Blindsided by my corporate overlords and PepsiCo

I scheduled my last post to go up later this morning, and I e-mailed in my notice. Even if all this works out, there’ll just be another idiotic management blunder in six months or a year, and I don’t intend to stick around for it.

*sigh*

hope this gets worked out. that was a mighty thorough post orac.

pity, I quite liked the odd P’max.

I neither condemn nor condone the fact that PepsiCo has a blog here. But I will note that the comments that have been approved there do straddle both sides of the fence. It kind of shows they are trying.

Eh! It is a big multi-billion dollar food enterprise that has to deal with farming issues (traditional versus integrated pest management), to product creation (okay, fat versus flavor?), to distribution (local versus centralized?). So they could have lots to say… or nothing.

My personal soda addiction is Diet Coke. I don’t eat chips, and I actually cook food without much in the way of short cuts (so I made “Hot Tamale Pie” today, I used canned tomato sauce, canned black olives and frozen corn, plus purchased ground beef… but I chopped onions and red peppers, plus oregano from my garden… the corn bread topping was not from a mix!).

I will have to see how it goes.

PS: Gopherus Agassizii, you would have garnered more respect for your comment if you had spelled PZ’s last name correctly. And you lost all credulity when the link on your name went absolutely no where. Next time, don’t be so idiotic.

“The writing can be entertaining here, but the idea that this blog has any real import is foolishness and nothing more.”
Agassizii, where did Orac say he has a major impact on the whole quackery debate? People will be more likely to take your criticism seriously if it actually criticizes what people say.

I find myself asking the question:- What would Jesus do?

Also, before everyone decides that no critical comments will be allowed, y’all MIGHT want to go read the current comments. They are neither nice, nor pretty, and honestly, most of them are pretty goddamned petty and juvenile, what with proclaiming the DOOOOOOOM of Scienceblogs and how they’re all taking their balls and going home. yeesh.

I had no idea so many twihard tweens read Scienceblogs.

Agassazii, while a blog may not be John Kennedy’s “go to the moon” speech, it is a chance for people like me to read expert views without vapid journalistic filtering. That’s pretty damn significant.

As for the Pepsi blog, it should have the Pepsi logo on it, or a disclaimer like the “Special Advertising Section” that adorns every issue of MIT Technology Review.

And I find myself asking the question – What Would the Revere’s Say?

nd considering the weird crash diets PAL has blogged about in the past, I simply cannot believe his ‘Im just concerned about health!’ line. *shrug* And then there was that intensely negative reaction I got from other SciBlings for suggesting we add fitness/diet/plant-science bloggers in the past, which PAL said nothing about (despite the fact he is ‘so concerned with patients health’, right?)…

What negative reaction? Not from me. I did, as I recall, express concern that it would be really, really hard to find food/diet/exercise blogs that weren’t laden with quackery and woo and wanted to make sure that physicians here had a chance to vet such blog candidates in order to avoid inviting food woo promoters into the Sb fold.

how industry research into chemistry, physiology, neuroscience, behavioral economics, medicine, and nutrition can…

Oh, they’re going to say, “can enhance marketing and drive profit,” right? That actually could be pretty cool… I’m interested in how they market their stuff, even if the effect on national health is disastrous. The science itself is amoral (not immoral, amoral), and it’s fascinating.

…can improve health outcomes around the world.

Oh. Really??? Pepsi is using “behavioral economics” to “improve health outcomes”?!? Um… I’ll believe that when I see it…

So why can I enjoy a multitude of Pepsi products and maintain a healthy lifestyle? Some Pepsi products are actually an integral part of my diet (I drink so much Gatorade and eat buckets of Quaker Oats). Apparently I am some kind of wizard? Member of the X-men that can actually enjoy ‘BAAAAD’ food in moderation, thats my super power?

Throwing Pepsi under the bus because they make *Pepsi* and blaming them for your unhealthy diet is intellectually lazy.

And judging the Pepsi Blog before they have published anything is unfair. It might turn out to be total crap, but there are a lot of blogs here that are crap. You know what I do with crappy blogs? Ignore them.

Or could much of Erv’s snark be because you, PZ and everyone are condemning the blog before it even starts?

The blog seemed to make it quite clear that its existence was all about promoting Pepsi’s RP projects. They’re going to be showing feel good informercials. Do we really need a PR flack to English translator for this sentence?

We have some exciting things planned for this project, including a video series that will begin with a look at the role the food industry plays in health issues, and how industry research into chemistry, physiology, neuroscience, behavioral economics, medicine, and nutrition can improve health outcomes around the world.

Translation: sit back and watch us show you that we’re such goody two shoes who really care about the environment and the people. This way, you can feel good when you down a 20 oz bottle of sugary carbonation.

