part0016

One of the top three food companies in the world is Coca-Cola. Do you see what’s wrong with that picture? The majority of what they produce isn’t even real food—it’s a sugar-laden drink full of processed additives. They have enormous power in the marketplace and have used their influence to infiltrate our every move about nutrition and health. They drive the conversation in the media, are at the table when government policies are made, and pay academics under the table to promote their agenda.

You could say my fight against Big Soda really began in a Starbucks. A few years ago, it was Pumpkin Spice Latte season, and I couldn’t help but notice that just about everyone seemed to be enjoying this incredibly sweet dessert masquerading as a coffee drink. In fact, the Pumpkin Spice Latte is Starbucks’s most popular seasonal drink—they sell millions every year. Almost everyone has had one, and you might have had a few yourself.

The popularity of the drink led to several readers e-mailing me about the ingredients. They wanted to know what, exactly, was in all those syrups, powders, and sauces used to make the drink .

So I did the obvious thing: I e-mailed Starbucks asking for the complete list of ingredients in the Pumpkin Spice Latte. This is the response I got:

“The Pumpkin Spice Latte is of pumpkin and traditional fall spice flavors combined with espresso and steamed milk, topped with whipped cream and pumpkin pie spice. If you ever have any questions or concerns in the future, please don’t hesitate to get in touch.”

I hate when companies are condescending. Starbucks was pretending to answer my questions while totally avoiding the truth. What’s in that whipped cream? Is it just cream and sugar? (Almost certainly not.) And what about that “pumpkin pie spice”? If it’s so wholesome and natural, why not just tell us the actual ingredients? My radar went up because they were being so evasive. After several more e-mails back and forth, they were still refusing to tell me what was in the drink:

“While we understand that some customers would like to know the nutrition information for their specific customized beverage, unfortunately we are unable to provide this level of detail for every beverage customization request. The beverage information that is available on Starbucks.com reflects the beverage offerings currently on our menu with the most common customization options.” 1

I found this outrageous. I strongly believe that we have a right to know what’s in the food we eat. Starbucks likes to brag about its transparency, but they refused to tell us what they put into their lattes. What were they trying to hide?

This meant I had to take matters into my own hands. I began by persuading a barista at my local Starbucks to let me look at their various drink components. Despite the assurances of corporate headquarters, the Pumpkin Spice Latte wasn’t just espresso, syrup, and steamed milk. I eventually uncovered the complete ingredients list (as it was at the time):

Milk, espresso (water, brewed espresso coffee), pumpkin spice flavored sauce (sugar, condensed nonfat milk, high fructose corn syrup or sweetened condensed nonfat milk [milk, sugar], annatto [for color], natural and artificial flavors, caramel color [class IV], salt, potassium sorbate [preservative]), whip cream (whipping cream, Starbucks vanilla syrup [sugar, water, natural flavors, potassium sorbate, citric acid, caramel color {class IV}]), pumpkin spice topping: cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, clove, sulfites.

And that’s when I finally understood why Starbucks took such pains to hide their ingredients—they didn’t want their customers to know about the risky additives in their best-selling items. (Especially that innocuous sounding caramel color.)

Case in point: if you ordered the Pumpkin Spice Latte, you’d get two doses of class IV caramel coloring, one dose in the syrup and another in the whipped cream. Let me explain why this particular caramel color is so troubling. There are four different types (classes) of caramel coloring. The type used by Starbucks (class IV) is manufactured by heating ammonia and sulfites under high pressure, which creates carcinogenic compounds, notably the dangerous substance 4-methylimidazole (4-MEI). One study funded by the U.S. government found that feeding mice caramel coloring IV (which contained 4-MEI) increased their risk of developing lung cancer and leukemia. 2 The International Agency for Research on Cancer, a widely respected division of the World Health Organization, classifies 4-MEI as “possibly carcinogenic to humans.” 3 Furthermore, an investigation by Consumer Reports found excessive levels of 4-MEI in many popular U.S. drinks. 4 They didn’t test the Pumpkin Spice Latte, probably because they didn’t realize Starbucks used this coloring. I mean, why would you need to color coffee brown?

