Posts Tagged ‘Coca-Cola’

And Now a Word from Our Sponsors: New Report from Eat Drink Politics

January 23, 2013 – For Immediate Release

Public health attorney and author Michele Simon asks: Are America’s nutrition professionals in the pocket of Big Food? While the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics’ 74,000-member trade group partners with the likes of Coke and Hershey’s, the nation’s health continues to suffer from poor diet.

The largest trade group of nutrition professionals—the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics—has a serious credibility problem. In a damning report released today, industry watchdog Eat Drink Politics examines the various forms of corporate sponsorship by Big Food that are undermining the integrity of those professionals most responsible for educating Americans about healthy eating.

The report details, for example, how registered dietitians can earn continuing education units from Coca-Cola, in which they learn that sugar is not a problem for children and how Nestlé, the world’s largest food company can pay $50,000 to host a two-hour “nutrition symposium” at the Academy’s annual meeting. Additional disturbing findings from the report include:

  • Beginning in 2001, the Academy listed 10 food industry sponsors; the 2011 annual report lists 38, a more than three-fold increase;
  • Companies on the Academy’s list of approved continuing education providers include Coca-Cola, Kraft Foods, Nestlé, and PepsiCo;
  • At the 2012 annual meeting, 18 organizations – less than five percent of all exhibitors – captured 25 percent of the total exhibitor space. Only two out of the 18 represented whole, non-processed foods;
  • The Corn Refiners Association (lobbyists for high fructose corn syrup) sponsored three “expo impact” sessions at the 2012 annual meeting;
  • A majority of registered dietitians surveyed found three current Academy sponsors “unacceptable” (Coca-Cola, Mars, and PepsiCo);
  • 80 percent of registered dietitians said sponsorship implies Academy endorsement of that company and their products;
  • The Academy has not supported controversial nutrition policies that might upset corporate sponsors, such as limits on soft drink sizes, soda taxes, or GMO labels;
  • Sponsors and their activities appear to violate the Academy’s own sponsorship guidelines.

Among the report’s recommendations are for the Academy to: 1) provide greater transparency on corporate funding sources; 2) gather input from all members on corporate sponsorship; 3) reject all corporate-sponsored education; and 4) provide better leadership on controversial nutrition policy issues. Registered dietitian and Academy member Andy Bellatti, who has long criticized his professional group’s conflicted corporate sponsorships said:

Michele Simon’s report on the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is thoroughly researched and expertly points out the different ways in which the nation’s leading nutrition organization harms its reputation, efficacy, and members by forming partnerships with food companies that care more about selling products than they do about improving the health of Americans. Anyone concerned about public health will realize that the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics is in dire need of systemic change if it hopes to take a leadership role and be taken seriously as the home base of the nation’s nutrition experts.

Report links:

Contact: Michele Simon at (510) 465-0322 or Michele@EatDrinkPolitics.com

California Newspaper Editorial Boards Spread False Claims and Faulty Logic on Proposition 37

Each election season, proponents and opponents of the various initiatives on the California ballot hope for the state’s major newspaper endorsements. While you can’t expect every paper to endorse your side, Proposition 37, which would require labeling of foods produced using genetic engineering, seems to have had a string of incredibly bad luck. So incredible, in fact, that the reasoning behind several California newspaper endorsements of a No vote has me scratching my head.

Read rest at Center for Food Safety…

How Did My Profession’s Conference Get Hijacked by Big Food? (Guest post by Andy Bellatti)

Coca-Cola promoting the RDNational ConfectionersThe HFCS folks

Booth displays at Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics Expo. (photos by Andy Bellatti)

I recently attended the annual gathering of the largest trade group of nutrition professionals, which I also covered last year. Look out for complete report from me in the coming months. Meantime, I am pleased to share the experience of one registered dietitian, Andy Bellatti.

The Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics (AND) hosted its 2012 Food & Nutrition Conference and Expo (FNCE) earlier this month. Sadly, the event once again (see last year’s report) demonstrated how this registered dietitians’ accrediting organization drags its own credential through the mud by prioritizing Big Food’s corporate interests over sound nutrition and public health.

