Coca-Cola Funds Scientists To Focus On Exercise Rather Than Dieting

By R. Siva Kumar - 10 Aug '15 13:17PM

The world's biggest manufacturer of sugary beverages, Coca-Cola, is now funding a "science-based" solution to obesity: "To maintain a healthy weight, get more exercise and worry less about cutting calories," according to nytimes.

The beverage giant is teaming up with scientists who are doing the rounds in medical journals, conferences and through social media. It is giving "financial and logistical support" to a new organization called the 'Global Energy Balance Network', arguing that weight-conscious Americans seem to be obsessed with their quantity of eating, rather than exercise.

"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, says in a recent video announcing the new organization. "And there's really virtually no compelling evidence that that, in fact, is the cause."

Critics slam Coca-Cola. This effort is the role of the beverage giant to "deflect criticism about the role sugary drinks have played in the spread of obesity and Type 2 diabetes," they say.

The company is just trying to convince the public that physical activity can offset a bad diet , in spite of evidence that exercise has less impact than food.

The conflict over obesity is coming up when there is a lot of effort to tax sugary beverages, remove them from schools and stop companies from selling them to kids. Over the last 20 years, "full-calorie sodas" consumed by the average American has reduced 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."

It is not surprising that Coca-Cola has donated $1.5 million last year to start the nonprofit organization, say two universities that employ leaders of the Global Energy Balance Network.

Since 2008, it has also donated $4 million to two of its founding members: Dr. Blair, a professor at the University of South Carolina whose research over the past 25 years has formed much of the basis of federal guidelines on physical activity, and Gregory A. Hand, dean of the West Virginia University School of Public Health.

Moreover, records show that the network's website, gebn.org, is registered to Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta. The company is also listed as the site's administrator. But the group's president, James O. Hill, a professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, said Coke had registered the website because the network's members did not know how. "They're not running the show," he said. "We're running the show."

Coca-Cola has however declined requests for an interview and said supports "scientific research related to its beverages and topics such as energy balance."

"We partner with some of the foremost experts in the fields of nutrition and physical activity," the statement said. "It's important to us that the researchers we work with share their own views and scientific findings, regardless of the outcome, and are transparent and open about our funding."

Coca-Cola continues to push its message of exercise being the obesity buster. "Reversing the obesity trend won't happen overnight," Coca-Cola said in an ad for its Chicago exercise initiative. "But for thousands of families in Chicago, it starts now, with the next push-up, a single situp or a jumping jack."