Coca-Cola Claims It Doesn't Market Soft Drinks To Kids, Announces New Star Wars Themed Bottles For Disneyland And Disney World

Coca-Cola has gone on record to state,

"Parents tell us they prefer to be the ones teaching their children about beverage choices. That's why for over 50 years we've adhered to a company policy that prohibits advertising soft drinks to children"

So clearly their newly announced plans to sell Star Wars themed bottles at Disneyland and Disneyworld must be targeting adults.

Nothing wrong with a liquid candy company trying to sell liquid candy (that's their literal job after all), but don't lie and pretend you don't target children with your marketing or that you care about anything other than profit.

Coca-Cola's New Simply Smoothie Strawberry Banana Contains 11.5 Teaspoons Of Sugar Per Cup

I should probably be putting "smoothie" in sneer quotes when discussing this new product.

The ingredients in this "smoothie" aren't simply water, strawberries, and bananas but rather they're strawberries, bananas, and apple, grape, and lemon juices.

Perhaps that's why in an 11.5oz serving of it, there's 44g of sugar (responsible for 85% of its 200 calories). For reference, drop for drop, actual Coca-Cola contains 15% less sugar and 33% fewer calories.

But of course no one confuses Coca-Cola for a healthy beverage.

But Coca-Cola (Simply's parent company) sure hopes you confuse this "smoothie" with one given they've festooned it with front of package shout outs that explicitly suggest it's good for you.

I'm also confused by its nutrition.

The ingredients report that 11.5oz of banana strawberry "smoothie" provides 1g of fibre - that's less than what would be found in just a 5th of a small banana, and yet to eat 44g of sugar from small bananas, you'd have to consume 18x that amount. And the 35% Vitamin C? You'd get that from just 2 strawberries.

Unless it's you doing your own blending (and even then, remember it's not likely to be as filling and you'll be able to consume a great deal more) eat your fruit, don't drink it.

The Obesity Society Weighs In On Soda Taxes To......Double Checks Notes......Caution Against Them

The Obesity Society (TOS), who in their own words are,

"the leading scientific membership organization advancing the science-based understanding of the causes, consequences, prevention and treatment of obesity in order to improve the lives of those affected."

has finally weighed in on soda taxes.

In their formal press release, The Obesity Society Calls for More Research on Sugar-Sweetened Beverage Tax (and reminder, it costs money to issue press releases), TOS called into question the benefits of soda taxes stating,

"Countries across the globe have generated headlines recently over their efforts to tax sugar, tobacco and alcohol products. Even though tobacco and alcohol taxation has helped to reduce consumption and save lives, these beneficial effects have not yet been proven for taxing sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs)."

They go on to quote TOS President-elect Steven Heymsfield as stating that they may not help with obesity,

"Although taxing SSBs might generate revenue that can be used to promote other healthy food items, the net outcome may not necessarily decrease overweight and obesity rates in the United States or worldwide"

And finally they suggest that soda taxes may confer health risks, with a quote from TOS' Vice-president Lee Kaplan,

"I believe that we have a primary responsibility to carefully dissect what we know about the effects of taxing SSBs on obesity from its other potential health benefits and risks, and to promote additional research where necessary to clarify areas of debate and identify new opportunities for progress.”

It's a bizarre press release.

It is either ignorant, or purposefully disingenuous, of Heymsfield and TOS to frame soda taxes as if they hinge on obesity and put forward the straw man that a singular intervention is unlikely to have a remarkable impact on global weights. Complex problems tend not to have simple, singular solutions - it's the, "but that single sandbag won't stop the flood" argument, and truly, it's breathtakingly dense, especially in that reducing the excessive consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages is desirable for people at any weight and is the explicit aim of the tax with a secondary aim of raising funds to support other public health initiatives.

Regarding potential health risks of soda taxes and the need for more research before considering, the data is quite clear (which is why the soda industry is fighting so vigorously against them), sugar-sweetened beverage taxes decrease sugar-sweetened beverage consumption and increase healthier beverage consumption while providing the greatest potential health benefits to low income consumers.

It's also worth noting that TOS' suggestion that we need to wait for more data before acting runs counter to the recommendations of:

• The World Health Organization
• The American Heart Association
• The American Medical Association
• The Canadian Medical Association
• The Australian Medical Association
• The American Cancer Society
• The American Public Health Association
• The Cancer Action Network
• The National Association of Chronic Disease Directors
• The National Association of County and City Health Officials
• The National Association of Local Boards of Health
• The Heart and Stroke Foundation
• Diabetes Canada

and many, many, more.

How TOS and its executives serving the soda industry as merchants of doubts versus a truly global initiative to reduce the consumption of sugar sweetened beverages helps push TOS' mission,

"to promote innovative research, effective and accessible care, and public health initiatives that will reduce the personal and societal burden of obesity"

is lost on me.

