by ANAHAD O’CONNOR Anahad O’Connor
IMAGE/Wilfredo Lee/Associated Press
Coca-Cola’s top scientist is stepping down after revelations that the beverage giant initiated a strategy of funding scientific research that played down the role of Coke products in the spread of obesity.
Rhona S. Applebaum, Coke’s chief science and health officer, helped orchestrate the establishment of a nonprofit group known as the Global Energy Balance Network. The group’s members were university scientists who encouraged the public to focus on exercise and worry less about how calories from food and beverages contribute to obesity.
Coca-Cola spent $1.5 million last year to support the group, including a $1 million grant to the University of Colorado medical school, where the nonprofit group’s president, James O. Hill, a prominent obesity researcher, is a professor.
Coke’s financial ties to the group were first reported in an article in The New York Times in August, which prompted criticism that the soft drink giant was trying to influence scientific research on sugary drinks.
The university returned the money to Coca-Cola this month after public health experts raised concerns.
Dr. Applebaum, a food scientist with a Ph.D. in microbiology, had been Coke’s chief scientific and regulatory officer since 2004. In that role she helped lead the company’s efforts to work with scientists as a way to counter criticism about sugary drinks.
At one food industry conference in 2012, Dr. Applebaum gave a talk outlining Coca-Cola’s strategy of “cultivating relationships” with top scientists as a way to “balance the debate” about soft drinks.
A spokeswoman for Coca-Cola said on Tuesday that Dr. Applebaum, 61, had made the decision to retire in October and that her retirement “has been accepted and the transition is underway.” The company declined a request for an interview with Dr. Applebaum.
Coca-Cola has said that while it offered financial support for the Global Energy Balance Network, the company had no influence on the group or the scientific research it produced. But reports show that Dr. Applebaum and other executives at Coke helped pick the group’s leaders, create its mission statement and design its website, findings first reported this week by The Associated Press.
The A.P. also published a series of emails between Dr. Hill of the University of Colorado and Coke executives that revealed the initial strategy of the Global Energy Balance Network. Before the G.E.B.N. was created, Dr. Hill proposed publishing research that would help the company fend off criticism about its products by shifting the blame for obesity to physical inactivity.
“Here is my concept,” Dr. Hill wrote to Coca-Cola executives about the study he was proposing, according to the emails. “I think it could provide a strong rationale for why a company selling sugar water should focus on promoting physical activity. This would be a very large and expensive study, but could be a game changer. We need this study to be done.”
The New York Times for more
(Thanks to reader)