Coca-Cola Under Fire for “Selling Sugar Water”

St. Croix Times Staff

A new book by well-known, caffeine-related, author and journalist Murray Carpenter, “Sweet and Deadly” How Coca-Cola Spreads Disinformation and Makes Us Sick” details the lengths the soft drink giant has gone to mislead the public about the safety of its products.  

It’s common knowledge, by anyone who cares to investigate, that soda is packed with sugar and therefore associated with various serious health conditions, namely diabetes and cancer. So how does Coca-Cola (Coke) continue to maintain such a great reputation in the face of such damning accusations? Didn’t cigarette smoking suffer from the same fact vs fiction convergence decades ago?

Mr. Carpenter’s book claims that one of Coke’s underhanded tactics to maintain their stellar reputation involved funding organizations like the Sugar Research Foundation and the Global Energy Balanced Network to spin the nasty underbelly of food science in its favor. The former was a nefarious but highly effective PR move that began in 1943. It was also the basis for similar tobacco PR campaigns in the 1950s. While the Sugar Research Foundation was partly funded by Coke, the Global Energy Balance Network was the company itself. The nonprofit organization Coke formed in 2014, heavily promoted the idea that lack of exercise was a far greater contributor than poor diet was to a person’s ill health. 

This PR stunt minimizes the impact of unhealthful sugar beverages like soda - which was allegedly Coke’s primary goal when it donated millions to start and fund the nonprofit.

“Sweet and Deadly” details not only these slippery tactics but decades and tens of billions of dollars worth of other misinformation practices by Coke. To the average person, it would be almost impossible to know they were being deceived without whistleblowers like Mr. Carpenter. 

“Coke is in the business of selling sugar water. If it tries to change directions and thereby reduce sales of its products, it would be violating its obligations to its shareholders,” Mr. Carpenter explains.

High-sugar beverages including those whose sugar content on the label actually comes from high-fructose corn syrup, are greatly associated with diabetes. As global temperatures rise, the risks associated with diabetes become heightened. 

As an ugly bi-product, Coke is also the biggest producer of branded plastic pollution globally. Coke isn’t likely to go back to selling its products out of glass bottles nor is it likely to reduce its products’ sugar content of its own volition.

In this day and age, gigantic corporations like Coca-Cola have all the leverage, the resources, legal power and political connections needed to spin narratives and manipulate public opinion. It comes down to the individual to weigh the alternatives: Great Taste or Disease that could Cripple Your Lifestyle?

Apparently the decision has already been made: Coca-Cola sells an estimated 500 billion bottles per year. This translates to more than 1 million bottles per minute. The company manufactures 110 billion plastic bottles annually to hold all those tasty soda treats.