As to why TOS is taking a stance so directly in line of the one being pushed hard by the sugar-sweetened beverage industry itself is anybody's guess, though it's worth pointing out that TOS has had a very close relationship with the food industry, including Coca-Cola who used to fund their travel grants, and PepsiCo and Dr. Pepper to who TOS' food industry outreach committee reached out directly following its inception (leading me to publicly resign my membership in TOS) at roughly the same time they released their new "Guidelines for Accepting Funds from External Sources" position paper (removed from TOS' website but still available here) refuses to allow even the consideration of funding as a source of bias and,

"expressly eliminates all forms of evaluation or judgment of the funding source"

Suffice to say, I have yet to regret my decision to resign my membership in The Obesity Society, and I can't help but wonder whether this press release and stance will be the last straw for others.

Guest Post: Coca-Cola's "Commitment To Transparency" Fails To Identify Over 95% Of The Authors They've Funded Since 2008

Today's guest posters Paulo Serôdio, Martin McKee, and David Stuckler, recently published a paper in Public Health Nutrition about Coca-Cola's transparency initiative whereby using a tool they'd created, they found that Coca-Cola's transparency initiative failed to identify over 95% of the 907 authors who published one of the 389 articles funded by Coca-Cola. What was also clear was that Coca-Cola's funded research focused primarily on emphasizing the importance of physical activity and the concept of ‘energy balance’. Stay tuned for more from these 3 on this file in the nearish future!

(A version of this post was originally published on the blog of Public Health Nutrition)

Is Coca-Cola really a model of research transparency?

Can we trust research on nutrition paid for by Big Food? Some argue that, as the industry profits from sugar-sweetened beverages, known to increase risks of childhood obesity and diabetes, they can be expected to support research that creates confusion and doubt about those risks. Others contend that researchers are independent and, as funders have no role in the study design, methods, interpretation or publication, the findings can be trusted.

What both sides agree on is the need for transparency. Its importance became clear in August 2015, when the New York Times published documents, obtained using freedom of information laws, that Coca-Cola had provided $1.5 million in financial and logistical support to the “Global Energy Balance Network”, a non-profit organization led by influential academics at the Universities of Colorado, West Virginia and South Carolina, and whose main message was that there was no compelling evidence of a significant link between sugar-sweetened beverages and obesity.

In response, Coca-Cola company published its so-called “Transparency Lists” of a combined 218 researchers and health professionals whom they had funded since 2010.

In our recent paper, we constructed a new database of the scientific articles published since 2008 reporting funding from Coca-Cola. We did this by writing a computer program to extract and parse funding statements from articles, captured by Thomson Reuters’ Web of Science database. We have made the program, written for R-software, publicly available and we hope that others will use it to search systematically search for literature funded by those with vested interests in research, such as the agrochemical, alcohol, tobacco, and other industries (freely available for download here).

Using this new dataset, we investigated four important questions:

Question 1: Are Coca-Cola’s transparency lists complete?

Using the data we gathered from Web of Science, we built a list of researchers who authored scientific articles where Coca-Cola’s funding was acknowledged, by following the same criteria that guided the makeup of Coca-Cola’s own transparency disclosure, which are available from Coca-Cola’s transparency website. We found discrepancies between the list of names that Coca-Cola’s disclose as people they fund and what can be found publicly in Web of Science. Overall, we identified 471 authors, involved in 128 Coca-Cola-funded journal articles (published between 2010 and 2015), who report Coca-Cola funding but do not appear in Coca-Cola’s transparency disclosures.

Question 2: How many studies and authors are funded by the Coca-Cola brand?

If we expand our search to the Coca-Cola brand, and include research published before 2008 and after 2015, we find that the company and its affiliated organizations have funded 461 studies between 2008 and 2016, involving 1,496 different authors (we concede not all were grant recipients). We provide a visualization of this research in the form of a co-authorship network where every researcher (nodes in the network) is linked to another researcher if they co-authored an article that acknowledges funding from the Coca-Cola brand (see Figure 3). To put Coca-Cola’s transparency initiative in perspective, we apply a network partition color scheme that highlights (1) researchers that appear on Coca-Cola’s transparency disclosures; (2) researchers that declare funding but did not appear on Coca-Cola’s transparency disclosures, and (3) researchers funded by Coca-Cola’s international affiliate companies (subsidiaries and bottlers).

Question 3: Which research topics and interventions are supported by the company?

Using structural topic modeling, a method of quantitative text analysis, we found that this research focused predominantly on topics such as “energy balance” and “physical activity”, a narrative that tends to divert attention from sugar and calorie consumption (you can find an interactive data visualization of the research topics here).

Question 4: Are Coca-Cola funded researchers declaring their links to the company in their publications?

We found that 17% (38) of researchers on Coca-Cola’s transparency list did not acknowledge funding from the company in their subsequent publications. Obviously, we could not tell whether this omission was intentional, but were it not for the company’s public acknowledgement, we would not know these researchers had collaborated with the company.

So can we trust Coca-Cola’s disclosures?

Our study suggests that Coca-Cola has taken a positive step in releasing details of research it funds, but it is clear that still a great deal of information is missing. Both the company and the researchers underreport their funding. This may be in an effort to minimize funding when it could be attached with a stigma in the eyes of public health researchers. Relying exclusively on funding statements may also give us an incomplete picture, as they often do not include the necessary information to identify the Principal Investigator(s) and the year in which the grant was awarded.

