Coke stresses US health ‘mission’ after AND draws advocacy fire

Michele Simon, president of industry watchdog Eat, Drink Politics, penned a report she claimed shows the too-close financial ties between big food/beverage and the AND, which counts 70,000+ registered dieticians (RDs) as members.

Within ‘And Now a Word from our Sponsors: Are America’s Nutrition Professionals in the Pocket of Big Food?’, Simon claims that corporate sponsors such as PepsiCo and The Coca-Cola Company distort the accuracy of nutrition messages and use the AND as a PR vehicle.

Within the 51-page report, Simon complains that firms such as Coke (just one AND approved continuing education provider) hand-pick sympathetic experts to run sessions – with AND promising firms “marketing opportunities”​ – aligned with “corporate goals to sell more”.​

Asked about some of the report’s takeaway conclusions by BeverageDaily.com, The Coca-Cola Company director of corporate external affairs, Rosalyn Kennedy, insisted that the firm believed in the importance of partnerships across all sectors.

Mission to optimize nation’s health​

This reflected Coke’s ongoing efforts to “innovate and underscore the importance of an active, healthy lifestyle”,​ she added.

“​We are proud supporters of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics, to help advance their mission of optimizing the nation’s health through food and nutrition research, education and advocacy.”​

At AND’s Annual Meeting in 2012, Robert Nieman, MD, teaching a webinar on Coke’s behalf, dismissed parental concerns about excess sugar consumption by kids as an “urban myth”​, she said, in a webinar he gave on Children’s Dietary Recommendations.

Simon links this to her maintenance that the food industry was in the “selling-more-food business”​, rather than the education business.

Truly surreal ‘junk food expo’ – Simon​

Dismissing the 2012 conference as “truly surreal”​ and a “junk food expo”​, rather than (as billed) a nutrition conference, Simon said the AND’s education failures had worsened the US “chronic disease epidemic​”, before wondering if Coke’s sponsorship had played a role.

Simon said that of members (3,000 were questioned in 2011 by independent researchers led by Colby Vorland) believed that three current AND sponsors were unacceptable, namely Coca-Cola (66%) Pepsi (66%) and Mars (55%).

Summing up, Simon quoted Michael Siegel, Boston University School of Public Health, approvingly: “Concurrent with its acceptance of money from Coke, AND has actually become an enemy of critical public health measures to reduce obesity…”​

‘Opinions are not facts’ – AND president​

But dismissing Simons’ report as a mixture of facts, opinion and speculation, AND president Ethan Bergman said:

“The majority of the report consists of publicly available facts filtered through the author’s opinions. She is, of course, entitled to her opinions. But opinions are not facts.”​

There was one undisputable fact about AND’s sponsorship programme, Bergman added, that the organization had​ one.

He urged AND members to seek out the facts, while not taking seriously the opinions of one with a previous “predisposition to find fault with the academy”.​

Glossing the meaning Bergman’s words, influential blogger and academic Marion Nestle wrote last Thursday: “​My interpretation: ignore the message because the messenger is not one of us.”​

“[But] as nutrition professionals, we ignore such messages at our peril.  If we want the public to trust what we say, our views cannot be ​perceived​ ​as compromised by financial ties to food companies,”​ she added.

PepsiCo did not reply to a BeverageDaily.com request for comment.