Researchers find Coca-Cola paid scientists to downplay how their drinks fuelled the obesity crisis
pharmafile | August 5, 2020 | News story | Research and Development, Sales and Marketing | Coca-Cola, Coke
Researchers have found that Coca-Cola paid an organization of scientists to downplay how the sugary drinks they sell fuelled the obesity crisis.
New research has been published in Public Health Nutrition from a team made up of researchers from the University of Oxford, the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine, the University of Bocconi and the US Right to Know Organisation. The team looked at more than 18,000 pages of emails between Coke and scientists who worked at the West Virginia University and the University of Colorado. Both universities were part of Global Energy Balance Network (GEBN) which ran from 2014 to 2015. Coke directly funded GEBN and contributed at least $1.5 million by 2015 and also gave millions more in funding to GEBN affiliated academics conducting research.
The research team said Coke pursue two main strategies, the first was to obscure the information and messaging. One email chain showed that scientists tried to inflate the number of partners and donours they had so Coke would not seem like the primary one. They also asked the universities they worked for if they had any rules about disclosing the amount of gifts Coke gave them to assess whether they would have to reveal the funding they had received.
The second strategy showed how Coke and the researchers built up their coalitions. This included establishing Coke’s network of researchers and helping them to establish relationships with policymakers. This saw the scientists meet with members of the West Virginia Legislature and Coke’s Vice President Rhona Applebaum.
Gary Ruskin, the Executive Director of US Right to Know, told The Mail Online: “Coke used public health academics to carry out classic tobacco tactics to protect its profits. It’s a low point in the history of public health and a warning about the perils of accepting corporate funding for public health work.”
Between 2008 and 2015, Coke provided close to $4 million in funding for various projects of two of GEBN’s founding members Dr Blair, a professor at the University of South Carolina, and Gregory Hand, Dean of the West Virginia University School of Public Health.
The GEBN website had always been registered to the Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta and the company was also listed as the site’s administrator. The president of the group in 2015, James O. Hill, said this was because the members of the organisation did not know how to run a website.
Coke has long maintained that the obesity crisis was linked primarily to a lack of exercise in children, while critics have alleged that Coke’s goal of involving itself in this research was to downplay how sugary drinks contribute to obesity, especially in children.
Coca-Cola’s involvement in this type of corporate-funded nutritional research is nothing new. The American Society for Nutrition and the Academy for Nutrition and Dietetics have formed partnerships with Kraft Foods, McDonald’s, PepsiCo and Hershey’s.
Conor Kavanagh