Nonetheless, approaches such as ours can help improve transparency in two ways. First, by aggregating research funded by Coca-Cola we can reveal the scale of the company’s involvement in research as well as providing a benchmark that can be used to evaluate the company’s transparency pledge; second, we leverage the company’s transparency disclosure to assess how good are researchers at revealing Coca-Cola’s financial support.

Our results underscore the need for transparency to avoid potential conflicts of interest in research funding.

Paulo Serôdio is a postdoctoral researcher at the School of Economics of the University of Barcelona, an associate member of the Department of Sociology of the University of Oxford and a visiting fellow of the Paris Institute of Complex Systems. His research merges insights from the fields of political economy, network science and data mining to study corporate influence on politics.

Martin McKee, CBE MD DSc. Martin is Professor of European Public Health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Research Director at the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, and past President of the European Public Health Association. His work has been recognised by election to the US National Academy of Medicine and UK Academy of medical Sciences, as well as by numerous visiting professorships, five honorary doctorates, and prizes and awards. He is best known for his research on the health effects of the collapse of the Soviet bloc, European law and health policy, and the health effects of the financial crisis

David Stuckler is a Professor of Policy Analysis and Public Management, Bocconi University in Milan. His research uses large datasets and statistical modelling to understand the root causes of epidemics.

Britain's Food Nannies Will No Longer Sell You 1.75L Bottles of Coca-Cola

Yup, you read that right - if you live in Britain, you might want to stock up on 1.75L bottles of Coca-Cola, as starting in March, you'll be forced to buy only 1.5L bottles.

And yet there's no outcry from the beverage industry.

You'd think there would be. After all, back when nanny Bloomberg tried to pass his cup size ban - the one that would have forced you to buy two 500ml cups if you wanted to drink the volume of a human stomach (1L) worth of soda at once, the beverage industry bought a full page advertisement in the New York Times to complain about it (that's it up above).

But what about Brits' rights to buy 1.75L bottles of liquid candy? Why no screaming about Britain's fun and freedom stealing nanny?

Because Britain's nanny is the beverage industry. You see Coca-Cola, consequent to Britain's new soda tax, wants to ensure people keep buying plenty of product, and to help ease the tax' sting, they're going to stop selling 1.75L bottles (which incur more tax) altogether.

So the next time you're tempted to shout about the nanny state when someone like Bloomberg proposes a new policy designed to encourage decreased consumption of junk food, remember, you already live in a nanny state.

The food industry is your nanny.

(originally posted in response to Philadelphia's similar plan)

UK Gov's ParkLives Kids' Exercise Partnership Markets Coca-Cola

ParkLives is a joint project between Coca-Cola and the British government that aims to promote free physical fitness activities at local UK parks.

At least that's what's in it for the British government.

What's in it for Coca-Cola?

Well of course they can spin it as strong corporate social responsibility which helps their claim that they're on team health and in so doing provide themselves with ammunition to possibly forestall or block industry unfriendly legislation.

But there's more.

There's marketing.

A recent study set out to look at the ParkLives project through the lens of advertising.

The study analyzed two weeks worth of #ParkLives tweets during two separate weeks. The first week was during a week of school vacation (where the marketing might be expected to be thicker and the events more frequent), while the second was during the school year, but spanning National Fitness Day.

Every identified tweet was then coded for category of content (marketing or otherwise)

Over the two weeks of collection, 318 tweets containing 216 images were identified, and of those, 57% included a Coca-Cola logo (usually on banners or staff shirts).

The authors note that the exposure to Coca-Cola branding is perhaps more powerful here in that with ParkLives, Coca-Cola is associated with fun, healthy, family activities.

The authors' take on all of this?

"ParkLives is indicative of a CSR project that aims to create a health halo around a brand and influence wider socio-ecological factors by guiding public discourse and directing opinion on the determinants of public health issues away from corporate influence and toward individual responsibility"

Partnerships, by definition, benefit both involved parties. Perhaps governments shouldn't be helping out in the business of marketing the world's largest liquid candy brand.

No Coke and Pepsi, Adding Fibre and Pro-Biotics Doesn't Make Liquid Candy Healthy

As the liquid candy business falters, Coca-Cola and PepsiCo are desperately turning to the addition of pro-biotics and fibre to their juices and sodas in a bid to sustain their sales.

First up is Coca-Cola Plus. Launched in Japan each bottle of the diet soda beverage has 5gr of added insoluble fibre. According to its official press release,

"Drinking one Coca-Cola Plus per day with food will help suppress fat absorption and help moderate the levels of triglycerides in the blood after eating"

And a statement to that effect will apparently be placed directly on the front of the bottle.

Next up is PepsiCo's juice arm's offering of Tropicana Essentials Probiotics, which along with its 7.25 teaspoons of sugar per glass (which incidentally is more sugar per glass than Pepsi), is reported to pack,

"more than 1 billion active probiotics in each serving"

What will they do for you?

According to PepsiCo they will,

"work to promote gut health"

Desperate times call for desperate measures I suppose.

[Sorry, earlier version had Coca-Cola, not PepsiCo making Tropicana]

The Coca-Cola Company Supports Stricter Sugar Guidelines Than Health Canada

By Romain Behar

Last week Coca-Cola announced that they supported the World Health Organization's recommendation to limit added sugars to 10% of total daily calories.

