My readers know by now that I am not exactly a fan of PepsiCo’s mega-marketing campaign disguised as philanthropy known as the Pepsi Refresh Project. As I wrote about previously, the nation’s largest food company is exploiting schoolchildren as young as age 6 in an effort to brand itself as the world’s savior.

Even  healthy food projects are lining up to feed at the trough of Pepsi Refresh, without a hint of shame that these corporate, tax-deductible donations rely on sales of Cheetos and Mountain Dew.

So I was surprised and disappointed when I noticed fellow health blogger, Megan Yarbrough post to Twitter a call to vote for a Pepsi Refresh project. Because I know we are usually on the same page, I reached out to her privately with a direct message and asked that she not promote this awful program. She responded immediately, acknowledging my concern and recently posted to her blog about how I changed her mind. Here is that eloquent post in its entirety:

I’ll admit, when I first heard about the Pepsi Refresh Project, I couldn’t have been more on-board with the idea if I tried.

Times are tight right now. And although we’re in a recession, that hasn’t stopped the problems we face as a nation from continuing to grow. If anything, it’s worsened them. The simple fact is: communities need money. And nonprofits desperately need money just to continue the great work they are doing – forget about starting new, game-changing initiatives. So at first, I saw Pepsi Refresh as a great opportunity for the do-gooders of our country to get the financing they require to really improve the lives of people all over our nation.

I thought it was so fantastic, in fact, that I was involved in more than one attempt to enter the Pepsi Refresh Project. Both for great causes. Sure Pepsi is a part of a lot of the problems we face as a nation. But shouldn’t corporations give back more often, particularly in times of great need? And while I wasn’t naive enough to not recognize that the entire Pepsi Refresh Project was a brilliant PR move, I thought it was also great opportunity for worthy causes to fund amazing projects all across the nation.

I was wrong, but it took me awhile to accept my realization that Pepsi Refresh ultimately harms our society – not helps it. That realization came to me after I became more involved with the food revolution movement and read Michele Simon’s book, Appetite for Profit.

PepsiCo, not just a maker of soda, but also the maker of Frito-Lay products, isn’t just a part of a lot of the problems we face as a nation – PepsiCo itself is a huge problem. If we ever hope to change the direction our country is headed, we need to fundamentally change the way we function as a society. We need to change our understanding of food, and change the way we eat. The type of food and beverages we need to reclaim our nation’s health really don’t come ready-made in a box, bag, or can.

As Michele Simon writes on her blog, “these grants give credibility to the notion that we can (and should) rely on Big Food to fix our broken food system. But nothing could be further from the truth. PepsiCo is happy to spend relatively small amounts of money in exchange for getting to hitch its PR wagon to the likes of farmers markets and school gardens.”

Yet, knowing this, I gave in last week when a cause that means a lot to me asked me to retweet their Pepsi Refresh project to my followers. That’s when Michele Simon (@Appetite4Profit) sent me a direct message to remind me that as a public health advocate, I really should not – cannot – promote the Pepsi Refresh Project. She put it in terms I could easily relate to given my involvement in tobacco control: “imagine if PM [Philip Morris] were promoting it.”

Big Food corporations are following the tobacco industry’s footsteps step-by-step. And I mean exactly. If you read about the tobacco industry’s deceptive marketing, their false health claims, the life-saving legislation they constantly defeat with the millions of dollars they spend on lobbying, the way they promote their products overseas in the developing world, and the way they set up fake science institutes to conduct “research” … and substitute ‘Big Tobacco’ for ‘Big Food’ – the two can be used interchangeably.

Food companies spend over $36 billion a year to market their products. They wouldn’t spend that kind of money, nor would they give away millions of dollars in the name of philanthropy, if they didn’t know for a fact that it is effective in getting people to buy their products. They want you to think that they aren’t part of America’s health problem – they are part of the solution. And, of course (just like the tobacco industry), they love to remind you that personal responsibility is part of the solution as well, since they know you don’t really want to give up those dinners from a bag either.

So, my friends, that is why I will no longer be tweeting about your very-worthy project or organization’s attempt to win a Pepsi Refresh grant. I admire your work, but I can’t go against the very ideas I preach.

If you’re interested in learning more (or if perhaps you think I’m crazy), I highly encourage you to check out Michele Simon’s blog, Appetite for Profit, as well as her book. One particular post worth reading describes how elementary school students in Illinois expressed their thanks to Pepsi after winning a Pepsi Refresh grant. Hopefully you’ll see the problem with the picture painted for you. Another great resource is Value the Meal, a blog by Corporate Accountability International.

Thank you Megan, for saying it so well. But mostly, thank you for taking a look at this issue more deeply, being willing to change your mind, and then speaking out about it. And if your friends are also harassing you to vote, just point them to Megan’s post instead.

In the wake of Jon Stewart’s recent call for a more civilized discourse in our nation, this experience gives me hope. Maybe if we could each stop and listen to each other, learn about an issue, and not react in haste, mindlessly forwarding emails, posting to Facebook, or retweeting what others (even our friends) want us to, things could get a little better. Maybe.

As I wrote last month, it can get pretty annoying when your friends harass you to vote for their favorite cause to “win” a grant from the now-ubiquitous Pepsi Refresh Project.

But lately I’ve been especially disappointed to see so many worthy food causes jumping on this marketing-disguised-as-philanthropy bandwagon. Let’s not forget that PepsiCo owns not only  Pepsi-Cola and other unhealthy beverage lines such as Gatorade, but is also the king of salty snacks. The company’s Frito-Lay division owns Doritos, Cheetos, Tostitos, you get the idea.