Oh and yes, I drink pop (yeah, I’m also in the Midwest like Orac), and eat chips. But I also have the good sense to know when someone is trying to butter me up for a PR and branding effort and I know from my education and the lamentations of those who tried this kind of blogging work that it’s a DOA venture. All corporate blogging efforts end up as an excercise in bland, transparent PR.

Their blog has the look and feel of the “special sections” in some magazines, where I am tricked into reading it halfway before I realize I’m reading an advertisement… I was tricked once by a certain energy drink that lasts 5 hours. I will not be tricked again.
If I want to read about food science, I’ll go check out the Ag school’s newsletters.

@Adam_Y

Perhaps Orac was thinking strictly in the drug sense and forgot about medical devices. Or perhaps because they are most known for their kitchen and laundry appliances and other home electronics.

I gotta admit, it does seem very weird for Pepsi to have a blog here. Why do they need it? I always saw Science Blogs as a place for individual bloggers, or small blogger groups, rather than someplace for large corporations. I didn’t know about the GE or Shell blogs. I would venture to say there is precedent, and if ScienceBlogs wants to do it, fair enough. But I’m not sure we need industry to have a voice here. The people who work in industry, yes. The scientists who work in industry, especially. But the corporations themselves? They seem to have an awfully big voice already.

Mind you, I am a Pepsi fan. My morning beverage of choice is Mountain Dew Voltage. Yeah, it’s a weird shade of blue, but it tastes wonderful. And my favorite tortilla ships are Doritos. All in all, I’m more of a Pepsi fan than a Coke fan. (Heck, Coca-Cola is the absolute biggest trigger for my acid reflux. Gave it up in high school because of that. I’m not sure why Pepsi Cola doesn’t trigger it so much. Admittedly, I prefer Dr Pepper to any cola.)

I wouldn’t recommend leaving Science Blogs over this. You can do your part to keep up the quality of the rest of Science Blogs. In the meantime, I have little interest in visiting Pepsi’s blog.

@ERV

“So why can I enjoy a multitude of Pepsi products and maintain a healthy lifestyle?”

Um…you’re a graduate student? And probably genius-level intelligence with considerable ability to offset the immediate pleasures of channel surfing with an understanding of long-term consequences? Though the picture of your abs was quite nice, kudos to you.

If somehow they invent a way of making quick, convenient food that is healthy, of high nutritional density and does not promote obesity, someone is going to have make it and chances are it’s going to be Pepsi or a competitor. Much like a drug isn’t good or bad because of the company that makes it (it’s either effective or not, with a documented risk:benefit profile) the food will be neither good nor bad – it’ll all depend on its biochemistry and who is eating how much in proportion to the rest of their diet. However, that information, risk:benefit, effective/not, how much:rest of diet, that all comes out from research after the fact (assuming they can make mac & cheese with cauliflower that doesnt’ taste like ass). If this blog is about products it will almost certainly be prematurely hyping them beyond what is warranted. If it’s about the absolutely fascinating work of food preservation, nutritional enhancement, flavour improvements, making something convenient without making it taste horrible/incredibly fattening (i.e. basic science of food and nutrition) it could be interesting. Much basic work gets done in corporations, by smart people – most graduate students don’t go on to professorships – and these people are still potentially valuable bloggers. It depends on how they use it, as a genuine blog with independence from the company and the ability to criticize their own products, or as a blatant shill for how extreme their new flavour is. Time will tell, and one can always ignore it. I see advertising as a means of supporting the sites I like – if ScienceBlogs gets money for it and can keep publishing ScienceBlogs, great! If it’s worth reading, I’ll read it. And if it’s not, I’ll ignore it and happily freeload off of its presence.

Orac– Yet they understand that this PepsiCo corporate blog crosses a line when it comes to advertising… Would your attitude be the same if it were a pharmaceutical company doing this?
Yes. Ive gotten to hear numerous scientists who have invented vaccines speak. Im sure it would be just as interesting to read about it on a blog sponsored by their respective companies.

I would also think it was neat to read about the history/science of beer on a blog sponsored by a beer company. Or the history/science of video games from developers at Nintendo.

Mark Chu-Carroll could very well end up leaving Sb over this. Blake Stacey (who is a scientist but not a physician) appears already to have left.
Two grown adults who are capable of making their own decisions and life choices. But I find theatrics as impressive as scapegoating on this issue.

one of my posts from yesterday…

compared to the normal woo you reference Orac, this isn’t all that bad. He has a point about lifestyle being a significant concern in health. I have three problems with this. You highlighted the false dichotomy as well as actually finding successful ways to get people to make lifestyle changes. The other thing that bothers me is that he doesn’t even give a hint about what the average Jojo can do to make those changes. Instead, he provides his web address which can direct you on how to buy his books, how to contact him for speaking engagements, how you can buy his DVDs (In Spanish too!) and how you can sign up for a weight loss program after you provide your personal information. Just who’s welfare is he looking out for here?

Well…um…never mind?