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McDonald’s and Coca-Cola – An Unhealthy Alliance

This week, the New York City Board of Health is expected to approve Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s proposal to limit the size of sugary soft drinks. Motivated by rising diet-related chronic diseases (along with healthcare costs), the mayor’s attempt to rein in out of control portion sizes caused quite a media firestorm. Predictably, the soda lobby has come out swinging, complete with an industry front group called, “New Yorkers for Beverage Choices.”

A better name would be, “Soda Pushers for Continued Profits.”

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PepsiCo and Coca-Cola spend $500K each to stop GMO labeling

Last week I wrote about why PepsiCo was the largest food maker to donate money to the “No on 37” campaign, to oppose a California initiative that would require foods containing GMOs to be labeled. New campaign finance reports show just how much hiding the truth is worth. The largest contributions are from biotech giants Dupont Pioneer ($2M) and Bayer Cropscience ($1M).  Other contributions include $500K each from Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, Nestle, General Mills, and ConAgra. Read this press release from the Yes on 37 campaign for the complete run-down on this latest investment in secrecy from Big Food.

Coke Lawyers Correct Eco-Blogger on VITAMINWATER(circle R)

You’d think high-priced lawyers working for a mega-multinational conglomerate such as Coca-Cola might have better things to do than send silly threatening letters to tiny nonprofits like the Center for Environmental Health. This letter calls out the Center’s blog for misrepresenting Coca-Cola’s VITAMINWATER (TM!) brand by referring to the category of “vitamin water.”

Seriously. I am embarrassed for my profession. At least the letter is good for a laugh.

 

Court not buying Coke’s defense of its deceptive marketing of vitaminwater as lawsuit proceeds

My friends at the Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) recently scored an important court victory in its lawsuit against Coca-Cola for deceptive marketing of its product vitaminwater. (In case you missed it, the soft drink giant purchased Glaceau, maker of vitaminwater, back in 2007 for a cool $4.2 billion in cash.)
The class action, filed in January 2009 in federal court in New York, alleges that Coca-Cola’s claims about vitaminwater’s heath benefits are false, misleading, deceptive, and unfair. As CSPI’s press release explained:

Vitaminwater’s website, marketing copy, and labels claim that vitaminwater is healthy, claiming, for example, that “balance cran-grapefruit” has “bioactive components” that promote “healthy, pain-free functioning of joints, structural integrity of joints and bones” and that the nutrients in “power-c dragonfruit” “enable the body to exert physical power by contributing to the structural integrity of the musculoskeletal system.”

If those claims sound like they belong on a pharmaceutical product, you’re right. As CSPI notes, they go way beyond anything the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) allows “and cross the line into outright fraud.” Then there’s the sugar. According to CSPI, “the 33 grams of sugar in each bottle of vitaminwater do more to promote obesity, diabetes, and other health problems than the vitamins in the drinks do to perform the advertised benefits listed on the bottles.”

An important hurdle in a lawsuit like this is surviving what’s called a motion to dismiss. That’s what Coca-Cola’s lawyers filed to ask the judge to throw out the case before it can even get to trial. Last month, U.S. District Court Judge John Gleeson denied Coke’s motion on almost all grounds, a huge victory for the plaintiffs.

In even more good news, the judge’s language in his order was very favorable to CSPI. You can read why on Public Citizen’s Consumer Law and Policy Blog, in a post by CSPI’s litigation director Steve Gardner. 

Here are a few highlights. The court said: “Because vitaminwater does not meet minimum nutrition requirements [of FDA law], any health claim about the product is contrary to FDA regulation.” This is important because of what is known as the “jelly bean rule.” As the court explains:

The FDA regulations restricting health claims (or implied claims of “healthiness”) to foods which meet certain minimum nutrient levels, colloquially termed “the jelly bean rule,” were developed in order to prevent food producers from encouraging the consumption of “junk foods” by fortifying them with nutrients.