And yet without a hint of irony, in this promotional video to get people to submit project ideas to the contest, the Pepsi Refresh Project “Food and Shelter Ambassador” Allison Arieff waxes sentimental about gardening, surrounded by nothing but greenery, not a soda or chip in sight.

Here are just a few projects that have so far been crowned winners of Pepsi Refresh grants: First, there is the Bikeloc project. Pepsi introduces the celebratory video this way:

Robert DuBois and Aaron Zueck are “potlucking across America” in one hundred days, and they’re doing it on bicycles. A $5,000 Pepsi Refresh grant put them in the saddle and allowed them to collect multimedia stories of the local food movement from coast to coast.

Just $5,000, was there really no other way of raising that money? Another project also won $5,000, this time for a school garden at an elementary school. Here’s how Pepsi describes it:

Jeanne Acutanza had the idea to build a sustainable garden at her kids’ school, where students and locals could plant crops together and donate the harvest to local food banks. She submitted her idea, you voted, and it won a $5,000 Pepsi Refresh Grant.

And in another heartwarming kid project, a farmers market manager in Illinois featured here describes how he won $25,000 to help teach schoolchildren about eating fresh fruits and vegetables, a worthy cause for sure. But what about the mixed messages kids receive from all the promotion with Pepsi logos associated with these two projects?

Now, it’s no wonder that in these hard economic times, so many groups would be desperate enough to turn to the nation’s largest purveyor of processed food to try and promote the healthy kind. But what these organizations don’t realize is that are really doing more to promote the Pepsi brand then they are to advance their own cause. Indeed, they are undermining the very ideals they espouse.

Moreover, these grants give credibility to the notion that we can (and should) rely on Big Food to fix our broken food system. But nothing could be further from the truth. PepsiCo is happy to spend relatively small amounts of money in exchange for getting to hitch its PR wagon to the likes of farmers markets and school gardens.

Meanwhile, the sale of junk food and soda continues unabated.

I recently blogged about questions regarding how PepsiCo’s voluntary beverage guidelines, announced in March, would be implemented in schools given that contracts are made at the local level. Now with back- to-school in full swing, I have even more questions about how PepsiCo may be using stealth marketing techniques to gain access to that coveted captive K-12 audience.

Today, the company announced a new program it calls Score for Your School. From the press release:

PepsiCo’s Frito-Lay North America business unit kicks-off high school football season with the “Score for Your School” program for Texans only that invites fans to help schools win up to a $10,000 donation for their sports programs. Beginning today, Texas fans can visit www.scoreforyourschool.com, enter the 9-digit product code from ANY Frito-Lay product (chips, dips, salsa and more) and then select the Texas high school of their choice.

So in order to even vote for your school, you have to purchase a product. How nice of Frito-Lay to “invite” fans to buy Fritos, Doritos, Tostitos, Cheetos, Lays, etc. But it’s “ANY” product, so generous! Why just Texas schools? The company’s marketing guy explains: “Frito-Lay snacks and high school football are a Texas tradition,” said Michael Del Pozzo, director, marketing, Frito-Lay North America.

Frito-Lay snacks are a Texas tradition? I will let the words of someone who replied to me on Twitter today speak to that: “Being that TX has a high obesity rate, this sure crushes any efforts being made 2 teach kids about eating healthy!!!” In other words, that’s one tradition Texas can do without. Frito-Lay’s Del Pozzo continues:

As high school sports programs face many challenges, we thought this promotion would be an easy and fun way for fans to help. Now, each single purchase can add up for a chance to win up to $10,000 for their school when they go online and ‘Score for their School’.

How thoughtful of Frito-Lay to create a fun and easy way for fans to help sports programs. Couldn’t have anything to do with how many more chips would get sold would it? Because if the company really cared, how about just sending a check to each Texas high school football team instead? This program, which runs through December 31, is capped at $90,000 in donations, a drop in the bucket for the nation’s largest salty snack purveyor.

But this marketing-disguised-as-philanthropy is by now old territory for PepsiCo. For the past year, the company has been gaining much positive PR with its ubiquitous Pepsi Refresh donation program. If you’re like me, you’ve been annoyed by friends and colleagues begging you to vote for their nonprofit or other worthy cause, like a high school popularity contest.

Last week, a parochial elementary school in Alton, Illinois held a “thank you assembly” for Pepsi employees after the school won a Refresh Everything grant of $25,000 to purchase computers. The article describing the event is worth checking out for the image of little 6-year old Matthew Dixon holding a “thank-you Pepsi” sign; yes 6. The reporter explains how the youngsters showed Pepsi employees their gratitude:

The entire school signed a large, thank-you poster, and the younger students made individual thank-you drawings in red, white and blue, the soda brand’s colors. [my emphasis] Teachers wore turquoise shirts that read, “Every Pepsi Refreshes the World,” and the children pinned on Pepsi buttons….

The highlight of the 15-minute assembly in the gymnasium came when Father Delix Michel riled up the youngsters with a T-shirt toss. Similar to professional baseball games – but minus the slingshot – Michel showed a good pitching arm as he deftly threw Pepsi shirts to all areas where students were sitting, including landing one shirt in the back row. Some of the shirts landed in the students’ laps.

A priest handing out Pepsi T-shirts, it doesn’t get any better than that for positive PR. Now it’s great that PepsiCo wants to give back to the community, but there is only one word for this and it’s not philanthropy, it’s branding. It’s sad that schools feel they must participate and don’t see through it.

The Pepsi Refresh website has an entire section devoted to education. Please let me know if your school is involved in either of these stealth marketing campaigns. Pepsi does not belong in schools, whether it’s soda vending machines or voting contests.