Putting aside that it's difficult to limit that which you can't see or count, Health Canada recently announced that rather than recommend limits and listings to added sugars on food labels, they are going to do so only for total sugars.

Their rationale has been explained to me and others as being in part reflective of the fact that as a percentage of Canadians' total sugar consumption (the other was a regulatory concern that they couldn't identify added vs. intrinsic sugar by way of testing), added sugars make up roughly half of those, and therefore with Health Canada's proposed 100g limit to total sugars, and using simulated diets, they expect 50g of those to be free or added. Working off a 2,000 calorie diet (which itself may not be all that wise, but is the convention everywhere), that reflects the WHO's 10% recommended daily added sugar limit. Of course that's only if you follow Canada's Food Guide. And given that soda, candy, and what were once known as "other" foods, aren't part of the Guide, suggesting a total sugar value will serve as a useful surrogate will fail the vast majority of the population given studies have suggested  that 25% of the average Canadian's calories come from "other" foods.

Even if you put dietary reality aside for a moment, there's a big problem with the plan as more recent research calls Canadians' presumptive added sugar consumption into question. The research, spearheaded by PhD candidate Jodi Bernstein and working out of Dr. Mary L'Abbé's lab notes that prior guesstimates were based off data generated in part from the limited Canadian Nutrient File (CNF) - a database that according to Bernstein et al. lacks, "scheduled, systematic and comprehensive updating", and does not contain any brand specific data.

In the CNF's stead, Bernstein et al created their own database, the Food Label Information Program (FLIP) database, which they update every 3 years. The data was collected by way of boots on the ground in Toronto, Ottawa, and Calgary grocery stores representing 75% of the market share. There, researchers used a smartphone to scan and categorize every single item with a Nutrition Facts table (NFt). Next, an algorithm was utilized to calculate the products' free and added sugars.

Among their FLIP derived conclusions is that rather than the 50% derived from the CNF, 62% of consumed sugar in Canada is from free and added sources.

In turn that means that Health Canada's arguments in support of their much criticized plan to list simply total sugar on future NFts, are weak, and may underestimate added sugar consumption, and that if you consume 100g of total sugar, you'll be exceeding the WHO's recommended daily added sugar maximum by 24%.

It also means that The Coca-Cola Company may now be supporting stricter added sugar limits than Health Canada.

[I should note though, both the 50% and the 62% are best guess estimates. In turn I'd say that speaks to why we'd be far better off with an added rather than total sugar listing on our NFts.]

Coca-Cola's New Anti-Obesity Ad Provides Truly Valuable Advice (No Kidding!)

During my annual winter blogging break, I'll be posting some of my favourites from back in 2013. I'm also changing my daily posting time to 9:00am

Thanks to blog reader and exercise specialist Mike Wigger for sending along the latest in Coca-Cola's anti-obesity ad campaign. It's a commercial called, "Grandpa", and in it they juxtapose Grandpa's then life (which according to Coca-Cola included more walking, smaller meals, biking to work, snacking on fruit, taking the stairs, enjoying the outdoors, homemade meals, eating at the dinner table) with his grandson's now life.



And of course the commonality between Grandpa and his grandson's lives in the advertisement is that Grandpa apparently also enjoyed Coca-Cola with the clear implication being that it's all those other things, not the consumption of Coca-Cola, that a person ought to change if they want to enjoy the same weight and health as Gramps.

But is Grandpa's Coca-Cola the same as your Coca-Cola? Not on your life and so I produced a video to explain what I mean and why it is that I in fact totally agree with Coca-Cola's latest message that we should try to live like Grandpa (and yes, I know my collar looks funny).

There's No Hydration Emergency, and Soda's Liquid Candy

Branding matters.

For soda makers, that their product's base is water means they can market or deflect around hydration and thirst.

But there is no hydration emergency.

If the body says drink, definitely do so, and water of course is your best bet.

Yet the world around has a bad habit of making it seem all the more complicated. Recently the New York Times wrote about "surprising ways" to stay hydrated. It covered the new "hydration index" study funded by the European Hydration Institute (EHI). The index ranks drinks according to their hydration abilities. Among other findings it reported that regular soda is as hydrating as water.

The EHI might be fairly described as the Global Energy Balance Network of hydration as it was founded by Coca-Cola at a cost of just over $7 million USD, and the study's lead author, a prior consultant and speaker for Coca-Cola, is the chairman of the EHI's scientific advisory board and the vice-chair of the EHI's board of trustees.

College Humor recently put out a great debunking of the hydration emergency. Have a peek!



All this to say that soda benefits from the hydration emergency message as it healthwashes their product in a way that leads people to think of soda as something more than just liquid candy.

So yes, definitely drink if you're thirsty, but drink water, not candy.

Coca-Cola Provides Pediatricians with Prescription Pads, and Kids with Diplomas

Today's guest post comes from my friend and stellar RD Andy Bellatti who some might not know is originally from Argentina. One of his contacts there sent him some photos of an almost unbelievable Coca-Cola partnership. As soon as I saw it, I offered up my blog for him to share more.

