Author: Jonathan Lambert / Source: NPR.org
The Coca-Cola company exerted strong influence over the way the Chinese government addressed the country’s growing obesity problem, according to a study published Wednesday in the Journal of Public Health Policy and the BMJ.
Study author Susan Greenhalgh, a social scientist and China scholar, wanted to uncover the opaque process of science-based policy-making in China.
She focused on the government’s efforts to address a growing obesity crisis: the percentage of obese Chinese adults more than doubled over two decades, from 20.5 percent in 1991 to 42.3 percent in 2011.Greenhalgh’s years-long investigation unraveled the complex personal, institutional and financial connections the soda company cultivated to align Chinese science and policy with the interest in building a market for Coke in China.
“I was surprised here at the extent to which Coke was able to penetrate the government,” said Paulo Serôdio, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Barcelona who studies how corporations influence science and policy. “The study gives us an interesting and important insight on the extent to which corporations can influence public policy in other countries where there is less scrutiny.”
Worldwide obesity rates have tripled from 13 percent in 1975 to 39 percent in 2016. The trend has drawn the attention of public health officials.
In the late ’90s and early 2000s, a consensus emerged in the public health community that beverages loaded with added sugar, like soda, are partly to blame. To curb consumption of these drinks countries have issued public health messages and enacted policies like soda taxes.
As a result, soda consumption is on the decline in many Western countries.That’s bad news for soda giants, who want to grow their market. A series of reports from the New York Times in 2015 detailed how, in the U.S., Coca-Cola has tried to downplay the role of diet while supporting and amplifying research that emphasizes the importance of physical activity to bring down obesity rates. Whether their influence extended beyond Western countries into emerging markets like China was unclear until Greenhalgh’s investigation.
She found that Coca-Cola promoted this message globally through the International Life Science Institute (ILSI), a research nonprofit set up by Coke executive Alex Malaspina in 1978. ILSI, according to its website, aims to foster collaboration between scientists from industry, government and academia.
But critics of the ILSI contend that it acts to further the corporate interests of Coca-Cola. While ILSI is based in Washington, D.C., its influence extends globally through 17 international branches positioned mostly in emerging markets, including China.
Coca-Cola recognized the untapped potential of the Chinese market in 1978, becoming the first international company to re-enter China in the post-Mao era. Greenhalgh reports that this effort was spearheaded by Malaspina, who traveled to China that year to establish connections with local scientists. There he met Chen Chunming, a politically savvy nutritionist who, according to Greenhalgh, would become the main architect of Chinese obesity science and policy.
The scientific and political climate in China allowed American corporate interests to easily gain a foothold in Chinese science and public…
The post Study: Coca-Cola Shaped China’s Efforts To Fight Obesity appeared first on FeedBox.