Dangers of health misinformation, part 4: Global reach

This is the fourth and final article in our series on health misinformation and the real-world harm it causes. Here, we look at a small (but disturbing) part of the bigger picture.

As we have learned in this series, individual peddlers of misinformation can certainly cause harm.

In this article, however, we will explore how institutions and businesses, which have more disposable cash, can cause more widespread damage. Not just to individuals but to societal and even planetary health. 

This is a huge issue, so here, we'll focus on just one case, because it warrants a deep dive. 

Usually, these kinds of stories are hidden from public view, but on this occasion, a leaked document provides fascinating insights.

This is a tale of industrial forces conspiring behind closed doors to keep entire populations — in fact, the entire planet — sick.

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Derailing truth at unprecedented scale

In 2019, a landmark paper, called EAT-Lancet, was published. It was written by tens of authors across multiple institutions. The purpose was to outline a dietary pattern that would support the health of humans and the planet we inhabit.

It is well known that Big Food and Big Agriculture are steadily destroying the health of planet Earth.

It is also well-established that while some populations don’t have enough food to eat, others are inundated with low-quality foods that make them sick.

The Lancet paper outlined recommendations to ensure humans and the planet remain healthy, even as Earth's population steadily increases.

However, their guidelines include this key message:

“Transformation to healthy diets by 2050 will require substantial dietary shifts, including a greater than 50% reduction in global consumption of unhealthy foods, such as red meat and sugar, and a greater than 100% increase in consumption of healthy foods, such as nuts, fruits, vegetables, and legumes.”

None of this is particularly surprising or groundbreaking: It’s common knowledge that regularly eating large amounts of red meat and sugar is associated with poorer health. 

It’s also well established that modern farming practices account for a sizable share of greenhouse gas emissions.

So, what’s the drama? 

The EAT-Lancet recommendations are sensible. The trouble is, they threaten the profits of some powerful forces. As a result, the report faced an unprecedented backlash, with social media lighting up with people slamming the report. 

In particular, many complained that the report was promoting a “vegan ideology,” which it is not.

In 2025, a leaked document provides insights into how this seemingly organic uproar was orchestrated. It shows how vested interests helped drive widespread online pushback against EAT-Lancet.

This wasn’t organic; it was a coordinated attack, based around the hashtag #yes2meat. 

The leaked document came from a PR company called Red Flag, which represents the Animal Agriculture Alliance (AAA). 

The AAA is a coalition formed by the meat and dairy industry, which aims to protect them against “emerging threats.” On the AAA board are employees from two of the world’s largest meat producers: Cargill and Smithfield Foods.

Food and the culture war

Increasingly, science, the environment, health, and nutrition have become culture war topics. 

Because of this, the backlash against EAT-Lancet was not a civil debate based on evidence. The individual authors received personal attacks and threats to their safety. 

In the weeks after the report was published, almost half of the 1,315 articles that covered it included Red Flag’s “campaign messages and quotes,” according to the PR company’s memo.

One of the Lancet report’s authors, Line Gordon, said that she was “overwhelmed” with “really nasty” comments.

“I was excited about the research we had done and how important it was and how much work we had put into it. However, when we launched, I remember waking up in the morning, and I’ve never been attacked in so many ways.”

The Lancet journal later analyzed the Twitter (now X) activity linked to the EAT-Lancet backlash. The authors of the analysis write: 

“A digital countermovement managed to organise rapidly, essentially dominating online discussions about the EAT–Lancet report in intriguing and worrying ways.”

They found that the coordinated attack began a week before the report was released, with Tweets already including the terms EAT–Lancet and yes2meat.

The leaked document gives us rare insights into the PR mechanisms that keep huge corporations in business. But it is not an isolated case. Underhanded techniques are widespread. They manipulate messages en masse, producing widespread confusion.

As our planet heats up and cardiometabolic conditions become more prevalent, we need a clear, commonsense, science-backed approach, which the EAT-Lancet report provided.

But because their conclusions were distasteful to the meat industry, it destroyed it. We need to ensure that health comes before profit, not the other way around.

Incredibly, even now, years later, researchers linked to Big Meat are publishing papers arguing against the 2019 EAT-Lancet paper. 

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What should you do?

In some ways, knowledge is power, so if you’d like to read more about how the food industry twists truth to maintain its wealth, read this next: 

• How Big Food maintains its stranglehold on the world’s health.

At ZOE, we’ve written a series of guides on mis- and disinformation. We hope they will help you wrestle fact from fiction:

• 10 ways to spot nutrition misinformation online

• How to spot red flags in adverts

• Nutrition products you don’t need

• How to make sense of scientific papers

If you enjoyed this article and would like to read the rest of the series, here are the links: 

• Part 1: Influencers

• Part 2: Experts gone rogue

• Part 3: ChatGPT errors