by tristero
Recently, I posted a Times article regarding Coke’s funding research that would enable them to mislead the public into thinking that exercise alone would enable people to lose weight. Scientific American follows up with an interview with Charlotte Markey, a “Rutgers University–based diet and behavior expert:”
We actually know a great deal about what leads to obesity. It’s not a great mystery. People are eating too much and not exercising enough…that makes it inevitable that people will be obese. The group’s emphasis on physical activity is misleading based on what the data shows. There’s no data to support saying if you exercise for 30 minutes three times a week that this will take care of the problem. We have data refuting that.
In reality, we need people to stop drinking sugary beverages like soda. Soda is the one consumable beverage that is repeatedly cited as having the biggest impact on obesity rates. From a public health standpoint, we want soda out of schools and we want cities to really decrease intake of soda—and Coca-Cola knows this…
Yep. From the standpoint of basic human hygiene, Coca-Cola and its ilk should be tiny little companies selling occasional treats (treats are great, every once in a while). Instead, they are colossal corporations selling obesity-delivery systems as if they were an essential food group.
That’s what you call a serious public health problem.