The conversations inside these rooms was depressingly transactional:
"We (Coke) will give you money. You need to paint opponents of us as racist."
The effort was successful, and the message was carried in thousands of articles between 2011-2013.
Coke's position was clear: soda is one of the cheapest ways to get calories - a flagrantly inaccurate statement when factoring in the health consequences.
I watched as the FDA funneled money to professors at leading universities - as well as think tanks on the left and right - to create studies showing soda taxes hurt the poor. They also paid for studies that say drinking soda DIDN'T cause obesity.
Of course, not mentioned in these studies is that incontrovertible fact that sugary drinks are one of the top causes of obesity and diabetes - leading to harrowing statistics like this.
Soda companies are deeply embedded in the USDA - so much so that the agency carries discredited talking points like "there are no bad food, only bad diets."
This ignores fact that sugar is highly addictive and has negative nutritional value.
In the end: racial tensions flared, soda spending was kept in SNAP funding, and many of the soda taxes were defeated...
Of course, this has been a disaster for low-income communities. Addictive, deadly sugary drinks should never be included in a government nutrition program.
People saying that restricting soda from SNAP funding is "paternalistic" or an "assault on personal choice" are unwittingly doing the work of the soda companies.
You can't have a free market if that market is rigged.
If this resonates, I am sending out a daily email exploring the food/health system and giving actionable health ideas that have impacted me:
There is a playbook that PR consultants use to help Big Food and pharma rig the system. I helped them implement it early in my career.
It’s the same playbook cigarette companies used in the 1980s.
Step 1: form a “third party” group.
Step 2: label opponents as the “nanny state”
Today, PR companies say it’s “patriarchal” to take Coke out of food stamps or curb Medicare spending on drugs - even though those policies are the result of a rigged system.
Step 3: fund research to sow confusion about scientific consensus.
Today, food companies spend 11x more on nutrition research than the NIH. There’s now an industry of researchers who depend on this money and are incentivized to make nutrition complex.
Step 3: Fundraiser follows up with Coke saying they got assurance from scholar that analysis will be what they want it to say, and Heritage will do PR work after report is done.
Step 4: Coke wires money.
Step 5: "Scholars" like Peter get paid and say they worked for Heritage.
You should be very careful Peter and check with @Heritage PR before making these statements...
I am happy to share names and more receipts.
This isn't funny or the time for snarky name-calling.
What Heritage and other influencers peddlers are doing is evil + hurting kids