Coca-Cola's $1.5M effort to 'inject sanity and reason' into war on obesity
Health
Coca-Cola’s $1.5M effort to ‘inject sanity and reason’ into war on obesity
The Global Energy Balance Network, a nonprofit founded to combat obesity, says the $1.5 million it received from Coke has no influence on its work, although emails obtained by The Associated Press show the world’s largest beverage maker was instrumental in shaping the nonprofit, which is led by a professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. Coke helped pick the group’s leaders, edited its mission statement and suggested articles and videos for its website.
It is not fair that Coca-Cola is signaled out as the #1 villain in the obesity world, but that is the situation and makes this your issue whether you like it or not.
Global Energy Balance Network’s James Hill to a Coke executive
Emails between Rhona Applebaum, Coke’s chief health and science officer, and the group’s president James Hill reveal conversations on media training and revised proposals surround obesity. On July 9, 2014, Applebaum emailed the group with a “tweaked” proposal for the establishment of the network. The proposal says the group will “inject sanity and reason” into the debate about obesity and become the go-to resource for media. On April 8, 2015, a Coke employee emailed Hill and Peters asking them to sign a nondisclosure agreement before the company shares “some of the learnings we have received from some of our consumer testing to help inform” the group’s work.
