How deeply invested Coca-Cola is with the exercise message

The last couple of weeks have seen Coca-Cola in the news quite a bit (and many thanks to my friend Simon Wiltshire for finding some great links on this saga). Coca-Cola has been having a tough time recently. This summer’s business news reported that revenues for the past year (2014) were down $2 billion from 2012 figures (although what’s a couple of billion when you’re still getting $46 billion?!)

The exposé

It looks like the NY Times was the first newspaper to break the latest story. Anahad O'Connor was the journalist who reported that Coca-Cola was funding ‘scientists’ to reiterate the message to focus on exercise, and not calorie intake, in the war on obesity.

One of the tools in this collaboration is a new organisation called the Global Energy Balance Network, which has the mission “healthier living through the science of energy balance.” Their vision is a world in health energy balance. For this, read ‘a world in which Coca-Cola sales stop falling, but human beings get off their lazy backsides to burn off the calories in those cans of Coca-Cola’. How they explain the fact that calorie-free, diet drinks are associated with long term weight gain/waist increase, I know not.