In other words, FDA developed this rule precisely with the type of marketing being deployed by vitaminwater in mind: promoting sugary soft drinks under the guise of good health and nutrition.

And then there’s this:

The fact that the actual sugar content of vitaminwater was accurately stated in an FDA-mandated label on the product does not eliminate the possibility that reasonable consumers may be misled.

This is important because defendants often try to hide behind the federal nutrition labeling law to avoid being held liable under state consumer deception statutes. But the court rejected this argument. In doing so, the judge cited to an earlier decision in a lawsuit over Gerber’s “Fruit Juice Snacks” that nicely captures the reasoning:

We do not think that the FDA requires an ingredient list so that manufacturers can mislead consumers and then rely on the ingredient list to correct those misinterpretations and provide a shield for liability for the deception. Instead, reasonable consumers expect that the ingredient list contains more detailed information about the product that confirms other representations on the packaging.
Translation: Front-of-package marketing should match what’s in the nutrition facts on back. Imagine! (My colleague Marion Nestle has long called on FDA to fix the problems associated with front-of-package labeling – see her recent commentary in JAMA on this very topic.)

Last week, author John Robbins wrote on Huffington Post about the “staggering feat of twisted logic” by lawyers for Coca-Cola by asserting that “no consumer could reasonably be misled into thinking vitaminwater was a healthy beverage.” He wonders:

Does this mean that you’d have to be an unreasonable person to think that a product named “vitaminwater,” a product that has been heavily and aggressively marketed as a healthy beverage, actually had health benefits? Or does it mean that it’s okay for a corporation to lie about its products, as long as they can then turn around and claim that no one actually believes their lies?

Excellent questions. At least one judge isn’t buying Coke’s silly defense. And apparently this case has touched a nerve, as least with HuffPo readers. According to the site’s stats, Robbins’ article is the most popular this week, with close to 600,000 views. Also, so far the article has more than 1,000 comments, with over 13,000 Facebook shares and over 22,000 posts to Twitter. I asked John Robbins what he makes of this response and here’s what he told me:

I am grateful to the 35,000 or so people who have posted the article I wrote about the dark side of vitaminwater to their Facebook pages and/or tweeted about it. Coca-Cola would like us to believe that it’s a responsible corporate citizen, but the truth is decidedly otherwise. In fact, the company constantly lies to the public. What’s even more insulting, Coke then has the audacity to turn around and say, in court, that a product they have marketed as healthy actually isn’t, and the public would  have to be stupid to think otherwise.

This case should put all food companies on notice that they can’t dress up junk food and nurtitionally-deficient beverages with healthy-sounding names or over-the-top marketing claims. 

Often once a case survives a motion to dismiss, the defendant is more likely to negotiate a settlement and change its marketing practices to avoid expensive and embarrassing litigation. Stay tuned.

Family doctors debate if they should take Coke money, after they took it

In this week’s Health Blog, the Wall Street Journal’s Katherine Hobson asks readers to chime in on a “debate” among family doctors over the ethics of corporate sponsorship of medicine.

But first, the backdrop. Last year, the American Academy of Family Physicians announced “a new corporate partnership program” and its first partner was to be The Coca-Cola Company. Soon thereafter, about 20 doctors resigned from the organization in protest, drawing attention to the matter by Food Politics author Marion Nestle as well as advocacy groups such as the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood. (Full disclosure: I serve on CCFC’s steering committee.)

The grant amount was described as being in the “strong six figures” by AAFP. Here is how the group described the partnership in its October 2009 press release:

The Consumer Alliance is a program that allows corporate partners like The Coca-Cola Company to work with the AAFP to educate consumers about the role their products can play in a healthy, active lifestyle. As part of this partnership, The Coca-Cola Company is providing a grant to the AAFP to develop consumer education content on beverages and sweeteners for FamilyDoctor.org, an award-winning consumer health and wellness resource.

