Tuesday, January 05, 2010

Proof the AAFP sold out to Coca Cola?


You may remember my posts and podcast regarding the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP) and their unholy partnership with Coca Cola. According to the AAFP the partnership was established to provide much needed funds ($600,000) to revamp their website FamilyDoctor.org and to develop materials regarding how to healthily choose beverages.

Well I decided to tool around FamilyDoctor.org's new digs and see how they made out.

Want to know what I found?

Well they've made a lot of videos.

I decided to watch the ones that I thought ought to have mentioned the importance of minimizing sugary beverage calories. I watched:

Diet and Obesity: Treating Obesity through Proper Diet
Diabetes Overview
Obesity Overview
Grocery Store Strategies
Nutrition Fundamentals
Diabetes and Weight Control
and
Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes

The videos were beautifully produced yet wholly unhelpful. The information provided therein was just barely more useful than, "Buy Low and Sell High" to get rich in the stock market or, "Eat Less and Exercise More" to lose weight.

So were there specific directives to avoid sugar sweetened beverages?

Yes. One. In the Nutrition Fundamentals video there was a single one word mention of soft drinks in their inclusion in a list of foods with empty calories. Sadly reducing surgary beverages wasn't mentioned in any of the other videos.

Now to be fair, there are some mentions on FamilyDoctor.org's written materials that suggest sugar-sweetened beverages should be avoided - but of course those written materials were PCC (pre-Coca Cola).

Oh, and conspicuously absent from the site? Beverage and sweetener guidance information - the very same information the AAFP reported Coca Cola's monies were meant to fund.

[Think the Coke partnership's bad? Wait until you see tomorrow's post on who the AAFP is letting advertise in their "Patient Education Program".]