Coca-Cola just might be the single corporation most mentioned by Childhood Obesity News, which can hardly keep up with the never-ending flow of bad behavior manifested by the world’s most hated beverage manufacturer. Coca-Cola’s flagship product, of course, has the same name as a much-feared addictive drug (which, in the old days, used to be one of its ingredients). Coke is to be thanked for providing endless copy for news organizations, magazines, and health-oriented websites everywhere.
Travel back in time to the fall of 2011, when we first included the company’s name in the title of a post: “Coca-Cola as a Childhood Obesity Villain.” The very next day, along came “Medical Professional Societies and Conflict-Cola,” the first in a series of pieces about some very dicey goings-on. This company has been involved in a breathtaking number of episodes that are most politely known as “conflicts of interest.”
The following month, Coke also featured in a multi-part series called “What’s So Bad About Soda Pop?”
Another multi-part series, “Catching Up with Food Addiction,” also found occasion to mention the name more than once. Coke earned its place among “World-Class Food Addiction Enablers” and was referenced in the posts of yet another series, “Is HFCS the Devil’s Candy?” This substance is of course the much-maligned (and rightly so) high-fructose corn syrup, which beverage manufacturers eagerly embraced for its low cost compared to sugar, which was destructive enough already.
In 2014 we offered “Coca-Cola Studies Globesity,” which covered the corporation’s desperate need to disprove what everybody else knows, that it is probably the #1 threat to world health. They want to help discover a cure for obesity, don’t you know? The poor mistreated lambs just want to help. They would help stop obesity if only they could. But they genuinely have no clue, except for a couple of general ideas about how being overweight is a person’s own fault, and all a person has to do is enough exercise and everything will be all right.
And then we got into diet drinks, of which Coca-Cola has plenty.
And the dismaying connection with the Olympic Games.
And the sick-making collaboration with schools.
In all of 2014, among the 10 most popular stories among our readers, three were Coke-centric.
These were:
- “Corporate Sponsorship of Obesity Research and Gatherings,”
- “Childhood Obesity and Coca-Cola Culture,” and
- “Coke and Its Contradictions.”
Believe it or not, these represent only a small portion of the posts either featuring or mentioning Coke, which has been a very naughty obesity villain of a company indeed.
Your responses and feedback are welcome!
Image by Soumyadeep Paul
SOURCE: Childhood Obesity News – Read entire story here.
