Why does it have to be all about obesity?

This post (from a blog I actually like and don’t mean to put down!) quite correctly criticizes Coke for pretending to take action against obesity while actually contributing to it. No surprises there. It’s a story to work up any anti-corporate activist into a seething ball of righteous indignation, and I’m glad someone is covering it.

But the post did make me think: is it possible that, in focusing so heavily on obesity specifically, we’re crippling our own arguments? After all, Coke can always show up with the perfectly legitimate studies showing that sugar water is no more obesogenic than any other food with the same number of calories, and defend themselves with all the familiar language about “moderation” and “portion control.”

To this, the answer is that, in practice, Coke usually represents a net increase in daily calories. But something about this message just doesn’t resonate – we all want to think we can have treats, and it’s been proven again and again that everyone sucks at monitoring their own food intake, so Coke’s message is more emotionally satisfying and it’s easy to latch on to it and ignore the facts. Which of course is exactly what Coke is relying on when they make the argument in the first place.

Then there’s the fact that the “Coke causes obesity” criticism completely fails to motivate people like me – people who don’t feel the need to lose any weight. I’m 5’4” and I fluctuate between 120 and 125 pounds. I have no reason to lose weight. In fact, I struggle to get enough calories every day, and I’m always looking to increase my calorie intake. But I still wouldn’t touch Coke with a barge pole.

Why? Because chemical-laced sugar water will not help me stay healthy and strong.

There are two things going on here that aren’t in the standard “Coke causes obesity” line.

• Weight is not the standard of health, and calories are just one part of the big picture. This provides a reason applicable all people, thin as well as overweight.  
• The standard for “food you should eat” has changed from “it doesn’t cause harm” to “it does provide benefit.”

These two differences make my reason for avoiding Coke much more compelling to me – and incidentally, it’s also a lot harder to argue against. It’s easy to argue that 150 calories from Coke = 150 calories from anything else. But it’s damn near impossible to argue that Coke, taken holistically, has as much nutrition as anything else. And I doubt that even a study steeped in industry funding from head to toe could prove a positive benefit from drinking Coke for anyone who isn’t clinically starving.

In a sense, these ideas are already present in the arguments about “wasting your calories” on Coke instead of more nutritious foods, or the occasional mentions you’ll see of non-weight-related problems. But I think we might do well to pay them a little more attention.