University of Colorado to Coca-Cola: Thanks, But No Thanks, Here's Your $1 Million Back
Did Coca-Cola’s funding skew this research? (Getty Images)
The University of Colorado School of Medicine has announced that it will be returning a $1 million grant received from Coca-Cola, reports The New York Times, after an earlier report by the paper revealed that the money was being used to fund an advocacy group that played down the link between sodas and obesity.
In 2014, Coca-Cola donated $1 million to the University of Colorado School of Medicine to help establish the Global Energy Balance Network, a nonprofit group whose self-proclaimed goal is “to prevent and reduce diseases associated with inactivity, poor nutrition and obesity.” However, while on paper that’s certainly a noble cause, since the group’s establishment in 2014, their messages have seemed to play down the link between soft drinks and obesity, focusing instead on encouraging people to exercise more and worry less about what they eat and drink – despite the fact that many studies have shown that exercise, while beneficial for numerous reasons, has much less of an impact on weight than does the food we consume.
Related: How Your Daily Soda Habit Is Breaking Your Heart
In one video produced by the organization, Steven Blair, an exercise scientist at the University of South Carolina who served as the group’s vice president, even went so far as to criticize the media for blaming the high rate of obesity in the United States on fast food and sugary drinks when there was “virtually no compelling evidence that that, in fact, is the case.” After coming under scrutiny for these controversial statements, the Global Energy Balance Network later took down the video, and Blair released a statement expressing “regret that a statement I made in this video has been used by some to brand GEBN as a network focusing only on physical activity.” But, as with all things published to the internet, the message was out there and the damage had already been done.
In the past twenty years, as study after study links soda consumption to health risks including raised blood sugar levels, weight gain, heart failure, and nonalcoholic fatty liver disease, consumption of full-calorie sodas by the average American has dropped by 25 percent. All of which makes the funding and creation of organizations like the Global Energy Balance Network “a direct response to the ways that [soda companies are] losing. They’re desperate to stop the bleeding,” public health lawyer Michele Simon told The New York Times. “Coca-Cola’s agenda here is very clear: Get these researchers to confuse the science and deflect attention from dietary intake,” added Marion Nestle, the author of the book “Soda Politics” and a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University who called the GEBN “nothing but a front group for Coca-Cola.”
Information released by organizations like the GEBN that are funded by corporations such as Coca-Cola is “obviously biased. It has to be,” nutritionist Keri Glassman told Yahoo Health. “Automatically, the information that they come up with, it’s going to be skewed. There’s no way for it not to be. The first thing you look at in any research is who’s funding it, who’s supporting it, what’s their natural bias going to be.”
As for GEBN’s widely publicized focus on exercise over fast food and sugary drinks, Glassman couldn’t disagree more. “Weight loss is always more about food than it is about exercise,” she explains. “I’m a huge advocate of exercise for the mental benefits, to increase your muscle mass, your immune system, but you can’t out-exercise a bad diet.”
When it comes to sugary drinks, like that often-beloved can of Coke or other soda pops, Glassman says that many people think “it’s just sugar. It’s not fat. It’s just calories, and I burned a lot of calories at the gym, so what’s the difference? But that’s just not true. Liquid calories [like those found in sodas] increase your insulin, which tells your body to store fat faster. It really is actually quite bad for you.”
Related: The Staggering Health Risks of Drinking 1-2 Cans of Soda Daily
The University of Colorado, which released a statement on Friday explaining that they would be returning the $1 million grant to Coca-Cola because “the funding source has distracted attention from its worthwhile goal,” plans to continue research into obesity and its health-related issues, stating that “the School of Medicine and physicians and researchers on the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus are making significant contributions to the understanding of and care for these health-related issues and the source of funding for the network should not distract from their efforts.” (Obesity research conducted by the school includes investigation into how increasing certain hormones during pregnancy can reduce a genetic inheritance of obesity, emerging links between antibiotics and childhood obesity, as well as community outreach designed to improve the health of low-income Denver children who are overweight or obese.)
“The School reviewed the grant and the goals of the network and in recent weeks determined that the funding was distracting from the goals of the network and from the significant research and care provided by School of Medicine physicians and scientists,” Mark Couch, communications director for the University of Colorado School of Medicine, told Yahoo Health. “The decision was announced after the review was completed and after working with Coca-Cola to arrange for the return of the funding.”
For its part, Coca-Cola has said it will donate the returned money to the Boys & Girls Clubs of America.
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