Talk:British Nutrition Foundation

Untitled
This reads like a promotional piece for this organisation.

There is no mention of the sugar/bottled water/chocolate manufacturers that fund them.

Also, should maybe mention that legally anyone can call themselves a nutritionist in the UK so the term has no real meaning.

Spin
Bias would be putting it incredibly mildly. Until now, this entire article has been a piece of advertising for the BNF. Sadly, all that had been 'improved' up till now was the quality of the spin language (most impressive it was, too!). I have overhauled the entire article, re-organising it to match a more standard Wikipedia format, removing large chunks of text that were nothing but spin, and carefully editing the language to approach a more objective tone.

I also added the 'Criticism' section, which was entirely absent previously, and which certainly seems noteworthy.

Let's hope the BNF don't get too upset at losing the free advertising they've had from Wikipedia over the past few years! Will be watching this one...

Richardsg213 (talk) 18:02, 23 February 2012 (UTC)

Update:

The BNF clearly went to a bit of effort to add a long piece on all of the wonderful things they do. However, I took issue with the following:

1) Repetitive. It kept hammering home the same lines over and over, which made it sound suspiciously like advertising.

2) Biased tone. It was written as though it is completely plain and obvious to all right-thinking persons that the BNF are lovely and benevolent and everything they do is perfectly wonderful and they are impugnable champions of pure science and reason. In short, it read like an advertising piece. It was not written in an appropriate fashion for an encyclopedia article.

3) References. There were none. Not a one. And it had even done away with the references that were in places in the previous version.

Richardsg213 (talk) 13:36, 13 April 2013 (UTC)

External links modified
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Article revision
The current version of the BNF article has broken links, incomplete references and is not particularly informative. Rather than make separate comments or individual edits, it is perhaps simpler to do a full redraft, as follows:



The British Nutrition Foundation is a British registered charity and company limited by guarantee that works to share scientific knowledge and advice on diet, physical activity and health.

Activities
The BNF aims to give the general public, educators and organisations access to reliable information on nutrition. Its website provides details on healthy, sustainable diets, on nutrition at different life stages, on diet in relation to health issues and on putting advice on diet and nutrition into practice. Training is provided through online courses and webinars, with past webinars available on the website, together with videos of previous annual conferences. The organisation runs an annual “Healthy Eating Week” each June.

The BNF manages the educational programme Food – a fact of life (FFL). This is designed to support teachers by providing accessible information on diet and health for children and young people progressively through the ages 3 years to 16+ years. It was originally launched in 1991 in a partnership with MAFF that continued until 1997. The BNF continued to develop the educational resources and from 2018 the FFL programme has been a partnership between the BNF and the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board.

The official journal of the BNF, Nutrition Bulletin, is an international, peer-reviewed journal published quarterly by Wiley. Its coverage has included review articles and news items on nutrition, but since acquisition of an impact factor and MEDLINE coverage an increasing number of papers reporting original research have been included; many articles are open-access.

Governance
Under its Memorandum and Articles of Association, the Board may comprise no more than 12 Trustees. Trustees are appointed by the Board and serve for a term of three years, with each Trustee able to serve for a maximum of nine years; membership of the Board is weighted towards the scientific academic community. As a charity largely funded by corporate donations from food industry organisations, the BNF maintains its independence through advisory and scientific committees, an Editorial Advisory Board, educational working groups and a register of interests for Board members and senior managers.

Finances
In 2021-22, the charity had an income of £1.35million, with an expenditure of £1.33million.

Criticism of food industry links
A 1985 World in Action documentary interviewed Derek Shrimpton, a previous director general at BNF, who said: "In the period I was there the foundation was solely taken up with defence actions for the industry." He also said that BNF worked to frustrate government committees working on policies to reduce sugar, salt, and fat consumption.

In 2005, 26 UK MPs signed an Early Day Motion in Parliament concerning the BNF advising the government on food nutrition while receiving funds from the food industry.

Further concerns about the BNF's relationship with the food industry were raised in a 2010 British Medical Journal article, also published in a shortened form in The Independent, which criticized the way in which the BNF was treated as a source of impartial nutritional information by the media, usually without describing the industry ties, with funding members including, for example, Cadbury, Kellogg and McDonalds. It also criticized the UK government for paying the BNF to develop educational materials on nutrition, and quoted Tim Lobstein, a director at the International Association for the Study of Obesity-International Obesity Task Force (now the World Obesity Federation), saying that some BNF educational materials seem to support industry messages.