Sugar for kids: how Big Tobacco changed the soda industry
Is‘Big Soda’—the manufacturers of sugary soft drinks—as bad as Big Tobacco in covering up the health risks of its products?
The parallel has been mooted a few times, but in 2017, Praxis Project, a health advocacy group, went a step further and issued a lawsuit in which it directly accused Coca-Cola of adopting Big Tobacco’s tactics of using‘science’ to disprove evidence its drinks were harmful. Just five months later, Praxis withdrew the suit, amid claims it had overplayed its hand.
In the suit, Praxis claimed that Coca-Cola—aided by the American Beverage Association—had started to ramp-up a campaign of “misrepresentation and deception”in 2012 against a growing body of evidence directly linking sugary drinks to obesity, type 2 diabetes and heart disease.
“Just as the tobacco industry formed the
