ACSH staffers cringed while perusing the first fusillade of a three-week series launched by PLoS Medicine on what its editors call "Big Food." The series is introduced by an editorial that calls for greater public scrutiny of the role that the so-called multinational food and beverage industry plays in the obesity epidemic. In what has become a familiar call to arms, the PLoS editors entreat public health officials worldwide to "support initiatives such as restrictions on marketing to children, better nutrition standards for school meals, and taxes on sugar-sweetened beverages." Predictably, the PLoS series singles out soda, laying into soda companies' public relations campaigns in the first article.
These are tired accusations that are, despite pervasive repetition, incorrect," says ACSH S Dr. Elizabeth Whelan. As we've noted in response to various proposals and policies that target sugar-sweetened beverages, such strategies aren't founded on solid evidence. Research actually shows that there is no correlation between per capita soda consumption and weight. This truth is conveniently ignored by those who need to pursue an anti-Big Soda agenda, oblivious to science-based evidence."
Yet the PLoS article is adamant. Its authors are especially critical of the soda industry's campaign of "corporate social responsibility" (CSR), launched (according to the PLoS authors) to mask their real soda-selling agenda, in response to increased health concerns about their products. They compare such campaigns to those taken up by the twentieth-century tobacco industry, which laid the blame on consumers' shoulders and used CSR as a means to "bolster the companies' and products' popularity, and to prevent regulation." But even worse, say the authors, soda company CSR campaigns specifically target young people as they aim to increase sales. As a prime example of this underhandedness, the authors cite soda company CSR that involves "construction and upgrading of parks for youth who are at risk for diet-related illnesses." Why? Because such efforts "keep the focus on physical activity, rather than on unhealthful foods and drinks."
"Frankly," says ACSH's Dr. Gilbert Ross, "the focus should be on physical activity. It's clear that we are a population that has become too sedentary. Cutbacks to physical education programs have done us no favors. That a soda company would finance more park and playground place for at-risk youth is surely not a bad thing, whatever their motivation. According to these ideologues, doing good is now a bad thing too. But imagine what they d say if the soda industry didn t promote physical activity!"
