Coca-cola, Pepsi, Nestle linked to bribe of scientists to defend impact of sugar
Coca-Cola and many scientists came under fire Monday after millions of dollars in donations to a nonprofit fighting against diet links to obesity were made public.
Global Energy Balance Network spreads the message in medical journals and through social media that the blame for America’s obesity epidemic is not about diet but a lack of exercise.
With PepsiCo, Nestle and other brand names, Coca-Cola is spending millions in partnerships linked to the scientific research and this new blame game.
“Most of the focus in the popular media and in the scientific press is, ‘Oh they’re eating too much, eating too much, eating too much’ — blaming fast food, blaming sugary drinks and so on,” the group’s vice president, Steven N. Blair, an exercise scientist, stated in a recent video announcing the new organization.
“And there’s really virtually no compelling evidence that that, in fact, is the cause.”
Does sugar cause obesity? Some companies are paying millions for you to get conflicting reports.
photo/ Beyonce limited edition Pepsi can
“Coca-Cola’s agenda here is very clear: Get these researchers to confuse the science and deflect attention from dietary intake,” Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition at New York University, told the New York Times.
The Times notes that “This clash over the science of obesity comes in a period of rising efforts to tax sugary drinks, remove them from schools and stop companies from marketing them to children. In the last two decades, consumption of full-calorie sodas by the average Americanhas dropped by 25 percent.”
“Coca-Cola’s sales are slipping, and there’s this huge political and public backlash against soda, with every major city trying to do something to curb consumption,” said Michele Simon, a public health lawyer. “This is a direct response to the ways that the company is losing. They’re desperate to stop the bleeding.”
The organization’s website, gebn.org, is “registered to Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta, and the company is also listed as the site’s administrator,” because they didn’t know how to do it, according to the Times, who then quoted their president, James O. Hill.
“They’re not running the show,” he said. “We’re running the show.”
Critics of global warming have long held that bribery and corruption manipulated the science and created a hysteria to ensure more funding for research. Here, the hysteria is being quelled by corporate dollars to keep the science quiet.
