Decades of health and scientific research campaigns on Risks of sweet soft drinks are a great reason why Americans drink less soda since consumption culminated around 2000. paper In the wild, medicine revealed that in 2020, 2.2 million new cases of type 2 diabetes and 1.2 million new cases of cardiovascular diseases in the world were attributable to sugary drinks. But many of us have still not obtained the memo – the average American is drinking around 12 ounces of sweet sodas per day today. For each person who does not drink sodaThere is someone who strikes 24 ounces per day.
Why are we still drinking so many drinks that make people sick?
Eight years ago, two pastors continued Coca-ColaBy far the most popular Soda society in the country, and the American Beverage Association on “their marketing, its labeling and their sale of sugary drinks from Coca-Cola”. THE complaintPlaced in Washington, DC, allegedly alleged that Coca-Cola knew science linking sugary drinks to chronic diseases but masked these links by aggressive public relations campaigns. Some thought that the prosecution could finally do to entrust the balance of public opinion against Coke – in the same way as a judicial case in 2007 on a misleading marketing on the dependence of Oxycontin moved the wave against Purdue Pharma. But as I cover my new book, “Soft and mortal“Each JAB by health defenders has been skillfully adorned by Coke and its allies.
Like tobacco companies, Coke has spent millions of people turning science to hide Soda’s health costs from the public and minimize the risk of sugar. In fact, Coke was at this game longer than the tobacco industry. When the tobacco industry research committee began to launch Disinformation campaigns In 1954, he imported his staff and his strategies Log, Stock and Baril de la Sugar Research Foundation, a non -profit organization funded partly by Coke. Soda companies were pioneers of the public relations strategy now known as tobacco game book.
For decades, the company of $ 300 billion has dubed consumers by promoting messages that are misleading or falsifying. He used a large network of allies and proxy groups to transport his messages, including cooptography scientists and their research, and spent Billions of dollars on advertisements which associate the coke with warm and blurred feelings represented by polar bears, Santas and happy families. Coca-Cola has not yet been confronted The American health crisis.
One of the food lies that Coca-Cola propagates is the concept that a calorie is a calorie. “We do not believe in empty calories,” said Katie Bayne, former Coke Marketing Director in 2012. The following year, James Quincey, now CEO of the company, said: “When we speak of obesity, a calorie is a calorie. Experts are clear – academics, government advisers, diabetes associations – we need to have a balance in Caleries.
But in the human body, Not all calories are created equal – Far from it. Research has long shown that a Liquid sugar calorie is not metabolized in the same way as a whole grain calorie, for example, or a calorie of fruit or nuts. These calories have fibers, vitamins and other nutrients that are not present in soda.
Coke also promotes the related message of “energy balance”. The simplest argument of energy balance postulates that a calorie of food will be metabolized in the same way as it is cashews, curly cabbage or Coca-ColaConsumers should therefore not focus on the type of food but try to burn as many calories as they consume it. Coke particularly interested the emphasis on the calorie-out side of the equation.
Coke is selling sugar water. If he tries to reduce sales of her products, she would violate her obligations to her shareholders.
It was the goal of Global Energy Balance NetworkAn organization launched in 2014 by researchers affiliated at the University of Colorado and at the University of South Carolina. One of the academics, Steven Blair, has done the work of Yeoman to move the attention of Americans to the regime to the concept of Balance calories and calories. In a video for the organization, Blair said: “Most of the objectives, in popular media, in the scientific press, are” aww, they eat too much, eat too much, “blame fast foods, blame sugary drinks, etc., and there is really no convincing evidence that it is actually the cause.”
In 2015, a New York Times expose revealed that the global energy balance network was simply a group of front for Coca-Cola. The company had funded her and guided her since her creation, but wanted her to seem independent. This caused very public apology from the CEO of Coke, Muhtar Kent, who wrote a column of Wall Street Journal entitled “We will do better”. Coca-Cola did not respond to several requests for comments for this story.