It was bad enough when Pepsi took over the vending machines at work and forced me to walk to another building to get my damned Diet Coke, but now they are tainting Science bloggers with the appearance of conflicts of interest too. It’s nice that they disclose that it’s Pepsico, but I really think there needs to be a special advertising tag at the top of the blog.

Two grown adults who are capable of making their own decisions and life choices. But I find theatrics as impressive as scapegoating on this issue.

And I find dismissing such concerns as “theatrics” or “scapegoating” and referring to people who express such concerns as “arrogant idiots” and “snooty assholes who think that they look more educated or forward-thinking or refined because “they don’t drink ‘soda’ or eat Doritos” to be even less impressive than anything I’ve read thus far on this issue, quite frankly.

Orac, I understand exactly why this is so disturbing. While not in the same league, this feels a bit like Nature deciding to run ads disguised as scientific articles. Thw fact that ScienceBlogs is willing to put a straight advertising blog in their line-up taints the real science blogs by association, which can have lasting repercussions for the scientists that write here.

It also casts a heavy pall of suspicion on the motives of SciBlogs themselves – are they really interested promoting scientific inquiry?

Reputations can be permanently soiled by questionable associations, and I feel for you. Personally, I’d get out if SEED cannot be convinced that a PR blog masquerading as science will make SB as a whole seem less trustworthy.

@ERV

You appear to be venturing awfully close to concern troll territory. Go back and read Orac’s post and you will see that, while he has voiced reservations about what they may produce, he is taking, to quote, “a wait and see approach”.

Myself, their description of what the blog will be sounds uncomfortably similar to those full-page newspaper ads for Amish furniture dressed up to look like news articles.

Don’t have much to comment on the issue here, much has been said already. But if you leave here, I hope you keep blogging elsewhere and let us know where you go.

I’ll wait and see myself and take a close look at the first few posts. They may actually find it a convenient venue to try to provide some reasonable, useful and accurate information on diet and nutrition to food consumers.

But, as Blake Stacey said, it does breach the firewall between editorial and advertising. Or, as Orac put it, it blurs the line between advertising and content.

I get irritated enough by infomercials running at 3:00 in the morning. I would hate to turn on the tv at 8:00 in the evening to watch one of my current favorite shows or perhaps even get some useful content on one of the better PBS shows and get fed an infomercial instead.

Guilt by association is a logical fallacy, but it’s also part of how humans work. Guilt by association, and innocence by association: you’re more likely to trust someone introduced to you by a friend than someone who just walks up to you in a bar or on the bus. Pepsico wants to be here because Science Blogs has a good reputation. If someone told you that I was a friend of Osama bin Laden (I am not, and have never to my knowledge met the man) you would likely take my arguments less seriously, because you’d wonder about my motivations. And some of the bloggers here are already spending time explaining that no, they are not tools of some conspiracy.

In my perception, Science Blogs giving PepsiCo a blog does not validate PepsiCo, it taints Science Blogs.

I add that Orac is not just preaching to the converted. His posts about the anti-vaccination movement have helped some on-the-fence parents as well as parents like me who let the propaganda get to them. His input has been invaluable.

Vicki,

That humans “work” this way, does not mean we embrace unreason. Also, declaring how I would act is bad form, it is more appropriate to ask how I would act.

If you said you knew Osama Bin Laden, my first thought would be that you were mad, but if you provided convincing evidence, I would not dismiss anything you said out of hand without it being unreasonable to do so. Here is probably what I would do though:

1) I would suspect you of having ties to a known terrorist, as you have just declared them.
2) I would watch you more suspiciously in light of this evidence. Are you placing brief cases around in places they shouldn’t be? If you say you forgot it, I’d be less likely to believe you and call the authorities. Are you talking about making a big move, but packing lightly? I would probably not believe you, and call the authorities.

I would do these as these are RELEVANT conclusions/actions to make when someone declares they are associated with terrorists.

I wouldn’t:

1) Dismiss your claim that you ate a jelly donut this morning.
2) Dismiss your claim that sunscreen helps prevent sunburn.
3) Dismiss your claim that you flew around in an intergalactic spaceship, because of your terrorist ties.

I wouldn’t do the above because these are not relevant, as far as we know, to terrorism. Maybe people with ties to terrorists don’t eat jelly donuts, but I have never seen anything to convince me of this. 🙂

Pepsi creates food? Actual food, like my great-grandparents would recognize as food?

If it needs R&D, it’s probably not food as such.

If you have a problem with ScienceBlogs, you need to leave. I’m not trying to be nasty or snarky. I’m just stating the obvious that shutting down this blog is really not a big deal.

Pepsi’s blog is clearly going to be an attempt to justify the garbage their machines churn out. If that is some kind of threat to your reputation, then move on. Again, this blog is entertainment for you and the people who come here. It might have its stage on a scientific foundation, but it is still primarily a show.