Consumer education? That must explain how a search for “Coca-Cola” on FamilyDoctor.org, brings up helpful content on hydration like how “even caffeinated drinks, such as coffee, tea and soda, count toward your daily water intake,” and why sports drinks are useful for athletes, and how safe the artificial sweeteners aspartame and saccharine are. All of this brought to you by Coca-Cola under the guise of consumer education. Even the disclaimers on each of these pages is misleading:

This content was developed with general underwriting support from The Coca-Cola Company.

That makes it sound as if the Coca-Cola is just paying someone else to do the writing. But it appears the company is directing the substance of the content as well, since the verbiage is pretty similar to that found on Coca-Cola’s own website on these very topics. (See for example, the company’s page on sweetener “facts and myths.)

It’s bad enough for a medical trade organization (and “award-winning” website) to be bought off by American’s number one promoter of unhealthy beverages, especially to children, but now apparently, almost a year later, the issue has turned into fertile ground for navel gazing as a way of justifying the move after the fact.

This week, AAFP’s journal, the Annals of Family Medicine, has published two perspectives on the matter. One penned by Dr. Howard Brody, AAFP member and director of the Institute for the Medical Humanities at the University of Texas Medical Branch. He’s not in favor of the idea:

The physician has a duty to prescribe medications or make dietary recommendations based on scientific evidence. The companies have an interest in selling more beverages, or more drugs, regardless of the evidence.

Precisely. In contrast, AAFP president, Dr. Lori Heim, sees no need to assume conflict of interest:

To gauge an individual or organization’s ethics, one must view its behavior over time, define the goal of that behavior and compare the outcome with the mission and values. Within this context, one can determine whether the assumption or appearance of conflict of interest or ethical lapse was, in fact, correct.

What? She lost me somewhere between outcome and values.

Taking money from Coca-Cola is not a science experiment that you watch over time, gather data, and then publish the analyzed results. But if one were to approach the issue that way, there’s no shortage of evidence of Coca-Cola’s “ethical lapses.” Whether your concern is marketing to children, labor abuses, or contaminating water supplies in developing nations, Coca-Cola would be the one company you’d not choose as a partner. Journalist Michael Blanding has written an entire book called The Coke Machine: The Dirty Truth Behind the World’s Favorite Soft Drink, due out in September, which chronicles these misdeeds and more.

But why, almost a year later, is the AAFP journal publishing what amounts to an academic debate between two doctors over an issue that has obviously already been decided? I realize that wheels of academic publishing turn very slowly and that perhaps these articles were submitted months ago, but why was there no public debate before AAFP took the money?

All this does now is give credence to idea that taking corporate money is a worthy subject of debate in the annals of medical journals, right up there with questions like, what sort of treatment a doctor should give patient X or Y. What about those 20 member doctors who resigned in protest last year? Where are their opinions published in any medical journal? This no debate at all. It’s simply an effort to whitewash the situation so now AAFP can say: See, we grappled with the issue in our journal under the heading “Ethical Issues.” Oh and by the way, we’re keeping Coke’s cash.

As I blogged about in March, Coca-Cola isn’t the only soda company seeking to infiltrate the medical establishment. The Yale School of Medicine has partnered with PepsiCo to allow the soft drink and snack food giant to fund a research lab and fellowship. Where does this end? At what point will we no longer have truly science-driven research institutions and unfettered medical professionals available to help Americans sort through the confusing clutter of health and nutrition information? Or has that time already come? Let’s hope not.

You can send a letter to AAFP asking them to end the Coke deal here, on the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood’s website.

Wondering where in the world Big Food will put 1.5 trillion calories?

Last week, 16 major packaged food companies “pledged” to Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move campaign that they would somehow remove 1.5 trillion calories from the U.S. food supply by the end of 2015. As I wrote here, there are many reasons to be skeptical about this announcement. Since my post others have chimed in with their own doubts. For example, see business writer Melanie Warner’s excellent analysis, Food Industry’s Calorie Reduction Pledge: Smart Marketing, but Dumb Nutrition.

