It seems like every day we hear something new about how terrible soda is for you, and the soda industry is sick and tired of it. (Aside: “Sick and tired” is how we remember feeling after we drank our last Big Gulp and the sugar rush wore off.) “Public health departments are going out and aggressively misrepresenting our products in advertising and using taxpayer money to do that,” American Beverage Association spokesman Chris Gindlesperger tells Reuters. So how is the industry fighting back? By effectively demonstrating that their products aren’t actually causing Americans to become obese? Ha! Of course not. The ABA is just suing New York City’s Health Department and making document requests from government agencies in hopes of overwhelming their employees.
“It is, in our opinion, an effort to overwhelm or smother government employees, who already have too much to do,” says an attorney for one anti-obesity group. The tactic, Reuters points out, is similar to ones that were employed by Big Tobacco when the government started to crack down on smoking. “The purpose is to stop the staff from doing what they’re actually hired to do,” according to a rep from the American Cancer Society.
What we want to know is, if soda companies are so worried about people not drinking their products, why are they trying to get rid of the soda that’s actually good?
Exclusive: Soda makers escalate attacks over obesity [Reuters]
Related: Giant-Conglomerate Dr Pepper Trying to Eradicate Dublin Dr Pepper