Last week, Fernando D'Ippollito – a pediatrician in Argentina – sent me the image that accompanies this post: a “diploma of good behavior” for his patients.

The diploma reads:

“Today, (DATE), this certificate was awarded to (PATIENT'S NAME) because Dr. (DOCTOR's NAME) asked them to:

__ Stick Out Their Tongue
__ Cough
__ Take Deep Breaths
... and this was done without crying or complaining."

The bottom right of the diploma reads “Your pediatrician” and provides a signature line for the doctor.

The most disturbing detail – Coca-Cola's logo – is in the lower left-hand corner.

According to Dr. D'Ippollito, this diploma template – along with a Coca-Cola branded prescription pad – was given to all members of the pediatrics department at his hospital (José Penna Hospital in Buenos Aires) by a visiting Coca-Cola representative – a visit that can only happen with approval from hospital administration.

It appears his hospital's administration has not gotten the memo. Criticism and abandonment of soda industry partnerships with health organization finally jumped from “fringe” to “mainstream” after last year's Global Energy Balance Network (GEBN) debacle, which resulted in global headlines, the disbanding of GEBN, Coca-Cola's notorious chief science and health officer stepping down, an end to the ties between Coca-Cola and the American Academy of Pediatrics as well as the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (the former severed ties with Coca-Cola, the latter was dumped by Coca-Cola) and a variety of monetary “transparency” disclosures from the soft drink giant.

2016 has only added more PR nightmares for the soft drink industry. Nancy Brown, CEO of the American Heart Association, recently published an open letter to Big Soda calling for an end to marketing to children. This letter came just days after a new report by the Center for Science in the Public Interest which detailed the many ways in which Coca-Cola continues to targets children, despite pledges to not advertise to children under the age of 12.

Today, keeping distance from the soda industry for a health institution or organization isn't progressive and courageous as it is a basic display of integrity and commitment to health.

Back to this Coca-Cola branded “good behavior” diploma nonsense (how is that for advertising to the 12-and-under crowd?): does Coca-Cola have ties with Argentina's national pediatric organization? That is unknown for now; the group's website page on sponsorship is, curiously, blank. The answer, though, is “very likely.” In March, Chile's Pediatric Society received plenty of negative attention after Coca-Cola sponsored its annual conference. And, earlier this month, it was revealed that Coca-Cola has generously donated to Spain's Academy of Pediatrics.

The point of these initiatives – which barely make a dent in Coca-Cola's operating budget – is to align the brand with health authorities in order to gain public trust. A sports figure hawking soda in a television commercial sells “cool”, but a pediatrician advertising soda via a “good behavior” diploma or a prescription pad is supposed to provide peace of mind to parents.

The best move health professionals – including, but not limited to, doctors, nurses, and dietitians – can make is encourage all patients, regardless of age, to limit or avoid sugar-sweetened beverages. In the case of Dr. Ippolitto, he tells me he and his fellow hospital colleagues saw this initiative for what it is: a cynical, and failed, attempt at buying the good graces of hard-working doctors.

Andy Bellatti, M.S., R.D., is a Las Vegas–based dietitian. He is also a co-founder and the strategic director of Dietitians for Professional Integrity, a group that advocates for ethical and socially responsible partnerships within the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. You can also follow Andy on Twitter and Facebook.

Coca-Cola Latest Ad Says, "Don't Believe Everything You're Told"

Took my eldest to see The Martian this past weekend, and a pre-movie Coca-Cola Christmas ad aired.

The ad's below.

The ad's premise is straightforward. The spot highlights sentiments that with the help of Coca-Cola and Christmas, are proven to be wrong.

"Don't open the door to anyone" sees a boyfriend dressed in a reindeer costume surprising his girlfriend.

"Don't accept anything from strangers" sees a father and daughter buy a man painting a Christmas mural a bottle of Coca-Cola

"Nothing in life is for free" sees a woman drop her change and stranger in return buying her a bottle of Coca-Cola from a vending machine

"Nothing lasts forever" sees a couple's kids looking at a photograph of their parents young and in love and sharing a bottle of Coca-Cola followed by their parents old and in love sharing a bottle of Coca-Cola.

But there were two messages that didn't have any obvious explanations.

There was,

"Don't believe everything you're told",

and,

"Don't mind everything you hear".

The first features a very young boy excited to see Santa, and the second has Santa chugging a bottle of Coca-Cola.

Could these messages be Coca-Cola's subtle response to their absolutely disastrous year in regard to public relations, sponsored research, public-private partnerships, the rising tide of calls for sugar-sweetened beverage taxes, and the seemingly global effort at encouraging a reduction in the consumption of added sugars?

Ottawa City Hall Gives Free Coca-Cola to Children In Return For Hugs

Children lined up yesterday to hug an Ottawa City Hall based Coca-Cola vending machine to get a free cola.

Why is the City of Ottawa currently handing out free Coca-Cola at City Hall? What could possibly be in it for the city?

I'm genuinely not sure what the answer is. I asked the Mayor yesterday, but unfortunately didn't hear back.

I have to imagine it might be along the lines of holiday spirit, or "fun".