Junk food + sedentary habits + environmental pollutant exposure = major public health meltdown = budget busting public medical expenses

You have the perfect opportunity to work on a truly devastating bit of ‘woo’, the fast food industry.

They’re happily exporting addictive foods to the Third World, the HaveNots.

It used to be true that the Haves, with their Improved Diets and Advanced Medicine could easily afford to tackle infectious disease in impoverished Developing countries.

First, the Industrialized Nations introduced chemically managed farming, and then they threw in medical interventions, including drugs and vaccines, to ‘fight’ the number one controller of aggressively population growth.

What that got us was the shortest estimated doubling time in all of history: less than 30 years, almost all of that growth occurring in the poorest regions, Africa and Asia.

That got us a vast number of HaveNots who WANT more – exactly what is desired if you have the Have Nations on long-overdue credit controls – you need to expand your consumer base.

In the 1980s, the Have Nation global industrial giants decided that labor pools should be moved closer to cheap raw natural resources, and so the majority of the manufacturing base that had created Have Nation wealth moved overseas. The side-effect was to damage the tax bases of the Haves, a pattern that would manifest as mid-20th century population boom age cohorts began to retire. They too feel very owed. Unfortunately, they are also creating public debt through irresponsible personal habits – including food addiction.

That has made the public health service industry boom, and transferred a lot of wealth internally.

Thus, in the past twenty years, the balance of economic power and growing disposable income wealth has shifted to the HaveNots.

After the most recent economic meltdown, its tacitly clear: the Haves can no longer afford to feed, cloth and medically treat the HaveNots when Things Go Bad.

You can see what is happening here: the tobacco and fast-food industries see $$$$$ in the growing disposable income in HaveNot nations.

You have pounded out week after week of woo-bashing on vaccine/autism/alternative medicine.

There is a much better target to be had.

Mkandefer–

That was a generic “you,” a description of how most people react. I apologize for the confusion.

That said, consider things like “Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Communist Party?” Not a question about actual harmful activities (espionage, sabotage) nor about beliefs, but a form of guilt by association. No, association with Pepsico is not likely to tarnish anyone’s reputation to that degree, but the mechanism is similar.

This is also one of the methods con artists use. For example, they will seek out and defraud people who will see them as “one of us”: the recent immigrant conning other members of the immigrant community, or the member of Religion A approaching people after services and getting them to invest in a ponzi scheme.

I’m with you Orac – my degrees are in Food Science, and I was trained to work in the food industry. I’m a member of IFT. Thus, I’m about as sympathetic to the industry as anyone currently working on the front lines of health and fitness (I’m a recreational bodybuilder and consumer advocate) could be. Nonetheless, when I stumbled across the “Food Frontiers” blog the other day, I too, found the idea creepy.

Don’t get me wrong – like it or not, Pepsi et. al. will be part of the solution to the obesity crisis, if a solution is to be found at all. And it’s not as if you can’t get solid information from corporate sources. Nonetheless, the way in which they present health info can be positively Orwellian. For example, you can learn all about how Snickers and Starburst Fruit Chews can fit into your “healthy lifestyle” from the Mars Corporation ( http://www.marshealthyliving.com/whats-inside ); and how salt is necessary to life from Cargill ( http://salt101.com/#/intro ). However true these propositions are, it is also true that most people are not nearly active enough to afford near-empty calories of candy into their “healthy lifestyles” on a regular basis. Likewise, most do NOT need Alton Brown’s encouragement to add more salt to diets that are already replete with the stuff.

In short, the “creep” factor comes from the level of distrust – there’s typically an agenda behind whatever facts you’re given by your friendly neighborhood mega-corporation. And – as Orac points out – Pepsi doesn’t need Scienceblogs to get its message out… but the fact that its here anyway adds to feeling that there’s no place that’s even remotely free from corporate voices.

And – as Orac points out – Pepsi doesn’t need Scienceblogs to get its message out… but the fact that its here anyway adds to feeling that there’s no place that’s even remotely free from corporate voices.

Their intent may be twofold here: get their voice shoehorned into a forum of their critics; and gradually erode the credibility of this forum to the point where it is no longer seen as a go-to source for realiable information that is contrary to their propaganda. The Republicans did the same things to the entire MSM, and now Pepsi are adapting the same winning strategy for themselves.

I respectfully suggest that leaving is not the answer — that would only leave the field to the enemy.

Sometimes that’s the most (or only) effective action you have. IMHO the “resignation in protest” is not nearly common enough in public life; I can only recall a couple of instances in the last 40 years aside from the Saturday Night Massacre. I suspect we can all think of several times in recent years when it should have happened, and probably did behind scenes but was whitewashed for public consumption.

It comes down to “if you can’t be part of the solution, you can at least refuse to be part of the problem.” Not quite as attention-getting as seppuku on the steps of the Capital, but still effective.