But it was far from the only deceptive messaging that Coke had spread. In a blog article in May 2013, Coca-Cola deceived its success in eliminating the calories of the American diet by modifying the formulation of its products, its portion size and its promotion. “Yesterday, the best manufacturers of American food and drinks announced an important step: more than 1.5 Billion of calories were removed from the American market,” said the post now remunerated. “This achievement is the result of the efforts made by the Healthy Weight Commitment Foundation (HWCF), a coalition of 16 food partners and drinks, including Coca-Cola company, and more than 230 organizations, which work together to help reduce obesity, in particular infant obesity.”
The position ran under a photo of the former Ministry of Agriculture Dan Glickman, Lisa Gable de HWCF, and the author Hank Cardello during an event sponsored by obesity Solutions Initiative at the Hudson Institute. Although the photo seems to be three independent experts cordially discussing the problem of obesity, the entire event was paid by Coke, Pepsi and other food companies. Coke alone had given hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Hudson Institute and $ 5 million in HWCF.
What the company has not mentioned is that Coca-Cola could eliminate many more calories from the market in the blink of an eye by removing drinks in full sugar or by reducing its advertising from these products. Not only Aggressively market These dense calorie drinks, but it continues to introduce new mixtures of coke which, in some cases, such as Spicy coca-colaHave even more sugar than the original Coca-Cola.
Coke is selling sugar water. If he tries to reduce sales of her products, she would violate her obligations to her shareholders. (Misfortune to the CEO who announces a profile call – “As we have done, we finally managed to reduce the amount of coke that we sell, thus reducing the calories!”) What is unexpected is for Coca-Cola To simultaneously sell more sugary drinks than any other company while taking credit to reduce calories.
A group before ended up adopting the pro-succre position a little too far. The International Institute of Life Sciences, founded in the 1980s by a Coca-Cola executive, has spent decades to run the food sciences in favor of its donors, in particular Hershey, Kraft and Kellogg. But when he financed a 2016 research document Criticizing the growing body of science on sugar health risks was a step too far for some of its members of the company. Matthias Berninger, a spokesperson from March at the time, said the newspaper would not help consumers make better choices. When March Leaving the ILSI in 2018, Berninger said: “We do not want to be involved in plaid -led studies which, so often, and especially for the right reasons, have been criticized.” Two years later, Coke also quietly left the group.
In 2018, Coke was part of a front group developed to help him repel against the Soda taxes Several municipalities in California had promulgated. COKE and its allies of the SODA industry, under the guise of a campaign entitled “Californians for responsibility and transparency in public spending, sponsored by companies from California”, have gathered signatures to support an initiative across the State which would require municipalities to obtain the approval of two thirds of voters before implementing a change of local tax. By creating such an odious initiative to municipalities and unions that California legislators would do everything to make it disappear, Coke has won the negotiation power. With signatures in hand, the Soda Alliance went to Sacramento and swung. We will withdraw the initiative, they declared, in exchange for a law prohibiting new taxes on grocery store, including sodas, until 2030. Legislators have concluded the agreement And pushed this provision as a rider on a budget bill. This strategy, known as the pre -emption, has also proved to be effective for firearms groups.
Coke has created this parallel world developed to mislead consumers on the Health risks of sugary drinks And take strategic measures such as prevention of sodas taxes. All the harmless and funded groups to the named coke are part of a plan that has prevented the balance of public opinion from switching to Coca-Cola, as for other companies such as Tobacco Company Philip Morris, Purdue Pharma, and Exxon. In 2024 Axios Harris survey 100, which classifies the reputation of the company, Coke ranked 27th with a “very good” score compared to the “Fair” scoring of Exxon in n ° 86. The public relations strategy guarantees that Coca-Cola seems to be wrapped in a goodness aura while remaining profitable and by regularly rewarding their shareholders.
And this DC trial? He has dragged for years, when the first -rate legal team of Coke managed to revolt. The complainants finally withdrew the trial in 2019. Coke again won.
Murray Carpenter is a journalist for health and science and the author of “Sweet and Deadly: How Coca-Cola distributes disinformation and makes us sick” and “Caffinée: how our daily habit helps, hurts and hangs us”.
This story is suitable for “Sweet and deadly: how Coca-Cola spreads disinformation and makes us sick “ by Murray Carpenter. Copyright 2025 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
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