The Big Guys vs. the Little Guys

Towards the end of the day yesterday, I received an email that caused me a bit of initial stress. Basically, to put it simply, a paper I co-wrote annoyed two major global beverage companies, and there are some minor trickle down issues that I'll have to deal with. While I was a little nervous, I actually was also thinking that perhaps this is a good outcome. Does it mean that my work is: a) being read, b) making food manufacturers worried, and c) hopefully causing them to continue making improvements to their products? I do not see myself as an advocate, but rather someone who is trying to do research in as fair as a way as I can, to ensure that information that should be out there is out there. My intention in the paper wasn't to 'call out' these companies, but to just provide the public health community a sense of how they are even doing because until now, there has virtually been no literature on that. Part of the irony in this was that the manuscript reviewers had complained that our tone in our initial submission was too "pro-business"! It is hard for the little guy to come out unscathed!

Talking about research, below are two photos from when Marc & his team was conducting research in India last week (yes, that is snow in the R photo).