey Co., a chocolate manufacturer, and nearly US$300 000 from the National Dairy Council (NDC), Conagra, Coca-Cola and Aramark, a company providing food services. Abbott, a pharmaceutical company selling infant formula, as well as General Mills and Cargill each donated more than US$100 000 in 2011 and maintained substantial donations from 2013 to 2017. Food and beverage companies such as Nestlé, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo, with the exception of General Mills, reduced their contributions over time. Nevertheless, contributions from companies such as Pharmavite-Nature Made and Abbott increased substantially during this same period. Overall, contributions shrunk by more than US$600 000 in 2015 and by more than US$500 000 in 2016, in respect to previous years.

Second, FOI documents showed large corporate donations to the ANDF from 2011 to 2015, listed in Table 2. Between 2011 and 2014, the Foundation received more than US$2 million each year from corporations, representing approximately a third of its total revenues for that period. In 2015, the corporate funding dropped under US$2 million, but corporate funding still represented more than 62 % of the ANDF’s revenues. Third, our findings suggest that ANDF is a means for corporations to reach out to young students and professionals. From 2009 to 2015, corporate contributions to the Foundation were US$15 million. Of these funds, more than US$6 million were transferred to AND members through the distribution of awards, scholarships, research grants, fellowships and other ANDF-led programmes. Of these, US$4·5 million went to an initiative called the ‘Champions Program’, which granted funds to hundreds of non-governmental organisations to support projects ‘promoting healthy eating and active lifestyles for children and their families’ (Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Foundation Industry Foundation Support Fundraising Industry Revenue, 2015). At least US$500 000 went to stipends for public nutrition education programmes. Between 2009 and 2012, the General Mills Foundation provided an additional US$2 million directly to the Champions Program and summed a total US$7·5 million in 2015 after 13 years of donations(33).

Lastly, internal AND documents from 2015 to 2016 show that AND invested its funds in the stock of several pharmaceutical companies such as Abbott, Johnson & Johnson, Perrigo Co., Pfizer Inc., Allegra, Merck & Co., and some food and beverage companies such as PepsiCo, Nestlé and J.M. Smucker’s Company.