A Network of University Scientists Set Out to Be "the Voice of Science" on Obesity and Said Diet Was Getting Too Much of the Blame. Its Website Was Registered to Coca-Cola's Headquarters in Atlanta.

In 2015 a nonprofit called the Global Energy Balance Network promised, on its website, to be "the voice of science" in discussions about healthy lifestyles. Its leaders were well credentialed. James O. Hill was a professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, Steven N. Blair was an exercise scientist at the University of South Carolina, and Gregory A. Hand was dean of the West Virginia University School of Public Health. The network's big idea was energy balance, and its argument was that weight-conscious Americans worried too much about what they ate and too little about exercise.

"Most of the focus in the popular media and in the scientific press is, 'Oh they're eating too much, eating too much, eating too much' — blaming fast food, blaming sugary drinks and so on," Blair said in a video announcing the group. "And there's really virtually no compelling evidence that that, in fact, is the cause." Over the previous two decades, the average American had cut back on full-calorie soda by 25 percent.

The Registrant

On 9 August 2015, Anahad O'Connor of the New York Times reported that Coca-Cola had given $1.5 million to start the network. The universities released the figure under state open-records laws. Since 2008 the company had also given close to $4 million for projects run by two of the network's founders, Blair and Hand.

Records showed that the network's website, gebn.org, was registered to Coca-Cola's headquarters in Atlanta, and the company was listed as the site's administrator. Hill said Coke had registered the website because the network's members did not know how. "They're not running the show," he said. "We're running the show."

The website did not mention Coca-Cola's money until Yoni Freedhoff, an obesity expert at the University of Ottawa, wrote to ask who was paying. Blair called this an oversight that had been quickly fixed. "Does that make us totally corrupt in everything we do?" he asked. Eleven days after the story ran, he asked for his video to be taken down and said he believed "both diet and physical activity are important in obesity and that we must address both."

The Emails

In November, the Associated Press reported on emails showing that Coca-Cola had helped pick the network's leaders, edited its mission statement and suggested articles and videos for its website. One proposal circulated at the company described a group that would "quickly establish itself as the place the media goes to for comment on any obesity issue". It would run a political-style campaign against the "shrill rhetoric" of "public health extremists" who wanted to tax or restrict foods they considered unhealthy.

Hill wrote to a senior Coke executive: "I want to help your company avoid the image of being a problem in peoples' lives and back to being a company that brings important and fun things to them." Rhona Applebaum, Coca-Cola's chief health and science officer, managed the relationship. On the question of the network's logo, she was flexible up to a point. "Color will not be an issue," she wrote, "except for blue."

The Unwinding

On 6 November the University of Colorado School of Medicine returned its $1 million, saying that "the funding source has distracted attention from its worthwhile goal." The University of South Carolina kept its $500,000. Coca-Cola's chief executive, Muhtar Kent, said there had not been enough transparency about the company's involvement. The company accepted Applebaum's retirement and did not fill her job. At the end of November the network announced that it was "discontinuing operations due to resource limitations."

The List

Kent had already promised in the Wall Street Journal that the company would publish the research and health partnerships it paid for. The list appeared on 22 September 2015. It showed $118.6 million spent in the United States since 2010: $21.8 million on scientific research and $96.8 million on "health and well-being partnerships."

In 2018 Paulo Serôdio, Martin McKee and David Stuckler checked the list against the published literature. Coca-Cola's transparency lists named 218 researchers. They found 389 articles, written by 907 authors, that acknowledged Coca-Cola funding. The company's lists named 42 of those authors.

A 2020 follow-up by the same researchers and Gary Ruskin went through 18,030 pages of emails obtained under public-records laws. It found the network's own disclosures had been handled with similar care. "While we disclose Coke as a sponsor we don't want to disclose how much they gave," John Peters of the University of Colorado wrote in February 2015. He also asked: "Might Grant imply there is agenda attached vs. gift seems less tethered?" Applebaum called the academics "our 'email family.'"

None of this required anyone to invent data. The sugar industry had used the same method on dietary fat in the 1960s. All it needed was for university letterhead to be taken at its word, which it usually is, and for nobody to look up who owned a website. For as long as that held, the professors at public universities telling the public that diet was over-blamed did so on a domain their sponsor had set up for them.

When the network closed, it blamed resource limitations. Of everything the Global Energy Balance Network published, that was the easiest statement to check.

Filed from public reporting:

• The New York Times — "Coca-Cola Funds Scientists Who Shift Blame for Obesity Away From Bad Diets"
• CBS News (Associated Press) — "Emails reveal Coke's role in anti-obesity group"
• CBS Colorado — "University Of Colorado School Of Medicine Returns $1 Million From Coke"
• CBS News — "Anti-obesity group funded by Coke, Global Energy Balance Network, disbanding"
• Food Politics — "Muhtar Kent, Coca-Cola's CEO, and scientist Steven Blair respond to critics"
• CBC News — "Coca-Cola spent $118.6M on health research in U.S."
• Public Health Nutrition — "Coca-Cola – a model of transparency in research partnerships? A network analysis of Coca-Cola's research funding (2008–2016)"
• Public Health Nutrition — "Evaluating Coca-Cola's attempts to influence public health 'in their own words': analysis of Coca-Cola emails with public health academics leading the Global Energy Balance Network"