In fact, it would take a Hell of a lot to stop me from voting in a later election for someone who had resigned in protest. Putting principle ahead of career or loyalty is that rare these days, and despite cynical abuse of the word by the Right, character really does count.

I will note that once upon a time, I quit a job (without blowing the whistle, although I should have) with dependent kids because I couldn’t live with being part of what they were doing. One of my more treasured recollections of someone dear to me was her “and this is why I’m out of here” letter of resignation from a job despite having nowhere else lined up.

So, yeah, it’s more than drama. I won’t advise anyone one way or the other, but I’ll damned well defend the honor of the “resignation in protest” with hearty wishes it were more common and less often appropriate.

Vicki,

I think you acknowledge my point. We ask such questions of people, like party affiliation, because we can make likely inferences based on them. Certain party affiliations carry with them certain beliefs, and certain associations cause conflicts of interest. However, many associations do not. We have to first establish the association is relevant to what we are concluding. I was not arguing that associations NEVER produce correct inferences.

To merely state that Pepsico is associated with Science Blogs does in no way mean all Science Bloggers now are suspect as having conflicts of interest. To make such as statement is a logical fallacy. It would be like making the statement that Dr. Gorski from science based medicine has a conflict of interest because he is associated with a university that receives funding from a pharmaceutical company, despite that fact that Dr. Gorski’s research is not directly funded by the pharmaceutical company. To argue in this manner is unreasonable. To argue that people now can reasonably conclude all science bloggers have conflicts of interest because a handful of them have known conflicts of interest is also unreasonable.

———– MESSAGE BEGINS

Minion Blue (@9),

Toasted Merlot, of course. Sorry about the instructions, they try to make them comprehensible to a plethora of species, meaning that nobody can understand them at all. Did they leave out that little plastic bag of iso-thermocapacitors? They always do that. Ring Cindy if there are any problems and she’ll send a tech down.

And I’m certain that Lady Astra would be most gratified that you found the tentacle warmers to your liking. I’d let her know, but she’s heavy with hatchlings (again) and has a tendency to bite when disturbed. On an ironic note, I must report that she does crave New Nacho Cha-Cha Doritos™ and Blue Mega-Ultra Dew™ upon waking. At least until her blood gets up to room temperature.

I fear it’s going to be a long breeding cycle . . .

Lord Draconis Zeneca, VC, iH7L
PharmaCOM Orbital HQ
0010101101001

MESSAGE ENDS ———————

I, for one, will be withholding my judgment pending the actual content of the blog. I will say that when I first learned of this, I made the puckered, squinty, sideward-glance facial reaction that hallmarks my involuntary response to an internal bullshit-detector silent alarm…

However, I want to see what they have to say. First, industry R&D–whether that industry is pharma, energy, food, electronics, or others–is a major force in scientific progress. The work performed by these R&D groups is often held close to the vest, generally a mystery to even those non-industry scientists working in the same fields, until the research has manifest itself into tangible products or outlived its useful shelf life.

Industry R&D is a legitimate career path for many young scientists and engineers. I want a glimpse into the mechanisms of (and machinations behind) the development of products and their components as well as the post-marketing evaluations and adjustments. I think it’s likely we won’t get to see much (hard to imagine PepsiCo marketing allowing many closeted skeletons to be revealed nor valuable industry practices to be divulged), but it seems a largely untapped area for discussion and evaluation in a science setting. The history of how various products went from lab bench to grocery aisle could be enlightening and entertaining.

Best-case scenario: The new blog provides a useful, insightful look at the development, manufacture, and distribution of food-based products and the science and technologies utilized. They are open to criticisms of their methods and respond to critiques with science-based replies. (Super-best-case scenario: open forum criticism leads to actual differences in PepsiCo product development/marketing/distribution for the generalized benefit of everyone and PepsiCo leads the market in a new wave of interactive consumable product development.)

Worst-case scenario: The blog is purely marketing, providing little insight and mostly PR fluff. Critiques will be ignored (or moderated out of existence) and content will be almost entirely advertising videos or “debunking claims about PepsiCo product X” articles replete with dubious scientific claims.

Likely scenario: We’ll see a few glimpses into how product development occurred; we’ll get some apologetics about how their products aren’t really the villain in the obesity wars. Mostly, we’ll get something that doesn’t fit well with the current SciBlogs culture and (following a few months of general dissatisfaction by the other content creators) the blog will be shut down before September.

If anything considerably short of the best-case scenario occurs, I’d rather the bloggers who plan to, or are considering, leaving to do this instead: tear every questionable scientific claim apart the way you would if it was Age of Autism, Ken Ham, David Irving, Deepak Chopra, the Perth Group, Focus on the Family, Jenny McCarthy, David Icke, the Discovery Institute, Peter Duesberg, Bill Donohue, Dean Radin, Judy Mikovits, or any damn homeopath you can think of.