I also had this nagging feeling that even if these food companies were to honor their promise, those calories would not just disappear, rather they would likely just turn up in other countries. Sure enough, with the ink barely dry on the calorie-reduction agreement, in came a press release from one of the most important pledgers – PepsiCo.

PepsiCo proudly announced that it’s investing $2.5 billion in China, on top of the $1 billion the company has already spent there since 2008. The soft drink and snack food giant intends to build a dozen new food and beverage plants, to add to the current 27 facilities.

According to the Wall Street Journal, this announcement, made at the Shanghai Expo, indicates stepped-up competition with Coca-Cola, who announced its own $2 billion investment in China late last year. (Both companies are major sponsors of the Expo.) WSJ explains why Coke and Pepsi are so eager to find fertile ground:

Both beverage giants are expanding aggressively in China, India and Russia, among other emerging markets, where growth is much faster than in the U.S. Soft-drink sales have declined for five years in the U.S.

“Emerging markets” is corporate-speak for developing nations. While sales slump here at home, PepsiCo is seeing double-digit growth overseas:

Its international business boosted first-quarter results, with its Asia, Middle East and Africa unit posting 13% growth in snack volume and 10% in beverage volume, largely because of growth in China and India.

Meanwhile Coca-Cola, never to be outdone by PepsiCo in the chutzpah department, quietly announced, the week prior to the Big Food White House Pledge, that they were investing $300 million in Pakistan. The plan is to build two more (adding to the current six) manufacturing plants in that country. This is another direct challenge to PepsiCo, which already has a major presence in the Middle East. (A friend who is currently teaching at Lahore University of Management Sciences tells me that students there eat in the “Pepsi Dining Center.”)

One article explains Coca-Cola’s motives: “Pakistan is a growing market. It has a population of 170 million and majority of them are youngsters,” said Rizwan U Khan, Coca-Cola’s country manager for Pakistan and Afghanistan. “We view this country has a favourable place for expansion.”

The majority are youngsters, of course, since youth is the optimum time to get more loyal customers. Funny how we didn’t hear any such honest assessment coming out of Big Food last week at the White House. They were on their best behavior there. And while PepsiCo previously endorsed the First Lady’s Let’s Move campaign, it seems Big Food only cares about childhood obesity in America. Indian kids, Pakistani kids, Chinese kids, who cares?

Of course, the cigarette industry wrote this playbook years ago. Once regulations started becoming inhospitable in the United States, Big Tobacco just stepped up their marketing efforts overseas, especially in the developing world and as a result, smoking is an international epidemic. To quote Dr. Margaret Chan, World Health Organization director-general:

If Big Tobacco is in retreat in some parts of the world, it is on the march in others. As we all know, the tobacco industry is ruthless, devious, rich and powerful.

Just replace the word tobacco with food in that quote, and you will see our future.

Coca-Cola sees (profit) health in India, China while Americans remain confused

I always say you have to follow the business news to understand what’s really going on with corporations; it’s the one place they tell the truth. In this revealing interview with Coca-Cola CEO Muhtar Kent, Bloomberg explains how the soft drink giant, “has relied on overseas markets to offset at least four years of declining soft-drink volume sales in the U.S.” Sound familiar? It should, as it’s the exact same strategy as the tobacco and alcohol industries: once sales in the U.S. are saturated, the only place to go is overseas, and the developing world is the last available opportunity for growth.

The article describes Coke’s CEO as saying that “emerging-market economies such as China and India are beginning to bounce back quickly, while more developed regions will take longer to recover.” Even more chillingly, Kent is directed quoted: “The emerging world is in a healthier situation as we are exiting the tunnel.” Of course, he means the tunnel of the recession, but never mind how the health of the “emerging world” is being increasingly threatened thanks to the invasion of U.S.-style fast food, soda, and other non-native foodstuffs, as this 2007 article on childhood obesity in China explains.

As for the lagging economy in the U.S. and other western nations, Coke’s chief says that “the consumer is still confused.” Yes, we are so confused that we’ve cut back on drinking sugar water full of chemicals, how very inconvenient for Corporate America. But there’s always other nations to exploit.

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