I know what's in it for Coca-Cola though. Virtually free, powerful, emotional, branding, along with the opportunity to inculcate themselves with Ottawa City Hall where at least one City Councillor tweeted out a video (which I've uploaded to YouTube) of the next door school's kids having at it. His positive tweet suggests the probability that the hug based vending machine bought some Coca-Cola goodwill with him - something that might be useful were the city to one day consider a soda tax or moves to limit the vending of sugar sweetened beverages in city run buildings.

.
Here's how a reporter on the scene described the influx of kids seeking City endorsed free Coca-Cola,

Literally one million Lisgar kids are getting free full-sugar pop from a huggable Coke machine at City Hall.

— David Reevely (@davidreevely) December 2, 2015

The question that we have to consider as a society is whether there are ways other than handing out sugar water or junk food to inspire holiday spirit or "fun", and perhaps more reflectively, how it is we've come to a point in time where using junk food and sugar water to entertain at every event no matter how small, is so normalized that it occurs even in the City Hall of the city whose Mayor is Ontario's former Minister of Health Promotion?

[Thanks to Twitter's Alan D for sharing.]

UPDATE: According to reporter David Reevely, the city has a $250,000 per year "Pouring Rights" contract with Coca-Cola.

The city says the Cokes-for-hugs machine is part of a 5-year "pouring rights" deal with Coke. They move it around. A day here, a day there.

— David Reevely (@davidreevely) December 2, 2015

Canadian Beverage Association Poised to Take Credit for Existing Consumer Trend

Did you hear about the "Balance Calories" initiative launched by the Canadian Beverage Association, Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, and Motts?

The strap line for their press release is,

"Industry aims to reduce beverage calories in the Canadian diet by 20% over the next 10 years"

But beverage calorie reduction is an existing trend. Between soda taxes and news like yesterday's which saw Applebee's restaurants removing soda from their kids' menus, change is here, and it's much to the chagrin of the soda industry, not consequent to its good behaviour.

I think a more accurate strap line would be,

"Industry aims to take credit for ongoing reduction of beverage calories in the Canadian diet over the next 10 years in a bid to try to forestall industry unfriendly legislation like sugar sweetened beverage taxes."

And it's already paying off for them. On their website are quotes of praise from the Ontario's Minister of Health Promotion, the Ontario Minister of Agriculture and Food and Rural Affairs, the managing director of EPODE Canada and director of the EPODE International Network, the President of the Global Alliance for Improved Nutrition, and the Mayor of Toronto.

Coca-Cola Partners with Police to Hand Out Drink Coupons

Yesterday Ontario's Peel Regional Police and Coca-Cola held a joint press conference to promote their new partnership - one that will see police officers in Peel hand out coupons for Coca-Cola to drivers who haven't been drinking and driving.

Given the awareness and illegality surrounding drunk driving, the likelihood that this "partnership" will lead those who were otherwise considering driving drunk to not do so is low at best.

What that means of course is that this is a partnership that only benefits Coca-Cola who in turn receive the incredible opportunity of having a police force freely serving as respected, trustworthy, brand ambassadors.

By involving themselves in causes like this one, causes that are themselves beyond reproach, Coca-Cola secures powerful, and virtually free advertising, while accumulating public relations victories that they can use when trying to convince politicians that soda taxes are bad ideas. A great move for Coca-Cola, with pretty much nothing in it for Peel.

Unfortunately, though it was there before, the Peel Regional Police have apparently removed the video of their joint press conference with Coca-Cola.

ParticipACTION - One of These Things is Not Like the Others

A screen-cap of the funders page of ParticipACTION's - Canada's premier physical activity brand - most recent report.

Am betting too that if the logos were ranked in order of dollars, Coca-Cola's would be right at the top, as from the best I can gather, Coca-Cola has funnelled $10 million to ParticipACTION over the years.

[ICYMI, here's a recent editorial from The Lancet discussing these very sorts of partnerships.]

This is How Coca-Cola Teaches "Energy Balance" to Kids

By way of example, two of their initiatives.

The first is called, "Get the Ball Rolling" and according to Caren Pasquale Seckler, VP of Social Commitment at The Coca-Cola Company, it was launched because,

"At that time, we made an important decision to take a public stand against obesity. And the reason is simple: Coca-Cola cares about the health and happiness of everyone who drinks our beverages.built on our Company’s global commitments to help fight obesity"

Read about the program on Coca-Cola's website and you'll learn that apparently fighting obesity for Coca-Cola means handing out Coca-Cola branded soccer balls, driving traffic to "MyCokeRewards" loyalty program (which no doubt collects personal information, allows for permission marketing, and of course markets their beverages directly), asking people to vote for their favourite national park, and bringing their "Happiness Trucks" to events where kids are apparently placed in giant cans of Coca-Cola to race around in (photo up above). Oh, and of course, Coca-Cola beverages are distributed as noted in this Coca-Cola piece on a Get the Ball Rolling event with the Texas Rangers and the Boys and Girls Clubs of America,

"All Boys & Girls Clubs participants and coaches received a José Guzmán autographed baseball, Powerade t-shirt and goodie bag and Coca-Cola “Open Happiness” soccer ball, along with plenty of Powerade and Powerade Zero."