After confirming the use of class IV caramel coloring in the Pumpkin Spice Latte, I wrote a blog post exposing this on foodbabe.com . The piece quickly went absolutely viral with over 10 million views in 2014. Within days, major news outlets had picked up the story. I appeared on a popular national TV morning show to discuss my findings. 5

It wasn’t long before I heard back from Starbucks. After a few months, I received what I had been waiting for. A representative told me that Starbucks was now in the process of transitioning to a new formula, which is free from caramel coloring. 6 They were also going to post drink ingredients on their website. Success! Needless to say, I was delighted to hear that our collective activism had managed to get rid of a dangerous ingredient from an extremely popular drink and that we would finally get true transparency out of Starbucks. This was a major victory for us—and a major defeat for the industry that creates caramel coloring and the Big Soda brands who depend on caramel color to make their products look appealing. As you will see in this chapter, this was a big threat to the soda industry’s profits.

We have already learned about the toxic effects of sugar and the dangerous food lies the sugar industry has perpetuated for decades. Now we will focus on the evils of soda and the lies of the soda industry, who have tried for decades to defend a food that has zero nutritional value and is loaded up with toxic ingredients. Long story short: there is no mass-produced food product that has been worse for the health of Americans. If we got rid of soda, we’d all live healthier and longer lives.

That’s why they spend so much on feeding us lies.

I probably don’t need to tell you that soda isn’t healthy. Almost everyone knows this. However, consumers often don’t realize just how hazardous soda really is. When you drink soda, you’re ingesting a concentrated slurry of sugar and controversial chemicals that screw with the most basic processes of your body.

As the Centers for Disease Control notes, soda consumption is associated with a long list of health problems, including obesity, type 2 diabetes, heart disease, kidney disease, fatty liver disease, gout, and even asthma. 7 (Good luck finding a major internal organ that is not harmed by excessive soda consumption.) The more soda you drink, the more likely you are to suffer from these diseases, strongly suggesting that high levels of soda consumption play a causal role. But even moderate consumption of soda can put you at risk. A long-term study composed of nearly 90,000 women found that drinking more than two sugary drinks a day increased risk of heart attack or heart disease deaths by 40 percent compared to women who rarely indulged in sugary drinks. 8 Another study found a 20 percent increased risk of heart attack if you drank just a single 12-ounce soda per day. 9

The primary aspect making soda so dangerous is that the drinks contain a huge amount of sugar without any fiber. When you eat a piece of fruit, you might also get a significant amount of sugar. (A big apple can contain up to 18 grams.) But this sugar comes along with fiber, which slows down the release of that sugar into the bloodstream. There is no sudden spike.

But sodas have no fiber. As a result, they overwhelm our internal organs with sweet stuff, sending the pancreas and liver into overdrive. That excess sugar is then converted into fatty globules in the bloodstream, which can lead to heart disease. What’s more, the lack of fiber means that the empty calories in soda don’t leave us feeling satisfied, which can cause us to eat more than we should, or even drink another soda. And if that wasn’t bad enough, sodas are also loaded with dangerous preservatives like phosphoric acid.

So maybe you don’t drink regular soda. That’s good.

In my experience, however, many people replace these sugary beverages with other drinks from the soda industry that they think are healthier. Coca-Cola doesn’t just make Diet Coke sweetened with aspartame—they also make Coke Zero Sugar (sweetened with aspartame and the zero-calorie artificial sweetener acesulfame potassium [Ace-K]), Coke Life and an array of Diet Coke flavors, from Mango to Blood Orange. (In actuality, these new Diet Coke “flavors” are really nothing more than old Diet Coke with a new flavor added and a slick marketing campaign.)

And then we’ve got flavored waters flooding the market. These fruity waters and fizzy “sugar free” drinks are being promoted as healthy alternatives to regular Coke, Pepsi, and Sprite. But are they actually good for us?

If they seem too good to be true, that’s because they are. Most of these zero-calorie alternatives are filled with controversial additives that can sabotage your weight and your health—even if they have little added sugar, look like bottled water, or have really short ingredients lists.

