Susan Greenhalgh's book, Soda Science, uncovers how Coca-Cola and allied scientists manipulated obesity research to protect corporate interests.
Through investigative storytelling, she reveals the distortion of science and public policy by powerful companies, highlighting the exercise-first narrative that misled the public about calorie consumption.
There is a secret world of corporate science out there, where powerful companies and allied scientists shape research to serve industry interests. Susan Greenhalgh, an anthropologist and specialist on contemporary China, exposes this hidden world in her book, Soda Science. Blending investigative storytelling with scholarly analysis, this book reveals how Coca-Cola used front groups to distort science and manipulate public policies to protect its profits. In an interview with Down To Earth, Greenhalgh offers a glimpse into her decade-long investigation and the workings of “soda science”.
Soda Science is as much about corporate corruption as it is about public health concerns and manipulation of science and policy. What drew your attention to the relation between Coca-Cola (Coke) and obesity research?
I have long been interested in the politics of science, in particular, the corruption of scientific knowledge that often results when corporations have strong interests in certain scientific outcomes. When I began this project in the early 2010s, the history of corporate bias of science by the tobacco and pharmaceutical industries was well known, but little was known about possible interference in the science of obesity by the massive food industry whose products have a huge impact on what we eat. After the emergence of the obesity epidemic (it came to the public’s attention in the mid-1990s), governments and public health authorities began making major investments in scientific research on obesity. By the early 2010s, understandings of the causes and solutions to the obesity epidemic had grown enormously, yet the condition continued to spread. Why was that, I wondered. Could the science be distorted in some way? And which industry is deeply invested in making sure we continue to eat the kinds of high-fat, sugar and salt foods that are making us ill? These questions launched this research.
Your book argues that Coke’s research was not fake science; it was real science by real, eminent scientists, but distorted by its aim. Using this research, Coke misled the public into believing that as long as they exercised, they could consume plenty of calories. How was this narrative constructed?
The exercise-first response argued that it does not matter how much you eat and drink; as long as you exercise off the calories, you would not gain weight. This claim is the centerpiece of a body of knowledge I call “soda science”. Reflecting the corporate sector’s interest in promoting this view, soda science was made backwards, that is, conclusion first. Its main claim emerged from a meeting of major food-industry CEOs [chief executive officers] who were asked to decide how the industry’s chief non-profit, ILSI, should approach the obesity question [ILSI or International Life Sciences Institute is a US-based, industry-funded non-profit, with branches around the world, that sponsors research on nutrition and food safety]. The CEOs rejected a broad programme on food and exercise and agreed only to sponsor a programme encouraging exercise. From there, a handful of university-based scientists …
This interview was originally published in the August 1-15, 2025 print edition of Down To Earth