This, I think, would produce the best outcome likely possible: heightened critical evaluation (from those who could be ‘stained’ by a perceived COI). We’ll find out quickly whether the content of that blog can live up to the standards currently set by the others published here; if it cannot, it should become apparent in short order to the management of Seed Media Group that they are undermining their own revenue stream by undermining their credibility.

@ Chris. I will spell Myers’ name correctly in the future and will be less of an idiot if you will please look up the word “credulity” and use it in a less ironic manner.

Please give Pepsico a break. They are only here to talk science and problem solving. What’s a little “thought leading” going to hurt? Surely no one on here will be influenced and prescribe diet pepsi. I mean they are going to eat potato chips anyway aren’t they? Might as well be Frito Lay, the “scientific potato chip”. Engineered specifically for human health.

Better living through chemistry, right?

ERV writes:

So why can I enjoy a multitude of Pepsi products and maintain a healthy lifestyle? Some Pepsi products are actually an integral part of my diet (I drink so much Gatorade and eat buckets of Quaker Oats).

Not sure whether you were making the point that you maintain a “healthy lifestyle” regardless of what you eat, or that Gatorade and Quaker Oats are an integral part of a healthy lifestyle, but…

– If the former, surely the goodness or lack of same of one’s diet is a factor in determining whether one’s lifestyle is in fact healthy, yes?

– If the latter, then (1) In the current heat wave here in the Northeast, public health officials are asking people to dilute Gatorade by 50% with water due to Gatorade’s salt content; and (2) I doubt you or anyone else can eat “buckets” of oatmeal, filling as it is, but if you actually do, it’s 150 calories per 1/4 cup (various references on Quaker’s web site use 1/2 cup, various others use 1/4 cup – it’s 40 grams in both cases, which I’d estimate at closer to 1/4 cup). That’s 600 calories per cup. If you can manage to eat that much, it’s 3 Hershey bars’ worth. While that isn’t nearly the worst you can do with 600 calories, obviously anything in excess is going to either fatten you up or displace calories that could otherwise be part of a more balanced diet.

Is the foregoing way more pedantic than your comment merits? Yep. But can’t you just see some handsome sweaty lady proclaiming “I drink buckets of Gatorade as part of my healthy lifestyle!”? Seems like it might fit right in with Food Frontiers as an ad or a post (if there’s a difference).

If the latter, then (1) In the current heat wave here in the Northeast, public health officials are asking people to dilute Gatorade by 50% with water due to Gatorade’s salt content;

I’m calling bullshit. The last thing you want to do is start limiting your salt intake in this weather namely because you will end up killing yourself.

I think my head just exploded.

It was a joke. I’m the same Adam_Y that posted in that blog. Though ironically it did take me a while to realize why their writing style was so similar.

JohnV said:
OleanderTea would your great grand parents recognize your computer or your car or your internet connection? Would they recognize anything in a modern hospital?

If some asinine “eastern medicine” person came here and said “chinese medicine is great because they’ve been doing it for 10,000 years its obviously the best because its been around longer than western medicine” they’d be mocked for having such a viewpoint.

Please don’t act like a woo practitioner.

Oh, FFS. Don’t be a pedantic asshat.

My point is this: processed food, such as that created by PepsiCo, is crap. It is widely acknowledged — by actual medical doctors — that the best way to eat is to eat real food, unprocessed, like your great-grandparents would have recognized. Not dehydrated, from a box, and pumped full of chemicals, like pepsico “creates”. No matter how you cut it, Doritos ain’t food.

@85

In addition to JohnV’s request for citations, I would ask what is the difference between the processing of food done by Mehmood Khan and that done by Wylie Dufresne? Both use dehydration, boxes and chemical additives.

To pile on about processed food: some food is not usable until it is processed. That includes cooking blue corn in a lime solution (brings out more protein), or processing the cyanide out of cassava root (also known as tapioca), shelling and cooking cashew nuts to remove the poison ivy like poison, and on and on (and my Norsk grandparent’s fave: treating fish with lye to create lutefisk!).

Oh, and all cheeses are “processed” (I’ve made some at home by putting a bit of vinegar, another processed food, in milk and cooking at a very low heat… it was very nice, and added to ricotta made a very good lasagna!).

@Jud 79,

I just checked the box on my shelf and 1/2 cup of plain Quaker oatmeal (40 g) has 150 calories. How much sugar and butter do you like to add to it? (I actually like a little.) But, the raisin bran I ate this morning had 40% more calories and 16 times as much sugar!

Which leads us into confounding factors like adding sugar to the raisins because raisins without sugar soften the bran flakes.

The changes in the American diet over the last 50 years have been influenced by a host of confounding factors which make blaming the problem solely or mostly one source (whether it’s the producers of prepackaged drinks and snacks like Pepsi or the introduction of high fructose corn syrup in foods instead of cane or beet sugar or regular corn syrup as someone did on Nightline the other night) extremely simplistic.