Let’s start with their main selling point, which is that they have zero calories. In many cases, the lack of calories is because they are artificially sweetened with sucralose. Sucralose (which goes by the brand name Splenda) is created by chlorinating sugar in a lab, and while it may be insanely sweet and have no calories, it’s also linked to cancer. In 2016, the Center for Science in the Public Interest downgraded their rating of sucralose from “caution” to “avoid” after a study came out linking the sweetener to leukemia and related blood cancers in male mice. 10

Artificial dyes in these drinks (like Yellow #5, Red #40, and Blue #1) are derived from petroleum and linked to several health issues, including allergies, cancer, and hyperactivity in children. 11 If that’s not bad enough, these drinks can be preserved with potassium benzoate, which can form the carcinogen benzene when combined with vitamin C (which is present in many of the drink flavors). 12 That’s a dangerous chemical cocktail in a plastic bottle.

The sheer awfulness of soda should make us wonder why we buy so much of the stuff. The statistics are staggering: roughly 63 percent of U.S. children drink at least one soda per day, while about 30 percent drink two or more. This comes as no surprise, as 60 percent of schools sell them. On average, American adults consume 145 calories from sugary beverages each day.

How is this possible? How do Coke and Pepsi still rack up billions in sales, even when we know that their products can dramatically increase the risk of serious illnesses like type 2 diabetes and heart disease? Why are there still entire aisles dedicated to these toxic drinks in most grocery stores?

The answer to these questions brings us to the terrible soda lie .

Soda companies such as Coke and Pepsi—along with their friends at the American Beverage Association (the main soda trade association) and International Life Sciences Institute (a front group partially sponsored by Coca-Cola)—have focused on telling one very big lie. According to Big Soda, we get fat because we don’t exercise enough, not because we eat or drink too much sugar.

Coca-Cola summarizes this idea on its website: “There is increasing concern about overweight and obesity worldwide, and while there are many factors involved, the fundamental cause in most cases is an imbalance between calories consumed and calories expended. Our goal is to help people around the globe understand the importance of a sensible, balanced diet and the health benefits from increasing their levels of physical activity.” 13 In other words, you need to work out more to avoid obesity (but keep drinking that Coke!).

This approach makes perfect sense for Coke, at least from a business perspective. Since they make their money by filling us up with empty calories, it’s only logical that they would try to focus attention on increased exercise. (Especially if that leads us to drink more Powerade and Vitaminwater, both of which are owned by Coca-Cola.) In 2012 Coca-Cola published their very own “Work It Out” calorie calculator, an app that would calculate how much you needed to exercise to burn off that Coke you just drank. This focus on calories in, calories out also allows Coke to vigorously push its low-calorie beverages to persuade dieters to keep drinking Coca-Cola products. But here’s the truth: as we explored in Chapter 4 , not all calories are equal—especially when they consist of refined sugar and natural flavors that increase food cravings.

This is faulty logic and illustrates Coke’s attempt to shift the blame on obesity from sugar consumption to lack of physical activity. If you’re fat and drink lots of soda, the problem isn’t soda; it’s that you’re lazy . This contradicts dozens of well-done studies showing that, for the vast majority of people, exercise is not an effective weight loss tool. Exercise is still really good for you, but if you’re looking to shed pounds, you probably need to change your diet, not join the gym.

The fact that Coca-Cola and other food industry giants are getting away with this orchestrated deception is unbelievable. They’ve helped create the obesity crisis. Now they’re trying to deflect blame—blaming us for being lazy instead—while simultaneously peddling a new generation of unsafe low-calorie drinks.

How stupid do they think we are?

Big Soda will do anything to keep and grow its market share of soft drinks. In fact, Big Soda’s tactics have frequently been compared to those of the tobacco industry.

From the 1950s until the late 1990s, the tobacco industry orchestrated an elaborate campaign of disinformation to discredit the science connecting cigarettes to lung cancer and other diseases. Today, the soda industry is engaged in its own campaign of disinformation to cast doubt on the science linking sugar-sweetened beverages to negative health consequences.

And they’re telling the lies with help from people we should be able to trust for health information, such as dietitians, academics, trade groups, the government, and others.

Need proof? Take a look.

Big Soda, Big Spenders. In 2016, the trade group for Big Soda compensated a group of dietitians to use Twitter to tweet against soda taxes, saying such things as “Soda taxes fall flat” and “Better-informed consumers, not taxes, can help prevent obesity.” 14 These dietitians are supposed to be experts offering advice on healthy eating, but instead they are shilling for Big Soda’s political gain. Isn’t that crazy?

