How Coca-Cola Misled America About the Science of Sodas: New Book

Decades of Health Campaigns and Scientific Research About the Risk of Sugary Soft Drinks Are a Big Reason that Americans have Been Drinking Soda Since Consumption Peaked Around 2000. pepper In Nature Medicine Found that in 2020, 2.2 million New Cases of Type 2 Diabetes and 1.2 Million New Cases of Cardiovascular Disease World Were Attributable to Sugar-Sweeted Beverages. But MANY OF US STILL HAVE GOTTEN The MEMO – The Aventure American Today Drinks About 12 Ounces of Sugary Sodas a Day. For Each person who doesn’t drink any Soda, there’s some chugging 24 ounces of every day.

Why are we Still Drinking So Much of a Beverage that Makes People Sick?

Eight Years ago, Two pastors sued coca-cola, by far the country’s soda company, and the American Beverage Association over “Their Deceptive Marketing, Labeling, and Sale of Coca-Cola’s Sugar-SweeteED beverages.” Break complaintFilled in Washington, DC, al The Coca-Cola Knew About the Science Linking Sugar-Sweeted Beverains to Chronic Diseases But Obscured Those Links Aggresive Public Relations Cammigns. Some thiught that the suit would finally type the Balance of Public Opinion Against Coke – The Same Way a Court Case in 2007 Over Misleading Marketing on Oxycontin’s Addictiveness Shifted the Tide Against Purdue Pharma. But as I Cover in My New Book, “Sweet and Deadly“every jab by health advocates has deftly parried by Coke and it allies.

Like the tobacco Companies, Coke Has Spent Millions Spinning Science to Hide Soda’s Health Costs from the Public and Downplay the Risks of Sugar. In fact, coke haen at this game longer than the tobacco industry. When the tobacco industry research committee launching Disinformation Campaigns in 1954, it imports it Staff and Strategies Lock, and Barrel from the Sugar Research Foundation, a nonprofit finally by Coke. The soda companies were pioneers of the Strategy Now Known as the tobacco playbook.

For decades, the $ 300 billion corporation has duped consumers by promoting messages are eather misleading or flat-out FALSE. It is used to an extensive networking of allies and proxy graps to Carry Its Messages, Including Co-Opeting Scientists and Their Research, and Spent Billions of Associates Coke with Warm and Fuzzy Represented by Polar Bears, Santas, and Happy Families. Coca-Cola has been to face a major reckoning for its outsize role in america’s health Crisis.

One of the dietary falsehoods that coca-cola spreads is the concept that a calcie is a calorie. “WE DON’T Believe in Empty Calories,” Katie Bayne, Coke’s Form Chief Marketing Office, Said in 2012. The Following Year, James Quinccey, Now the Ceo of the Corporation, Said, “Wen We Talk About Obesity, A Calorie. Academics, The Government Advisors, Diabetes Associations – We Need to Have Balance in the Calories.

But in the human body, not all Calories are created equal – far from it. Research Has Long Shown that a Calorie of Liquid Sugar is not metabolized in the Same Manner as a Calorie of Who Grain, for Example, or a Calorie of Fruit or Nuts. Those Calories Have Fiber, Vitamins, and Other Nutrients that are not present in soda.

Coke also Promotes the Related Message of “Energy Balance.” The Simplest Energy Balance Argument Posits that a Calorie of Food Will Be Metabolized The Same Where Comes From Cashews, Kale, Or Coca-Cola, SO Ensumers Should Focus Not On the Type But On Trying to Burn As they are. Coke has ben especialy interesting in emphasizing the calories-out side of the equation.

Coke is in the business of Seling Sugar Water. If it tries to reduce sales of it Products, It Waled Be Violating Its Obligations to ItHolders.

This was the focus of the global Energy Balance Network, an Organization Launched in 2014 by Researchers Affiliated with the University of Colorado and the University of South Carolina. One of the Academics, Steven Blair, Did Yeoman’s Work to Shift Americans’ Focus from the Elements of the Diet to the Concept of Balancing Calories in and Calories Out. In a video for the organization, Blair Said, “Most of the Focus, in the Popular Media, in the Scientific Press, Is ‘Aww, They’re Eating Too Much, Eating Too Much.’ Blaming Fast Foods, Blaming Sugary Drinks, and SO, and there Really virtuely no compreming evidence that in fact is the cause. “

IN 2015, A New York Times exposos revealed that the global Energy Balance Network was Simply a Front Group for Coca-Cola. The corporation has ended it and guided it SINCE ITS INPECTION But wanted it to appendar independent. This promped a Very public Apology from Coke’s Then-CEO Muhtar Kent, who penned a street journal column titled “we’ll do better.” Coca-Cola Did not Respond to Multiple Requests for Comment for This Story.

