Irene van den Berg (editor until October 2025)
Irene van den Berg (1978) has been an independent journalist since 2006. For The Investigative Desk, she works on research into the food and tobacco industry. She wrote several stories about the influence of the food industry on science and education. Her work has previously been published in Vrij Nederland, NRC, AD and OneWorld.
Publications

This is the warning Big Alcohol wants to keep off your bottles of beer
Ireland was set to become the first EU country to put cancer warning labels on alcoholic drinks. But following a massive lobby campaign by Big Booze –

Fitter, better, younger? Big Food’s health supplements mislead European consumers
Big Food is making more and more money with dietary supplements that promise to combat obesity, stress and menopause symptoms. However, nearly half of

From junk to ‘health’: The dangerous spin of Big Food. How Big Food profits from health hype
Large food manufacturers are increasingly positioning themselves as ‘health companies’. But not by making their chocolate, sauces, and desserts less u

With 6 tricks (and clever marketing), the food industry is profiting from the Ozempic hype
Medicines like Ozempic, Wegovy and Mounjaro are popular weight-loss drugs. ‘Big Food’ sees users as a new outlet and is pushing cheesy factory pizzas,

Taste of temptation
Food manufacturers earn from our propensity to eat unhealthily, and we pay with our health. With clever tricks, copied from the tobacco industry, they

Nespresso’s ‘sustainable’ coffee
Nespresso promises with its quality mark sustainable coffee and better circumstances for the farmers and the environment. But, Columbian coffee farmer

Farmers’ millions evaporate at Vion, top executive resigns
Meat processor Vion is set to shrink by a historic 40 percent. Heavy losses have already left Vion’s owners, farmers in the south, over 120 million eu

Obesity as a profit model
Five of the 10 largest producers of ultra-processed food on the European market are investing in products for diseases caused by unhealthy eating. Mos

Big Tobacco spends billions to expand its influence on healthcare and research
Tobacco giants have invested billions of dollars into remedies for smoking-related diseases, including by funding scientific research into medicine an

The tobacco industry spends billions to gain access to the medical world
The four largest tobacco companies have already invested more than $21 billion in this century altogether, in at least 33 companies making products fo

Tobacco funded research: how even journals with bans find it hard to stem the tide of publications
Tobacco companies are investing billions in pharmaceutical and medical products. These ties complicate the ongoing efforts of researchers, scientific

Outrage over medical investments by tobacco companies
The tobacco industry is earning double from patients who have become ill from smoking through billions in medical investments. Outrage among doctors i

Big Tobacco’s Beyond Nicotine Strategy
The past few years, the four biggest tobacco companies (Philip Morris International/Altria, British American Tobacco, Japan Tobacco International and

Dutch ex-minister Van Nieuwenhuizen ignores lobbying ban
Former Dutch minister of Infrastructure Cora van Nieuwenhuizen ignored the lobbying ban for contacts with former ministers. This was discovered by doc

Are JDE Peet’s coffee beans really grown sustainably? The company is not really sure
JDE Peet’s, parent company of the Dutch Douwe Egberts firm, wants 100 percent of its coffee to be sustainably grown by 2025. But it doesn’t know exact

How Big Tobacco wins 30 sustainability awards each year
Big Tobacco is stringing together sustainability and corporate responsibility awards, according to research by The Investigative Desk. This provides t

Dairy multinational FrieslandCampina finances ‘independent’ science, but only if it leads to increased milk production
FrieslandCampina is the largest private funder of dairy science at Wageningen University & Research, the world’s top agricultural university, base

Are Unilever’s ties with Wageningen University too close?
Wageningen University & Research (WUR) takes pride in its excellent relations with the food and agriculture industry. It is particularly close wit