On this edition of Your Call’s One Planet Series, Harvard university anthropologist Susan Greenhalgh discusses her new book, Soda Science: Making the World Safe for Coca-Cola.
Greenhalgh tells the story tells the story of how, in the midst of an explosive epidemic of obesity, Big Soda mobilized academic allies to create a science that would protect profits on sugary drinks by advocating exercise, not dietary restraint, as the primary solution to obesity — a view few experts accept.
She writes that the 1990s was a rough decade for the soda industry. In the US, obesity rates were exploding. Public health critics began fingering sugary soda as a main culprit and calling for taxes on soft drinks. With profits on sugary drinks threatened as never before, Big Soda had to be defended. Coca-Cola would take the lead. The book draws concepts from the social studies of science and anthropology to track a largely hidden project of the food industry that was global in scope. That project sought to create an industry-friendly science of obesity, spread it to key markets abroad, and get it embedded in official policies on diet-related chronic disease.
Guest:
Susan Greenhalgh, John King and Wilma Cannon Fairbank Professor of Chinese Society Emerita at Harvard University, and author of Soda Science: Making the World Safe for Coca-Cola
Resources:
Union of Concerned Scientists: How Coca-Cola Disguised Its Influence on Science about Sugar and Health