Here’s my short list of a few:
— Emphasizing food safety and quality leads to replacing an open barrel of apples in the store with prepackaged chips and other snacks that have been through a controlled sanitization and preparation process including adding plenty of preservatives like salt and sealed packaging to extend shelf life.

— A massive nation wide dietary “experiment” was started about 30 years ago to replace fats, especially saturated fats, in the diet with sugars, starches and unsaturated fats. This let manufacturers advertise them as “light” and claim that they are “good for you”.

— Pressure on small restaurants to compete with large, better known chain restaurants and on the chains to compete with each other leads to adding a little food to portion sizes, which doesn’t cost much, to encourage customers to spend more. Pepsi has contributed to this by introducing larger packaging like the ubiquitous 2 liter bottle, but they are not the only culprits. Thus, a hamburger has gone from a small patty (perhaps 3 ounces) to a 1/4 pounder to a 1/3 pounder and even half and full pound burgers.

When I went on a major diet several years ago, I quickly discovered that healthy portion sizes were a lot smaller than I was used to eating. Also, it was harder to control and monitor the input when I ate out.

All that being said, I still don’t like infomercials.

In Poland, where I hail from, there’s that guy who makes great ice cream, as his father and grandfather did. When he was pressed into a corner by big corporate brands, he sold his brand for a hefty sum, built an ice cream factory, took his time to train the staff (two years) and launched a new brand that captured a respectable part of the market just by being honest, pure and traditional. He makes his ice-cream out of milk, cream, sugar, natural vanilla, fruits, chocolate, coffee and so on. No artificial flavours or some such bullshit. His name is Grycan and if you ever visit Poland, do try any of his creations, for they are good.
You can probably infer from the above that he is my hero among the businessfolk.
If he paid SB to have his own blog I’d react with the same outrage as I did to PepsiCo.
I’m purging the SB from my RSS feed, although I’ll be visiting from time to time to see if things have changed. I encourage all SB bloggers to find another platform for the time being.

hat_eater, are those fresh vanilla beans straight from the orchid, or is the vanilla made from cured pods, which takes several months, and have they been made into an extract using alcohol?

Is the chocolate straight from the cacao bean? Or has it gone through the curing and fermenting process that brings out the flavors. Again, a process that takes lots of time.

Are the coffee beans raw and still red? Or have they been fermented, dried and roasted?

I don’t see how anyone can call these three natural products “unprocessed.”

knotfreak, my long comment did not go through, and Orac is in Vegas. But the short version is that you seem to feel the term “processed” only refers to foods you think are unhealthy or over-corporate. It doesn’t work that way.

Humans have been processing food for thousands of years. It is done both to make the food edible (cassava), and to preserve it for later (like the freeze dried potatoes done in the Andes mountains by the Inca).

It is also not quite true that “processed” by your definition is unhealthy. My sister spent the 1960s growing up being about the only person she knew was severely lactose intolerant. No milk, cheese, and ice cream for her! These days she has a more expanded choice due to soy substitutes. I bet the cream cheese substitute made with tofu, which is actually quite nice, is much much healthier than any hand made artisan soft cheese.

The issue is not the type of food sold by Pepsi, but the fact that they are a commercial outfit that may post advertisements instead of blog articles.

Brother Orac, as an exercise physiologist I am also worried about the content of the Pepsi blog. I wrote about soft drinks several months ago when the American Heart Association released their new guildines on dietary sugar. Still, I am intrigued by the potential content of this blog and think it might be an opportunity for us to dissect the practices of this industry giant out in the open.

I still haven’t worked out the personal conflict of interest yet and I will be interested to see how my Sciblings that I respect and admire deal with it.

@97

Wow! Your response seems to be completely lacking in citations as requested by Chris and totaly non-responsive to my question. You appear to have merely re-asserted your earlier claim. Perhaps that doesnt necessarily make you a woo-meister, but its damn similar to the way woo-meisters respond to questions.

“why does everyone presume it’s going to be chock full of pro-Pepsi, pro-Doritos articles?”

Why are they on Scienceblogs at all? The entire premise is absurd. They sell sugar water. Shit can I get a blog too? If not why not? I am equally as unqualified to talk about science as Pepsi.

“It’s really just rank elitism.”

Yes you throw that word around like it is a bad thing. Science isn’t a democracy. Corporate shills shouldn’t in any sane world get equal billing with scientists on a Science blog. Sorry you feel otherwise.

Not so much condemning the blog itself. Who knows? It might be a perfectly pleasant read, and I already wrote above that I have nothing personal against PepsiCo. It’s the concept of the blog and her blithe dismissal of the idea that there might be a real concern and a real conflict of interest that could undermine the credibility of ScienceBlogs in general and bloggers who concern themselves with medicine in particular.

Try reading what I actually wrote next time, rather than what you want me to have written or think I wrote.

