The New York Times reports that Coca-Cola is funding scientists who claim that the American diet, including sugary soft drinks, is not to blame for skyrocketing obesity rates. The real culprit, they say, is a lack of exercise. Their recommendation: once an hour, get up off your lazy ass and stretch your legs as you walk to the refrigerator for a cold, refreshing Coke.

The scientists at Global Energy Balance Network, a "non-profit" financed by Coca-Cola, say that critics have blown the Time's report all out of proportion. They don't want Coke's money. They just want money. It's expensive to buy television ads to tell people that they're fat, but someone's got to do it!

The GEBN is a proud, independent organization that has produced studies proving that lack of exercise makes kids all over the world obese. Some of those kids can't afford to drink Coke four times a day, so that proves Coke consumption can't be a problem. It's science!

Personally, I think we shouldn't be so quick to attack the GBEN for this seeming conflict of interest. Coca-Cola gives money to lots of people, not just so-called "experts" whose findings just happen to support their marketing goals. The company supports youth fitness centers and donates soda to little league baseball games all across America. Working up a sweat is thirsty work, and Coke is there for America's youth.

So listen up, kids. Go outside and play something. And if all that running around makes you thirsty, reach for The Pause That Refreshesâ„¢. Just remember to run an extra two miles to burn off the calories in that delicious bottle of Coke! If you get fat, it's your own damn fault.

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An article in the paper this week commented that Walt Disney World was re-tooling their exhibit on "childhood obesity" to be more sympathetic to fat people. They were pressured into this, it is implied, by the National Association for the Advancement of Fat Acceptance. I find this astonishing. Not that Disney can bend to political pressure, but that fat people have a lobby.

Just what is this NAAFA? The acronym itself sounds like something you could expect a fat person to pant heavily between bites. The website of the NAAFA looks like the kind of site you'd expect to see from a canned link farm. Maybe NAAFA doesn't have a whole lot of people on staff who can hit just one key on a keyboard to program a better site. If I didn't know better, I'd suspect that their site is bare bones because someone ate the rest of it.

It turns out that NAAFA was created in 1969 in order to organize letter writing campaigns. It's hard to motivate others to accept your cause when you won't get off your ass for it yourself. In the years since, NAAFA has overhauled itself to become more pro-active. There are over 11,000 members in the group: if each pulled his own weight, they'd be able to get remarkable things done. Like make Disney change their policies. For all their trying, the 16-million member Southern Baptist Convention has never managed to do that. Maybe the Southern Baptists need to put on a little weight.

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In the past month, researchers at Yale University released a study revealing that sugar-sweetened soft drink manufacturers, especially Coca-Cola Company, have drastically increased their marketing to young children in recent years. The American Beverage Association responded: "This report is another attack by known critics in an ongoing attempt to single out one product as the cause of obesity when both common sense and widely accepted science have shown that the reality is far more complicated."

In the past month, researchers employed by the University of Oklahoma concluded a study that links consumption of sugary drinks with heart disease in women. The American Beverage Association responded: "This type of study cannot show that drinking sugar-sweetened beverages causes increased risk for cardiovascular disease. It simply looks at associations between the two, which could be the result of numerous other confounding factors."

In the past month, researchers in the U.S. Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration calculated that American emergency room visits related to energy drinks have increased more than tenfold in in the past 6 years. The American Beverage Association responded: "This paper is a troubling example of statistics taken out of context. The number of emergency room visits by people who consumed energy drinks, as reported in the paper, represented less than one one-hundredth of 1% of all emergency visits."

In the past month, researchers for Consumer Reports found that 10% of commercially available apple juice exceeded the federal standard for arsenic in water. The American Beverage Association responded: "In fact, this latest report once again uses federal drinking water standards in its analysis of juice -- in no way comparing apples to apples and only creating confusion."

Today, the John C. Whitehead School of Diplomacy and International Relations at Seton Hall University will present their 2011 Global Citizen of the Year Award to Susan Neely, the President and CEO of the American Beverage Association. The American Heritage Dictionary responded: "irony (i'·ro·ny): 1. The use of words to express something different from and often opposite to their literal meaning. 2. An occurrence, result, or circumstance notable for such incongruity."

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*Or it may not. The "May" makes it legal. We checked.^**

**Anyway, it's chocolate; you know you want it. Go ahead, take a bite. You can stop anytime you want.^***

***Trust us, we're General Mills. Sure, we promised last year to reduce the sugar we put in foods marketed at children, but what else are we going to do with all that sugar if we don't put it in foods marketed at adults? Adults like sugar, too, right?^****

****Whatever. In any event, there's still a spoonful of real heart in every bowl, and that we don't have to qualify with an asterisk!

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The FDA has announced "concern" over the chemical Bisphenol A (BPA), widely used in food industry packaging for the better part of a century. BPA is a synthetic estrogen that provides plastics with added resiliency, making bottles that resist shattering. The FDA has long approved the use of the chemical, but now the agency finds itself under pressure from consumer safety groups arguing that BPA can disrupt fetal brain development and lead to increased obesity. In short, it seems that BPA can make you stupid and fat but at least you'll be more resiliant to damage.

