The Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) is a Washington, D.C.–based non-profit watchdog and consumer advocacy group that advocates for safer and healthier foods.

CSPI was founded in 1971 by the microbiologist Michael F. Jacobson,[1] along with the meteorologist James Sullivan and the chemist Albert Fritsch, two fellow scientists from Ralph Nader's Center for the Study of Responsive Law.

[8] In 1975, CSPI published a "White Paper on Infant Feeding Practices" aimed at criticizing the commercial baby food industry's products and advertising.

CSPI took particular issue with the modified starches, excessive sugar and salt additions, and presence of nitrates in baby food products.

In addition, the White Paper criticized branding and advertisements on products, which they argued lead mothers to believe that solid foods ought to be introduced earlier in an infant's diet.

CSPI's 2004 petition, as well as a later one from a University of Illinois professor, led to the FDA's ban of partially hydrogenated vegetable oil, the major source of artificial trans fat.

It examined statistics relating to the soaring consumption of soft drinks, particularly by children, and the consequent health ramifications including tooth decay, nutritional depletion, obesity, type 2 (formerly known as "adult-onset") diabetes, and heart disease.

[15] In 2003, it worked with lawyer John F. Banzhaf III to pressure ice cream retailers to display nutritional information about their products.

[18] CSPI has urged companies to replace synthetic colorings with natural ones, and Mars,[19] General Mills,[20] and other major food manufacturers [21] have begun doing so.

[23] In 2010, CSPI and NANA led the successful effort to pass the Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, a landmark law to improve child nutrition programs.

In one such lawsuit, filed in September 2008, the Center "sue[d] MillerCoors Brewing Company over its malt beverage Sparks, arguing that the caffeine and guarana in the drink are additives that have not been approved by the FDA," and that the combination of those ingredients with alcohol resulted in "more drunk driving, more injuries, and more sexual assaults.

[40] CSPI executive director Michael Jacobson went on record saying, "Twenty years ago, scientists (including me) thought trans [fat] was innocuous.

Former U.S. Representative Bob Barr (a Republican, and later Libertarian Party nominee for President of the United States) accused CSPI of pursuing "a pre-existing political agenda" and pointed to individual responsibility for dietary choices.

[45] Cato Institute (a Washington D.C.–based libertarian think tank) scholar Walter Olson wrote that the group's "longtime shtick is to complain that businesses like McDonald's, rather than our own choices, are to blame for rising obesity," and called CSPI's suit against McDonald's for using toys to encourage young children to ask for the company's Happy Meals on behalf of a California mother a "new low in responsible parenting.

"[46] In 2002, the Center for Consumer Freedom, a group founded by Richard Berman that opposed government regulation, published a series of print and radio ads designed in part to drive traffic to the CCF website that provided additional critical information about CSPI.