Next up is Mixify. Mixify is a joint project between Coca-Cola, Dr. Pepper, PepsiCo, and the American Beverage Association.

The intervention seems geared to directly target teens and teaches them that following sweaty workouts you should eat "whatever you're craving",

And at their travelling road show of events, Mixify literally has children "balancing" what they drink with exercise as illustrated by their real life Jenga game.

So what do you think? Helpful altruism, or slick marketing?

Ask a Coca-Cola Funded GEBN Scientist an Easy Question, Get a 560 Word Answer

A great many stories have been written following the New York Times' Anahad O'Connor's piece, Coca-Cola Funds Scientists Who Shift Blame for Obesity Away From Bad Diets, including one published yesterday in Alternet
by journalist Ari LeVaux who asked Global Energy Balance Network Executive Committee member Dr. Marianella Herrera, a question which sure sounded straightforward to me,

"Do you think sugary beverages have a place in a healthy diet?"

Her answer, which I'll post in its entirety down below, when I cut and pasted it into Word, turned out to be 560 words long.

Honestly, if your answer to a straightforward question is 560 words long, you probably didn't want to answer it.

For what it's worth, I took a stab at answering it. My answer was 30 words long,

"Sugary beverages are a treat, but not a healthful one, and consequently the right amount to include in your diet is the smallest amount you need to enjoy your life."

And given that the question didn't ask me about them, I didn't offer up my thoughts on fear of being assaulted or robbed, gut flora, or sleep quality.

But then again, unlike Dr. Herrera, I don't receive grant support from Coca-Cola, nor am I am a member of the currently embattled, Coca-Cola funded, Global Energy Balance Network, and I genuinely can't guarantee that if I were, my fire-exit answer to a question that might lead me to be critical of my funders' (and potentially friends') products, wouldn't have resembled hers.

Motivated bias isn't something any of us are able to avoid, and with their funding of scientists and non-profits and more, that's definitely part what Coca-Cola is counting on.

Here is LeVaux and Herrera's full exchange:

Ari LeVaux:

Do you think sugary beverages have a place in a healthy diet?

Dr. Herrera:

More than say that sugary beverages can or cannot be a part of a healthy diet, let’s see facts: American Diabetes Association has a recommendation that people should limit the intake of sugary beverages because too much sugar is linked to developing type 2 diabetes, but also make the statement that if you want to consume sweets you should also take into consideration how you substitute the consumption of other carbs in your diet. In other words watch what you are eating and drinking. Is it bad to have a coke? No. Is it bad to drink 6 cans of coke a day? Yes, that might get you into trouble, as could get you into trouble eating a whole cake on a regular basis or a tin of ice cream every other day! What we want to tell people is go for fruits and veggies, have your protein portions consumed, go for the right fats and if you have your birthday you can have a piece of cake and relax, but go in moderation. What is also happening is there is an emphasis of dieting because it has proved to be a successful way to lose weight, which is a big issue today, but in this battle against obesity we might have forgotten other factors. For example: how about start thinking about stopping the weight gain? For that, lifestyle changes are key: exercising which has to be thought in terms of personal security in the developing world, have we thought really how many people are not exercising because they fear they will be assaulted, robbed, etc at nights which is the time many people have for exercising outdoors? How about improving the sleep quality, are we making enough education strategies for population understanding that hormone cycles released during sleep time are crucial for weight maintenance, for children’s growth, for the appetite regulation? Do we have access to good water in the developing world? How this affects the gut flora and in consequence increases the risk for being obese? As you see obesity is a complex multifactorial disease (it is a chronic disease according to WHO) so limiting the cause to just one factor would not be responsible in my perspective. So if you have a healthy lifestyle, eat in moderation, exercise, sleep well drink safe water, you might choose the foods you like if you know how to eat them. Getting people to like foods such as fruits and veggies is our major challenge and should start in early childhood. The American Diabetes Association has excellent resources that helps with some myths about sugar and points out how difficult is this approach.

And we have not addressed the issue that energy imbalance implies undernourishment for many people and that is also important to be highlighted here. There are many people particularly in the global south that suffer from hunger and while the causes of obesity might have different factors including a monotonous diet, don’t forget that now people might have some income that allows them to buy the cheapest foods (sugary beverages are not always the cheapest in the developing world) leading to the so called hidden hunger as a consequence of the social inequities in the access to healthy foods. As you see the topic is immense and please let me know if I’ve covered this enough for you!

At this point I'll remind you again of the New York Times' headline, Coca-Cola Funds Scientists Who Shift Blame for Obesity Away From Bad Diets.

Is The Obesity Society's Silence on Coca-Cola Due to Motivated Bias?

That was the question I asked on Twitter last Thursday.

Is motivated bias the reason that @ObesitySociety hasn't shared a single tweet about massive Coca-Cola & GEBN story? http://t.co/dDvFtD2lbK

— Yoni Freedhoff, MD (@YoniFreedhoff) August 13, 2015

Pro or con, I think @ObesitySociety ought to have a position given their billing as North America's premiere sci. org. dedicated to obesity.

