Calley Means, who worked on behalf of The Coca-Cola Company in years past, says the multinational purveyor of poison "food" paid the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) to slander as "racist" any and all scientists, researchers, or other "opponents" whose work exposed Coke products as toxic.
Coke also paid off willing parties to produce pseudoscience "debunking" the link between soft drink consumption and diseases like obesity and diabetes. (Related: Ten years ago, Coca-Cola tried to boost sales by marketing its high-fructose corn syrup [HFCS]-laden junk food soft drinks as healthy for breakfast.)
"Early in my career, I consulted for Coke to ensure sugar taxes failed and soda was included in food stamp funding," Means recently revealed. "I say Coke's policies are evil because I saw inside the room."
"The first step in playbook was paying the NAACP and other civil rights groups to call opponents racist. Coke gave millions to the NAACP and the Hispanic Federation – both directly and through front groups like the American Beverage Association (ABA)."
In 2011 when the idea of soda taxes really started to gain legislative traction, Coke amped up the slander and bribery agenda. Means says the conversations he heard within the walls of Coca-Cola corporate were "depressingly transactional."
"We (Coke) will give you money," Means recalls about the typical conversations that would take place internally between Coke and its target allies. "You need to paint opponents of us as racist."
As silly as it all sounds, these tactics worked. As the Farm Bill for 2011-2013 was being negotiated and finalized, thousands of articles flooded the news cycle that helped Coke avert soda taxes and possible removal from the food stamp program.
Aggressive lobbying and slander allowed Coke to lie to the public that soda pop is "one of the cheapest ways to get calories"
Means says Coca-Cola also partnered with the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to funnel money into "academia," which used it to produce "research" claiming that soda taxes would harm low-income populations.
"I watched as the FDA funneled money to professors at leading universities – as well as think tanks on the left and right – to create studies showing soda taxes hurt the poor," Means says.
"They also paid for studies that say drinking soda didn't cause obesity."
Coke was also able to get away with making the false and ludicrous claim that its soft drink products are "one of the cheapest ways to get calories," which Means describes as "a flagrantly inaccurate statement when factoring in the health consequences."
It was none other than the ABA that aided Coke in purveying the lie that taxing soda pop would hurt not just poor people but also "local businesses" while "unfairly targeting one product."
The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is also complicit in this racket, having put forth more lies claiming that "there are no bad foods, only bad diets."
The entire regulatory structure of the United States has clearly been co-opted by Big Industry, which is steering all the "science" in its own favor. Coca-Cola is just one example among many of what an absolute joke this entire system has become – and that some would argue always was.
"The word 'racist' has lost all its meaning," wrote a commenter about Coke's flagrant abuse of the English language. "The word has been so overused that it lost its meaning."
More news stories like this one can be found at RaceWar.news.
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