Sweet and Deadly: How Coca-Cola Spreads Disinformation and Makes Us Sick

How Coca-Cola makes Americans sick--and makes sure we don’t know it.

If we knew that Coca-Cola was among the deadliest products in our diet, would we continue drinking it in such great quantities? The Coca-Cola Company has gone to extraordinary lengths to make sure we don’t find out, as this damning exposé makes patently clear. Marshaling the findings of extensive research and deep investigative reporting, Murray Carpenter describes in Sweet and Deadly the damage Coke does to America’s health--and the remarkable campaign of disinformation conducted by the company to keep consumers in the dark.

Sugar-sweetened beverages are the single item in the American diet that most contributes to the epidemic of chronic disease--in particular, obesity, type 2 diabetes, and cardiovascular disease--and Coca-Cola is America’s favorite sugar-sweetened beverage, by far. Carpenter details how the Coca-Cola corporation’s sophisticated shadow network has masterfully spread disinformation for decades to hide the health risks of its product from consumers--risks disproportionately borne by Black, brown, and low-income communities. Working from a playbook of obfuscation and pseudoscience that has worked well for other harmful products, from tobacco and trans fats to opioids, Coca-Cola has managed to maintain an aura of goodness and happiness. This eye-opening book finally and fully reveals the truth behind that aura.

Murray Carpenter is the author of Caffeinated: How Our Daily Habit Helps, Hurts, and Hooks Us. He has worked as a print and radio journalist in Maine for 25 years, and has reported for the New York Times, NPR, and the Washington Post.