This Time magazine article reports on a recent paper published in the journal PLoS Medicine which examined how soda companies’ social responsibility campaigns are “designed to refocus responsibility from corporations back onto consumers [and] increase the popularity of the companies’ products.”
The same can be said about Coca-Cola and PepsiCo’s partnerships with the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics. Such relationships are only beneficial to soda companies; they acquire an undeserved reputation of “caring about health”, while the health organization they partner with — in this case, AND — earns the (deserved) reputation of selling out their credential and members to the highest bidder.
Partnerships with Big Soda don’t do the dietetics profession any favors. Rather, they are formidable hurdles that get in the way of integrity and respect from the general public and other health professionals.
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