‘Almost every middle-income country is being targeted by Big Food and its scientific agents’

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 new 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 SNIGDHA DAS, Greenhalgh offers a glimpse into her decade-long investigation and the workings of “soda science”.

- By Snigdha Das

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?