Around the country since 2009, Big Soda’s three reigning members—the American Beverage Association, Coca-Cola, and PepsiCo—have disbursed around $67 million to defeat soda taxes and fight warning labels regarding added sugar, according to the Center for Science in the Public Interest. 15 That much money buys a lot of influence. So the next time you see a supposed expert telling us that soda isn’t so bad, your next question should be whether they’re on the payroll of the soda industry.

A Bubbling Conflict of Interest. Big Soda has helped fund nearly 100 medical and public health organizations, according to a report published in the American Journal of Preventive Medicine . 16 Those organizations have included the American Diabetes Association, the American Heart Association, and the American Academy of Pediatrics. These are groups that are supposed to support public health. Many of these organizations have a direct mission to fight obesity, yet they have taken money from soda companies.

Naturally, this is a huge conflict of interest. How can the American Diabetes Association accept big bucks from a soda company when there is clear proof that soda is helping drive the huge increase in type 2 diabetes? They are taking money from the very companies that are contributing to the problem they are trying to solve.

Coke Fights Obesity? The Coca-Cola Company was instrumental in shaping and funding a nonprofit group called the Global Energy Balance Network, led by a professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine. 17 The group’s mission? To combat obesity!

The group received $1.5 million from Coke (and asserted the funds didn’t influence their work). Yet e-mails obtained by the Associated Press told a different story. Coke had a hand in selecting the group’s leaders, along with the content and videos that it put out. According to the AP, “the group would use social media and run a political-style campaign to counter the ‘shrill rhetoric’ of ‘public health extremists’ who want to tax or limit foods they deem unhealthy.” 18 Even worse, internal e-mails reveal the soda company had high hopes it would “quickly establish itself as the place the media goes to for comment on any obesity issue.” As was uncovered in a recent paper in Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health , internal documents from the company reveal that they saw the front group as a “‘weapon’ to ‘change the conversation’ about obesity amidst a ‘growing war between the public health community and private industry.’” 19

They disbanded in late 2015 after the e-mails surfaced that exposed Coke’s efforts. Coke stopped working with the group and informed the AP it had accepted the retirement of their chief health and science officer, Rhona Applebaum. And yet, the damage had been done, as the front group had succeeded in confusing millions of consumers about the dangers of soda and sugar. This fiasco is just one recent example how far Big Soda will go to protect their profits.

Pouring Money into Experts. In 2015, The New York Times exposed that Coke had provided millions of dollars in funding to fitness and nutrition experts to discredit the link between sugary drinks (like soda) and obesity, while suggesting Coke as a healthy treat. 20 (Coke also funds nutritionists who push junk food in general—they had one professor on the corporate payroll who said he lost 27 pounds eating Twinkies.) 21 Several dietitians, paid by Coke, wrote online pieces and appeared on morning news programs advising consumers to enjoy a mini-can of Coke or small soda as a snack. Positioning Coke as a healthy snack is a total joke. But I’m not laughing.

The money keeps flowing. Coke acknowledged that they have paid $2.1 million directly to health experts. In addition, they’ve invested $21.8 million in pro–soft drink research. Of these health experts working on Coca-Cola’s dime: 57 percent were dietitians, 20 percent were academics, and the remaining experts were primarily doctors, fitness experts, authors, and chefs. 22

The CDC. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) is a federal agency charged with improving public health in the U.S. It turns out this agency was in bed with Coke for years. This became apparent in June 2106, when Carey Gillam at U.S. Right to Know broke the story that a high-ranking official at the CDC, Dr. Barbara Bowman, had been in regular communications with top Coca-Cola advocate Alex Malaspina, a former Coca-Cola executive and founder of the front group International Life Sciences Institute (ILSI), which is partially sponsored by Coke. Dr. Bowman left the CDC a mere two days after damaging e-mails between the two were exposed, revealing that she had been providing guidance to him on how to influence beverage and sugar policy at the World Health Organization. Additional e-mails showed close communications between another senior official at the CDC, Michael Pratt, and ILSI. In another role, Pratt is a professor at Emory University, which credits Coca-Cola as a huge financial supporter. So much so that Emory jokes it’s “unofficially considered poor school spirit to drink other soda brands on campus.” 23

Junking Up the FDA. In the same e-mails exposing the CDC, more details emerged about this friend of Coca-Cola who has been quietly campaigning our government officials to support Big Soda. Alex Malaspina, who at one time was able to infiltrate the World Health Organization with industry-friendly scientists, money, and research, has more recently set his sights on the U.S. Food and Drug Administration with a campaign to discredit food industry critics like myself.