But it was far from the only misleading messaging Coke Had Spread. In a May 2013 Blog Post, Coca-Cola Trumpeted Its Success in Removing Calories from the American Diet Through Changing Its Product Formulation, Portion Size, and Promotion. “Yesterday, America’s Top Food and Beverage Manufacturers announced an important Milestone: More than 1.5 TRIKE CALORIES HAVE REMOned from the US Marketplace,” The Now-Removed Post Read. “This Achievement is the Result of Efforts Made by the Health Commitment Foundation (HWCF), A Coalition of 16 Food and Beverage Corporate Partners, Including the Coca-Cola Company, and Over 230 Organizations, WHO ARE WORKING TOGETER TO HELP REDUCY OBITY, ESSECIAL, ESP Childhood Obesity. “

The post ran beneath a Photo of the forms Department of Agriculture Secretary Dan Glickman, Lisa Gable of Hwcf, and the Author Hank Cardello at an event sponsored by the obesity solutions at the hudson institute. While the Photo appears to be three independent experts discussing the problem of obesity, the which event was paid for by Coke, Pepsi, and Other Food Corporations. Coke alone Had Given Hundreds of Thousands of Dollars to the Hudson Institute and $ 5 Million to Hwcf.

What the Company Didn’t mention is that coca-cola could remove far more calories from the marketplace in a Heartbeat by taking full-south beverages off the market or reduction its advertising of those products. Not Only DOES IT AGGRESSIVELY MARKET SEE CALORIE-DISE DRINKS, but it continues to introdes new blends that in some cats, Such as coca-cola spiced, have more suggest than the original coca-cola.

Coke is in the business of Seling Sugar Water. If it tries to reduce sales of it Products, It Waled Be Violating Its Obligations to ItHolders. (Woe to the Ceo Who Announces on an Earnings Call-“We Did it, we finally successed in reducing the amout of Coke we sell, thus reducing caralies!”) Corporation while TAKING CREDIT FOR REDUCING CALORIES.

One Front Group Endered Up Taking the Pro-Sugar Stance a Bit Too Far. The International Life Sciences Institute, Founded in the 1980s by a Coca-Cola Executive, Spent Decades Spinning Food Science in favor of its corplate funders, Including hershey, kraft, and kellogg. But when it funded a 2016 Research Paper Critiquing the growing body of science on the health risk of Sugar, it was a step too for it of its corplate. Matthias Berninger, a March spokesperson at the time, Said the Paper not Help Consumers Maketer Choices. Wen March Left Ilsi in 2018, Berninger Said, “We will not know to be involved in advocacy-led studies that so offen, and sorely for the right reasons, have been critigas.” Two Years late, Coke Quietly Left the Group as Well.

In 2018, Coke was part of an elaborate front grup to help it back against the soda taxes Several California municipalities HAD ENACTED. Coke and its soda industry allies, under the guise of a CAMAGN CALLED “CALIFORNIANDS FOR ACCOOUNTABITY AND TRANSPORMENT IN SPEMITING, Sponsored by California Businesses,” Gathered Signatures A Statewide Initiative That Would Requires to Get The Mountains to Get the Approval of two-thirds of voters before implementing any local tax change. By crafting an initiative so abhorrent to municipalities and unions that california lawmakers would will anything to make it go away, Coke Gained Bargaining Power. With Signatures in Hand, The Soda Alliance Went to Sacramento and Swung a Deal. We’ll with the initiative, They Said, in Exchange for A Law Banning New Taxes on Groces, Including Sodas, Through 2030. Legislators took the Deal and pushed that provision through as a rider on a budget bill. This Strategy, Known As Preemption, Has Also Proven Effective for Gun Rights Groups.

COKE HAS CREATED THIS ELIBORATE PARALLEL WORLD TO MISLEAD CONSUMERS ABOUT THE HEALTH RISKS OF SUGAR-SWEEVESEEDED Beverains and Take Strategic Actions Like Prevention Soda Taxes. All of the innocuous-Sounding, Coke-ended Groups Named Above Part of a Plan that has prevented the Balance of Public Opinion from Tipping Against Coca-Cola, as it has for other corporations such as the tobacco company philip Morris, purdue pharma, and exx. In the 2024 Axios Harris Poll 100, Which Ranks Company Reputations, Coke Placed 27th with a “Very Good” Score Compared to Exxon’s “Fair” Score at No. 86. The for Strategy Ensures that Coca-Cola appears shruded in an aura of goodness while staying profitable and steadily rewarding their Shareholders.

And that dc lawsuit? IT DRAGGED ON FOR YEARS, AS COKE’S Top-notch Legal Team SuccessFully Whittled it Down. The plaintiffs finally with the suite in 2019. Coke won again.

Murray Carpenter is a health and science journalist and the autor of “Sweet and Deadly: How Coca-Cola Spreads Disinformation and Makes US Sick” and “Caffeinated: How Our Daily Habit, Hurts and HoOks us.”

This Story is adapted from “Sweet and Deadly: How Coca-Cola Spreads Disinformation and Makes US Sick “ by Murray Carpenter. Copyright 2025 Massachusetts Institute of Technology.