Susan Greenhalgh
Harvard University
The 1990s were tough times for the soda industry. In the United States, obesity rates were exploding. Public health critics pointed to sugary soda as a main culprit and advocated for soda taxes that might decrease the consumption of sweetened beverages—and threaten the revenues of the giant soda companies.
My new book, Soda Science, tells the story of how industry leader Coca-Cola mobilized allies in academia to create a soda-defense science that would protect profits by advocating exercise, not dietary restraint, as the priority solution to obesity, a view few experts accept. It uncovers a hidden world of science-making—with distinctive organizations, social networks, knowledge-making practices, and ethical claims—dedicated to creating industry-friendly science and keeping it under wraps. By tracing the birth, maturation, death, and afterlife of the science they made, Soda Science shows how corporate science has managed to gain such a hold over our lives.
Spanning twenty years (1995-2015), the investigation moves from the US, where the science was made, to China, a key market for sugary soda. In the US, soda science was a critical force in the making of today’s society of step-counting, fitness-tracking, weight-obsessed citizens. In China, this distorted science has left its mark not just on national obesity policies, but on the apparatus for managing chronic disease generally. By following the scientists and their ambitious schemes to make the world safe for Coke, I’m able to offer an account that is more global—and yet more human—than the story that dominates public understanding today.
Coke’s research isn’t fake science; it was real science, conducted by real and eminent scientists, but distorted by its aim. This “thriller of a book” (in the words of one reader) raises crucial questions about conflicts of interest in scientific research, the funding behind familiar messages about health, and the cunning ways giant corporations come to shape our diets, lifestyles, and health to their own needs.
I wrote the book in narrative form and in lively, anecdote-filled language, so it should appeal to undergrads (at least those who read books) as well as general public readers. It should be of interest for courses in the anthropology of food, the anthropology of globalization, global health, STS, and E. Asian Studies. If you use it in a class, I’d love to jump on a zoom meeting to join in the class discussion.
The press is offering a 30% discount off orders. Within the Americas, visit www.press.uchicago.edu and enter code SCI30 at checkout. For 30% off orders in Europe, call +44 (0) 1243 843291 or email [email protected]. Redeem using promo code SCI30. Offers expires 1/1/25. For complimentary instructor copies, please visit: https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/S/bo221451790.html
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