Tests performed recently by the Canadian government agency Health Canada reveal that aluminum cans of Coca-Cola contain 0.18 micrograms (µg) of BPA per liter. The chemical leaches from the epoxy lining of the cans themselves after canning and mixes with the delicious and entirely wholesome Coca-Cola within. No wonder North America is obese: it's not our soft drinks, but our soft drink containers conspiring against us.

Canada's recommended safe level of consumption is 25 µg per kilogram of body weight per day, meaning that you would have to drink more than 138 liters of Coke PER KILOGRAM each day to consume concentrations considered unhealthy. That's over 31,108 12-oz. aluminum cans of Coke per day for the average 80kg (176lb) American. Before you panic over the FDA's announcement, compare that to the USA's advised safe level of 50 µg/kg/day!

Recognizing the severity of the situation, baby bottle manufacturers and distributors have already willingly begun turning away from using BPA in their products. That's a sound start to prevent the clearly overwhelming deleterious effects of consuming Coca-Cola on the development of your unborn baby's brain. But I suggest that it doesn't go far enough. In the interest of product safety, I recommend that everyone install an industrial Coke dispenser in their own kitchen so that they may drink Coke as nature intended: directly from the nipple. That way you can consume your American allotted 273 liters per kilogram per day safely and without fear that the chemicals in our cans are making us obese.

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Continuing my tirade against fast food marketing from last month:

My brother suggested that the Mexican slogan for McDonald's ("Me Enchanta") was used because the translation of the American slogan, "I'm Loving It," is apparently some sort of Mexican slang for having sex. As I recall, not too long ago, McDonald's ran a Big Mac commercial in which several guys said they'd "hit it," which is American slang for having sex. So I wouldn't think that McDonald's would really be all that opposed to saying that Mexicans were having sex with the food.

Clearly, Hardee's has no such compunction. Hardee's has gathered a fair amount of attention recently from advertisements with Padma Lakshmi having oral sex with a hamburger. Lakshmi is the perfect spokesperson: an authority on food (she rates food on television, so she must be an expert!) and a former model (the equivalent of a role model in modern America). Subtle, no. But if people are talking about it, that pretty much means the ad is working.

It all makes me wonder if there is any chance that some portion of America's obesity epidemic is related to an association of food with sex in our sex-obessed society? Horny equals hungry. How long until someone cuts to the chase and uses the slogan, "Got a boner? Grab a burger!"

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New York Governor David Paterson has proposed an 18% "obesity tax" on soft drink sales in New York state. The American Beverage Association objects ('natch), claiming that this tax will put the squeeze on the middle class. ("In an economy like this, the last thing we should do is raise taxes on hardworking families." -ameribev.org )

Let's say I consume a single 2-liter Coca-Cola every 2 days. That's 180 2-liters per year. (Don't judge me.) At $1.50 per 2-liter, that's $270 I spend on Coke per year. I already pay 7% sales tax for Coke, meaning that $270 of Coke costs me $288.90. If I were forced to pay an additional 18% tax on top of that, those 180 Cokes cost $337.50, a nearly $50 increase over the course of a year. (That's a lot more than I spend on comic books these days.)

Even in these hardscrabble times, that's not really a lot of money. And I drink a LOT of Coke. (Don't judge me.) How many families in New York consume as much soft drink per person as I do? Turns out that according to the National Soft Drink Association, the national average is somewhere near 105 2-liters per American per year. For the average New Yorker (at, say 1700 Broadway in Manhattan, the home of DC Comics) paying a sales tax of 8.375% on that same $1.50 Coke, they'll be paying $199.04 instead of $170.69, an annual difference of about $30.

Needless to say, ABA, I don't think this will break the back of New Yorkers. And the number is so low, that it is unlikely to really discourage that many obese middle class buyers. (Though I do think of my dad, who won't buy any 2-liter soft drink at a cost greater than $1.00, because "the price was never that high when I was a kid!")

But don't take this article as me supporting the government involving itself in my buying habits on the grounds that it knows better than I do what's good for me. I'm the guy that opposes seat belt laws, remember? If I want to get too fat from sipping sugary beverages to be thrown to my death from my car in an accident, I think that's my right!. And I'll let the ABA use that argument if they think it will help them.

Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll go to work saving my life by pouring another Coke.

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Perhaps you've heard this by now, but there's a death row inmate in Ohio who is suing the state to prevent his execution. The essence of his argument is that since all approved methods of execution would result in cruelty as a result of his obesity, he cannot be executed by the state.

You've got to admit that's pretty clever using the system against itself. "You can't kill me because I'm too fat, and you can't make me lose weight because then you'd just kill me." Check and Mate! What this really proves is that you can have your cake and eat it, too.

This fellow sounds like a true Kingpin of Crime at work to me.

Damn, that's one fat criminal.

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