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It’s been a decade since CNN reported on a professor of human nutrition who ate Twinkies for every three hours for 10 weeks, adding a few Doritos, sugary cereals and Oreos for variety, and lost 27 pounds doing it.
He did admit to lowering his calorie intake to 1,800, but still, his body fat dropped from 33.4 to 24.9%. His cholesterol numbers improved too. He admitted that once the diet trial was over, he added 300 calories and meat back into his diet, which increased his cholesterol numbers, but he wasn’t completely giving up the snack cakes.
What he didn’t own up to was the fact that Coke funded his study and he ended up on the Coke payroll. This isn’t the only instance in which Coke used nutrition “experts” to promote its junk-food-is-healthy stance. In fact, an investigation into where Coke puts its money found that 57% were dietitians, many of whom were members of the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics.
The Twinkie diet isn’t the only study that Coke’s had its fingers in, though: From segments on TV shows and in Self-Help and cooking magazines to stints in exercise programs (to infer that it’s not sugar that kills you, but lack of exercise) to sugar promotions in books by popular diet gurus to artificial sweetener research and more, Coke has had a heavy-handed financial influence.
Medium September 28, 2015
CNN November 8, 2010