Elizabeth Hanna says she was fired by the American Diabetes Association after refusing to approve recipes heaped with the additive made by a major donor

Elizabeth Hanna had a simple job: help people with diabetes figure out what to eat. Anyone with common sense knows this should probably not entail foods that might increase people’s risk of getting diabetes. But that’s not necessarily the thinking at the American Diabetes Association (ADA), the world’s leading diabetes research and patient advocacy group, which also receives millions of dollars from sponsors in the pharmaceutical, food and agricultural industries.

According to a lawsuit Hanna recently filed against the ADA, the organization – which endorses recipes and food plans on its website and on the websites of “partner” food brands – tried to get her to greenlight recipes that she believed flew in the face of the ADA’s mission. These included recipes like a “cucumber and onion salad” made with a third of a cup of Splenda granulated artificial sweetener, “autumnal sheet-pan veggies” with a quarter cup of Splenda monk fruit sweetener and a “cranberry almond spinach salad” with a quarter cup of Splenda monkfruit sweetener.

Guess which company gave more than $1m to the ADA in 2022? Splenda.

  • oDDmON@lemmy.world
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    8 months ago

    But as someone who was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes three years ago, I can attest that the dietary and medicinal guidance one gets from doctors and the ADA can be worse than the condition. The result is what the former head of the World Health Organization has called “a slow-motion disaster”, that led to the deaths of 2 million people in 2019.

    As someone under the treatment of American medicine for decades, I have to agree; doctors don’t know everything.

    • stoly@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      They aren’t supposed to, which is why things like the ADA exist. It’s sad that there appears to have been an industry takeover of it.

    • NucleusAdumbens@lemmy.world
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      8 months ago

      Are you the one from the ads who has the one trick doctors don’t want us to know? Please, enlighten us.