Evaluating Coca-Cola’s attempts to influence public health ‘in their own words’: analysis of Coca-Cola emails with public health academics leading the Global Energy Balance Network
Using the Freedom of Information Act, researchers were able to obtain 18,030 pages of emails between Coca-Cola and West Virginia University and University of Colorado. The company attempted to fund research through various methods to obscure their relationship to the funding; even withholding information that Coca-Cola was behind the funding. Researchers also found documentation of pushing specific messages to academics as well as supporting those academics.
TL;DR Coca-Cola obscured relationships with academics and influenced them to deliver a positive perspective on Coca-Cola
