• by Thom Forbes , December 2, 2015

The Global Energy Balance Network (GEBN), the exercise-to-eliminate-obesity organization that was non-transparently funded by Coca-Cola, has pulled the plug “due to resource limitations,” according to its website.

Coke had withdrawn its financial support — $1.5 million, according to reports — from GEBN after Anahad O’Connor broke the story in a front-page piece in the New York Times in August. It carried the headline: “Coca-Cola Funds Scientists Who Shift Blame for Obesity Away From Bad Diets.” 

Last week, the Associated Press’ Candice Choi revealed that, contrary to previous assertions that it had no influence on the GEBN’s work, emails she’d obtained showed that “Coke helped pick the group's leaders, edited its mission statement and suggested articles and videos for its website.” 

Coke’s chief health and science officer, Rhona Applebaum, retired at that time and Coke said she would not be replaced. James Hill, GEBH’s president and a professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, told Choi in an email that the group wanted to “continue its work.”

But not for nothing, apparently.

“I think ultimately the Global Energy Balance Network was a megaphone for Coca-Cola,” Yoni Freedhoff, an obesity expert at the University of Ottawa who was a whistleblower about the funding, tells O’Connor. “And now that Coca-Cola is no longer providing the funds to support that megaphone, it’s shutting down. I think that speaks to the purpose of the establishment of this group.”

Coke has come under widespread criticism from consumer advocates and scientists in public health, medicine and nutritionfor peddling “scientific nonsense.” 

“The lesson for Coca-Cola is to spend more time listening to detractors, and they appear to be doing that now,” Beverage Digest editor Duane Stanford tells the Atlanta Journal-Constitution’s Leon Stafford. “That’s a better tactic long-term than focusing on corporate scientific defenses that consumers, by default, will meet with skepticism.”

In a promotional video that surfaced when the story first broke in August, GEBN vice president Dr. Steven Blair “preached that the claim that sugary drinks cause obesity are totally baseless,” writesScience Times’ Christian George Acevedo.

“Most of the focus in the popular media and in the scientific press is, ‘Oh they're eating too much, eating too much, eating too much’ — blaming fast food, sugary drinks and so on. And there's really virtually no compelling evidence that that, in fact, is the cause,” according to Blair, a professor in the exercise science and epidemiology departments at the Arnold School of Public Health at the University of South Carolina, which reportedly received $500,000 of Coke’s funding.

Coke immediately tried to mitigate the damage with a blog post by its chief technical officer, Dr. Ed Hays, that said, in part: “At Coke, we believe a balanced diet and regular exercise are two key ingredients for a healthy lifestyle and that is reflected in both our long-term and short-term business actions.” 

That did not sit well with CBS medical contributor Dr. David Agus, for one, who in an interview called the lack of transparency “astounding.” “What you say and what you do have to be in line with each other. They are saying the right thing here, but they’re obviously not doing the right thing, and so we need to stand up to this” Agus said on “CBS This Morning.” 

Blair subsequently asked that the video be taken down from the GEBN website, stating that it “has been used by some to brand GEBN as a network focusing only on physical activity. This is not true and never has been true.” At the same time, he apologized to “top” nutrition experts working with GEBN, admitting that “my dismissal of diet as a cause of obesity did a disservice to their work.”

That action coincided with an apologetic op-ed by Coke CEO Muhtar Kent in the Wall Street Journal on Aug. 19. “I am disappointed that some actions we have taken to fund scientific research and health and well-being programs have served only to create more confusion and mistrust,” he wrote, pledging to “get focused on real change” and “to do this right.”

Meanwhile, Coke this morning has another controversy unfolding, this time over a TV spot that “depicts whites introducing soda to ‘poor’ Mexicans,” the Washington Postreports.

“While drinking Coca-Cola and sharing bottles of the black bubbly stuff with unfortunate natives, they built just what a small Mexican community where many speak an indigenous language needed: A giant Christmas tree made out of red lights that look like bottle tops,” writes Justin Wm. Moyer.

The spot was removed from the company’s YouTube channel late Tuesday.