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Junk Food Makes You Fat; Junk Science Makes You a Fathead
One hears the phrase “junk science” disturbingly often these days, which may raise in one’s mind the question, “How can I recognize science that is actually of the junk variety?”
One telltale sign: When it is being invoked to support the argument that junk food is just fine, no adverse aspects, go right ahead and indulge. Indeed, you could say that junk science is to real science as junk food is to real food.
Here is a prime example.
Besieged by evidence and health experts’ warnings that their products are key contributors to overweight and obesity and resulting unhealthy conditions, sales of Coca-Cola beverages have been dropping like GOP presidential candidates lately. Coke’s response has been to gin up a PR campaign based on the erroneous claim that the main cause of our obesity epidemic is not our diet, but our lack of exercise.
To lend legitimacy to this premise, which most experts roll their eyes at, Coke has begun recruiting reputable experts of its own to make that case. And by recruiting, we basically mean buying.
Soda Company Funding Studies
For example, there is the study reported by the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana, which concluded that the biggest predictor of childhood obesity worldwide is lack of physical activity. Read far enough into the report, and you learn the study “was funded by The Coca-Cola Company.”
But the main engine behind the message that calories are not the problem is the Global Energy Balance Network, a brand-new nonprofit organization designed to help friendly scientists get that viewpoint out to an increasingly weight-conscious public.
Guess who essentially underwrites the GEBN? Here are some clues: Coke put up $1.5 million last year to establish the organization. Over the past seven years, it has funded research by two of the GEBN’s founders to the tune of nearly $4 million.
The GEBN website is administered by Coca-Cola, which also serves as its registration home. In a nutshell, Coke’s relationship to the GEBN is analogous to the relationship between Jim Henson and Kermit the Frog.
The difference is that nobody takes Kermit seriously.
The ‘Science’ Doesn’t Add Up
An outfit called the Global Energy Balance Network, on the other hand, with its own letterhead, and executives with actual scientific credentials, has some actual juice when it comes to getting articles published in medical journals, and being invited to address conferences on health issues and appearing on talk shows.
Not to mention using the social media to spread the word: its Facebook and Twitter pages boost exercise as the answer to overweight, even suggesting that people will then be able to actually consume more calories. (How stupid and false is this notion? Hint: you have to walk three miles just to burn off the calories in one can of classic Coke.)
Coke’s stooping to junk science is nothing new, of course. The tobacco companies trotted out their own bought-and-paid-for scientists to deny any links between smoking and lung cancer; the oil and coal companies have their own fleets of experts at the ready to deny any links between carbon emissions and climate change.
Coke is merely adopting a proven deceit: If you can get even one scientist to sing your tune, you can dismiss all critics by saying that “scientists differ on this issue.”
The New York Times recently blew the whistle on the GEBN, which new devotes a whole section of its website just to declarations of its own impartiality and even-handedness. Fair and balanced, in other words. Uh huh.
Just remember, when it comes to any articles you may read about weight loss studies or methods that quote experts on the subject, that the Global Energy Balance Network is for all practical purposes a subsidiary of the Coca-Cola company.
By Robert S. Wieder, CalorieLab’s Senior Health Columnist since 2006. Author of several books, including 115 Reasons Why It’s Not Your Fault You’re Fat, Bob wrote for numerous national magazines after starting out as editor of the UC Berkeley humor magazine the California Pelican. He also put in a stint as a San Francisco-area stand-up comic.