The year following our campaign to get “yoga mat” out of Subway and my viral post about the caramel coloring in the Pumpkin Spice Latte, Coca-Cola took aim at our ability to convince major food companies to remove additives from their products. At the coaxing of his friends over at Coca-Cola, Alex Malaspina sent a private e-mail to Michael Taylor, a top FDA head, proposing the FDA hold a roundtable discussion on “Junk Science Reporting and Its Unintended Consequences.” What gave rise to such a suggestion? As Coca-Cola put it in their proposal: “Recent events—the vaccine scare in California, investigations by AMA and others into Dr. Oz, criticism of the Food Babe’s misuse of science and pledges by food service establishments and companies to remove ingredients in response to ‘consumer pressure’—have created a window of opportunity to drive an important message about the pervasiveness of pseudo-science and the unintended consequences it creates among consumers who now fear perfectly safe and beneficial products.” 2 4

Hah. I’ve heard many outlandish things from Big Food companies, but I never thought I’d hear someone defend soda as “beneficial.” It’s also highly inappropriate for a company that peddles such an unhealthy product to lobby a government agency in such a manner.

Targeting Soda Critics. I’m not the first person to be targeted by Big Soda and I certainly won’t be the last—they have a long history of going after their critics. Just look at what happened to Marion Nestle, a highly respected professor of nutrition at NYU and Cornell who wrote Soda Politics , a book about the devious marketing and lobbying efforts of Big Soda. As was made clear in a cache of e-mails published by Wikileaks, the Coca-Cola communication team was secretly tracking Professor Nestle’s talks and lectures. They even snuck into her private events where she was talking with nutritionists. “Now I assume that someone from Coca-Cola is taking notes at every talk I give and reporting in to headquarters,” Nestle says. 25

One has to wonder: If the science is on their side, and soda really is safe and harmless, why is the soda industry so terrified of its critics?

I hope you realize by now that Big Soda should not be trusted. If it were up to me, we’d make the soda aisle disappear. These drinks are not only a waste of money—they’re making us sick. Being aware that you’ve been fed lies about soda is important. But it’s even more important to just stop consuming this garbage.

Hopefully, I’ve convinced you that you’ll feel better if you swear off all sodas, even those zero-calorie ones that pretend to be healthy. Before you can kick the habit, though, it’s important to be honest about how many sodas you drink in a week. Add them up by keeping a food diary for seven days. For sticker shock, use a calculator to add up how many calories and sugar grams you’re guzzling in that period. Take some time to think about the negative health consequences that you might suffer from drinking all that soda. Create a strong desire in your heart and mind to stop drinking soda and sweetened drinks—this is a very important step! If you really want to quit, you will succeed.

(These drinks have some addictive properties, especially when they’re caffeinated.) Try cutting back by a fourth the first week, half the second week, and so on until you can quit soda completely. Each week you will be one step closer to meeting your goal and steadily improving your health.

Long-term success will ultimately depend on replacing soda with delicious alternatives. First, drink lots of clean, filtered water. (You’ll be shocked at how much money you save by replacing soda with H2 0.) Purchase a refillable water bottle and keep it with you at home, at work, and in your car. Plus, find other fizz! Miss the refreshment and mouthfeel of sodas? Don’t worry; you can still drink fizzy drinks that taste refreshing and are not loaded up with crappy chemicals. Just stay away from most store-bought versions and make your own drinks instead. Here are my favorite alternatives to soda:

Avoiding soft drinks—even diet drinks—sends Big Soda a message that you’re onto them. You know how to see through their lies. Instead of guzzling soda, you’re going to stay hydrated with drinks that save you money and don’t harm your vital organs.