LISTEN: A new book by journalist Murray Carpenter explores Coca-Cola’s efforts to minimize sugar’s role in the proliferation of chronic diseases associated with obesity, such as heart disease and Type 2 diabetes. GPB's Peter Biello speaks Carpenter here.
In the United States, nearly three-quarters of all adults are either overweight or obese, according to the National Institutes of Health. Diet and exercise play a role in maintaining a healthy weight, but there’s one substance on the market that features prominently in the American diet: sugar-sweetened beverages. Atlanta-based Coca-Cola has dominated that market for decades. A new book by journalist Murray Carpenter explores Coca-Cola’s efforts to minimize sugar’s role in the proliferation of chronic diseases associated with obesity, such as heart disease and Type 2 diabetes. The book is called Sweet and Deadly: How Coca-Cola Spreads Disinformation and Makes Us Sick. Murray Carpenter spoke with GPB’s Peter Biello.
Peter Biello: So what made you interested in looking at Coca-Cola’s role in shaping Americans' health?
Murray Carpenter: This book actually grew out of an earlier book I wrote about caffeine called Caffeinated. And in writing that book, I realized that the caffeinated beverage that we consume most by volume is actually sodas. And when I realized that, I started looking into sodas and their health risks and that sort of led me down this road. Also because after I wrote that book, a lot of people asked me, "Is my caffeine habit healthy?" And basically my answer was: if you're consuming it in coffee or tea and you don't suffer from insomnia or anxiety, then knock yourself out. But if you're consuming it in the form of sugar-sweetened beverages, you may have some problems.
Peter Biello: So, your book chronicles a variety of ways that Coca-Cola spreads disinformation, which is distinct from misinformation, because disinformation means it's deliberate. They know it's wrong, but they will say it anyway. So that's quite a claim. One of the ways you say it wants to mislead the public is by minimizing the harm of sugary products by paying for research that does exactly that, minimizes the harm of sugars. Can you give us a few examples of how Coca-Cola subsidizes research that makes sugar look better than it is?
Murray Carpenter: Actually it's been a consistent habit of Coca-Cola's to find and support the research that makes the habit of sugar-sweetened beverages appear to be more benign than it is. It's hard to say if their research minimized the health risks of sodas because they were being paid. I wouldn't say that. But I would say they found researchers who were of a similar mind and supported that research.
Peter Biello: And what about the question of disclosure? Generally speaking, we want to know when an industry is funding a study of something that is related to that industry. To what extent do we know when that is happening with respect to Coca-Cola?
Murray Carpenter: This varies a lot ... because they have funded an awful lot of research. In some cases, there is the kind of disclosure you would expect to see at the end of a published paper: "This research was supported by Coca-Cola, etc." In other cases, that was omitted and was later added if someone found that ... as a clarification later. So there's quite a variety, but certainly the most impactful research that has sort of exonerated sugar-sweetened beverages has often not disclosed that. And there's a separate but related aspect of this that we could talk about, which is their support of nonprofits that are bolstering these claims.
Peter Biello: Can you name some of those nonprofits? Because I suspect listeners will have heard the names but had not really known that they were funded this way.
Murray Carpenter: I think the big one that Coca-Cola actually got sort of exposed about and got into trouble was the Global Energy Balance Network, which was a nonprofit that they funded with more than a million dollars that was sort of generating this idea that a calorie is a calorie — calories in, calories out. Don't worry so much about what you're eating as how much you're eating. So Coke, kale, cashews — you can over-consume anything. Coca-Cola worked very hard not to have their name on that group. They wanted it to appear to be an independent group. There's another way that Coca-Cola and its allies in the beverage industry — Pepsi, the American Beverage Association — do this, which is to support groups that are, say, opposing soda taxes and using, again, a benign name that doesn't immediately seem to be industry-related.
Peter Biello: Well, help me break down the key piece of disinformation that you're describing here: the calories in, calories out argument. I mean, on its face, it seems like it makes a whole lot of sense, right? Your weight will stay the same, roughly, if you are expending as many calories as you consume and over-consuming anything, whether it's 140 calories in a can of Coke or, as you write in the book, 140 calories of almonds. If you eat more than you burn off, you're going to gain weight. So why is Coca-Cola misleading the public here?
Murray Carpenter: So this is something that research has really advanced on in the past 20 years. Because yes, what you're saying is sort of true: If you over consume calories, you're going to gain excess weight. But what research is increasingly finding is that a calorie of sugar is metabolized quite differently than other products that also have some fat or protein or fiber in them. And so a calorie of sugar is rapidly metabolized. And has some of the fructose is going into your liver, the glucose is going in your bloodstream quickly. It has different effects on your body than again, say a calorie of almonds.
Peter Biello: So what to make of a solution going forward? I mean, is it that Coca-Cola or the sugar-sweetened beverage industry needs to peel back on its advertising or change the makeup of its beverages? What would you say advocates are in favor of here?
Murray Carpenter: First of all, I don't think that the industry is going to do anything. I mean, they're doing exactly what they need to do, which is sell more product. And so I think the assumption consistently that any solutions would come from Coca-Cola are naive, as were the ideas that solutions would come for the tobacco industry. In terms of what advocates can do, we know that there are things that work to reduce the consumption of sugar-sweetened beverages. Soda taxes work, and warning labels work, and that's been proven in other countries as well. And so I think that's what people are investing efforts into is trying to get more of those. Sorry, it's worth noting also that one of the big national things that's going on is Bobby Kennedy —
Peter Biello: You're talking about Health and Human Services Secretary Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
Murray Carpenter: — really has an animus towards sugar and towards sugar-sweetened beverages. And one of the things he's done that researchers had long hoped to see is he has promoted waivers from SNAP, from food stamps, so that states can disallow the purchase of sodas with food stamps. We don't know that that will reduce consumption. The assumption is yes, because it's probably $8 billion that we're spending through food stamps on those. But at very least, now we're up to a dozen states that have requested waivers. At very least in a year or two years, we will know if that has made a difference.