— Yoni Freedhoff, MD (@YoniFreedhoff) August 13, 2015

My tweets went unanswered, and in case you're not sure what they were all about, last week saw Anahad O'Connor's front page story on Coca-Cola's funding of the "Global Energy Balance Network" (GEBN) make some massive waves and generate huge public interest.

There were stories in (and this is just a small smattering - truly, this was an international blockbuster of a story):

The Washington Post
TIME
The Boston Globe
The Guardian
The Independent
The Takeaway
CBC The National
MSNBC
FOX News
The Atlanta Journal Constitution
Forbes
CBS News
Mother Jones
USA Today
Slate

And it wasn't just about covering the news.

Letter writers to the NYTs seemed furious.

So did The New York Times' and USA Today's editorial boards.

Regardless of where you fall in the debate on the messages being put forward by the Coca-Cola funded non-profit, I think it's safe to say that this story is the most publicized story ever written on partnerships between the food industry, scientists, and non-profit, obesity focused, NGOs.

You might think, given the story's topic, size, and importance, that The Obesity Society (TOS), an organization that bills itself as,

"The leading professional society dedicated to better understanding, preventing and treating obesity"

whose strategic plans' mission specifies their desire to,

"lead the cause in advancing the science-based understanding of the causes, consequences, prevention and treatment of obesity"

would feel it important to add its own voice to the discussion - pro or con.

Which brings me to "motivated bias".

Motivated bias refers to the phenomenon whereby,

"When people have a stake in an issue, they tend to process information in a selective fashion that supports their personal interests, a phenomenon known as “motivated reasoning.”

If dollars, partnerships and friendships make up personal interests, The Obesity Society may well have a motivated bias to ignore this story rather than risk criticizing the Coca-Cola/GEBN partnership or its messages. In fact TOS' interest in food industry collaboration is the reason I resigned my membership as I just couldn't be a part of an organization whose, "Guidelines for Accepting Funds from External Sources" position paper refuses to allow even the consideration of funding as a source of bias and,

"expressly eliminates all forms of evaluation or judgment of the funding source"

And then to prove they were serious about it struck a "Food Industry Outreach Task Force", which later morphed into their "Food Industry Engagement Council", the 2014 meeting of which included representatives from Kellogg's, PepsiCo, Nestlé, Dr. Pepper and Ocean Spray.

Friendships may also have a role to play in the silence here - friendships between TOS' leadership and the scientists headlining GEBN (one of who is a TOS past president), as well as friendships between TOS' leadership and Coca-Cola's, whereby judging from their tweets to one another, Coca-Cola's Chief Scientific Officer and one of TOS' current council members are genuine friends. Lastly, given there's no available list of GEBN members other than its executive, it's also possible there are many other TOS members involved.

It's important to note, motivated bias isn't nefarious, it's human nature, and given TOS' silence in the face of this story, along with their stated interest in food industry partnerships, I can't help but wonder if motivated bias is what's keeping them from weighing in.

Motivated biases and motivated silences, whether they're present in this case or not, are undeniably among the primary benefits the food industry enjoys when partnering with public health organizations whose causes may be negatively impacted by the partnering industry's products.

[For an example of what can happen when a public health NGO unshackles itself from the food industry, look no further than Canada's Heart and Stroke Foundation, and if you're interested, here's an opinion piece I wrote for Obesity Reviews on why the food industry is neither friend, nor foe, nor partner.]

When Will ParticipACTION End Its Partnership With Coca-Cola?

I really do think it's a matter of "when" and not just "will".

For my non-Canadian readers, ParticipACTION is Canada's premiere physical activity NGO whose stated mandate is,

"As Canada’s premier physical activity brand, ParticipACTION helps Canadians sit less and move more through innovative engagement initiatives and thought leadership."

They're also funded primarily by Coca-Cola - to the tune of $10 million over 10 years which unless ParticipACTION pulls an escape chute, will last through April 2018.

It was almost inconceivable back in 2007 that ParticipACTION felt that "thought leadership" included a partnership with Coca-Cola, but I'd argue it is wholly inconceivable now. With the World Health Organization, Canada's Heart and Stroke Foundation, and even Health Canada discussing the need to reduce free sugars in our diets, and recent estimates suggesting that the consumption of sugar sweetened beverages is responsible for over 180,000 annual deaths, ParticipACTION simply can't re-up with the world's largest single source provider of free sugars and still try to pass itself off as caring about the promotion of health.

And the writing may be on their wall. In ParticipACTION's recently published Strategic Plan entitled "Moving Forward" two statements caught my eye,

It’s time to make ourselves more relevant

and,

It’s time to reinvent our funding model

And finally, just as a gentle reminder, here's what former ParticipACTION champion Hal Johnson had to say about Coca-Cola and ParticipACTION.

I am disappointed that Participaction has partnered with Coke, it doesn't fit no matter how much money they are getting http://t.co/hAyogrPT

— BodyBreak (@bodybreak) June 22, 2012

Let's hope that we actually do soon see some ParticipACTION "thought leadership" with a formal announcement marking the end of their bizarre Coca-Cola era, even if that means cutting their ties earlier than they'd planned. It's never the wrong time to do the right thing.