Bullshit. that’s the word to describe that.

Bull.

Shit.

bullshit.

You bitch about the “blithe dismissal of the concern that there could be a conflict” and then bitch that I should “Try reading what I actually wrote next time, rather than what you want me to have written or think I wrote.” and yet, you decided based on me saying that maybe, just maybe a *SCIENTIST* or a GROUP of *SCIENTISTS* should, perhaps, maybe, just maybe, rather than going into some kind of fucking twihard frenzy over what MAY happen, what COULD happen, wait for a few, and see what happens.

Gather evidence.

Act upon actual real data.

I know that’s a pretty radical idea, you know, waiting to see what will happen, then acting upon that, but what the fuck, beats taking your ball and going home as a reaction, right?

Or not, fuck, maybe it’s y’all’s turn to have your little lack-of-evidence-based twihard fit.

Oh, and what makes me call it a twihard fit?

There’s a problem brewing and ScienceBlogs, a disturbance in the Force, if you will, and it’s a doozy. It’s a darkness that’s distubed several of my fellow ScienceBloggers to the point where I fear that some of them may leave. Indeed, it’s a spectacularly tin-eared and idiotic decision on the part of management that is leading me to start to wonder about my continued relationship with ScienceBlogs.

IIITSSS A DAAAAAAARKNESSSS

Yeah, that’s some calm, rational, mature reaction to something that hasn’t happened yet.

or this shit:

I would answer that it does not, nor does ScienceBlogs require such material to provide interesting, educational, and entertaining blogging for its readers.

How the fuck do you know what everyone wants? I may not always agree with what Pepsi does with the work of its scientists, but I find the process of creating “sugar water” and the like to be pretty damned fascinating, just as I find the science showing why consuming many Pepsi products is bad for you in anything but small amounts is pretty damned fascinating.

What, only science content that you and a few bloggers approve of is “acceptable” for the “purity” of Scienceblogs? Do you get a nosebleed on that high horse?

Then of course there’s the requisite dose of goodolddayism for a few paragraphs. More bullshit. you sound like my dad trying to convince me the Depression was a goddamned paradise.

but then the capper, the fucking Capper:

For the moment I’m willing to take a wait and see approach. I’m also going to be paying close attention to this new interloper. Just because it’s Seed-supported won’t inoculate it from a heapin’ helpin’ of not-so-Respectful Insolence. What happens next will also guide what would seem to be a mandatory reevaluation of my relationship with Seed and ScienceBlogs. Seed and ScienceBlogs have built up a lot of good will with me; so I’m inclined for the moment to give them the benefit of the doubt, although I remain disturbed that this project wasn’t announced to us before it caught us by surprise. My font of good will isn’t bottomless, however. Like Mike Dunford and Jason Goldman, I’m not reacting in a knee-jerk fashion to the mere concept of a corporate blog. After all, I didn’t react one way or the other to the two or three such blogs that preceded the PepsiCo blog. Nor am I necessarily planning to leave ScienceBlogs just over the concept of a blog like PepsiCo’s blog, but I am going to be watching it very carefully.

If this is your idea of a “wait and see” post, what the HELL do you call reacting instead of responding? setting the servers on fire?

got news for you sparky. this post, and all the other tween crying going on, before you have any fucking proof, or data?

That’s a knee-jerk reaction. it may in fact be the *definition* of a knee-jerk reaction. you’re all bemoaning the decay of sb, and pining for the good old days, and already writing the eulogy for sb, and all the rest, and you’ve not one bit of any valid reason to do so.

The least you could do, *as a scientist* is to give them the chance to hang themselves, or not, and then respond based on facts.

But no, y’all aren’t going to do that, and instead, you’re bagging on Erv for calling you out on your crap.

Want some cheese with that whine?

Dave, I did not request citations. That was JohnV.

I am surprised at the lack of understanding many people have in what goes into making food. Also, that it seems to this assumption that if it is made in a big factory it is automatically bad. Just ask anyone who cannot digest certain foods about the range of choices they had now versus twenty years ago.

What I asked is if there would be the same conversation if it were another more politically correct company or two.

So I guess that answers my question on whether knotfreak would react the same if Seed had an advertising blog for Bob’s Red Mill. He would not care one bit. It all about whether the company passes some political correctness bar.

I really hope knotfreak that your rolled oats are not from Quaker Oats. And I am pretty confident that you have never eaten grits.

The Appetite for Profit is a nice blog and deals with Pepsi’s inroads into the areas of legitimate science and nutrition professionally. It is nice to read someone who sticks to an intelligent discussion of the matter and does not throw a fit and threaten to take her toys home if someone lets that fat bitch Ashley into the tree house. (Orac and others should take note.)

Anyone waiting on the good folks at Pepsi to produce some good science on nutrition is probably also willing to wait on the scientists at The Discovery Institute to produce some quality research on evolution. Tigers and stripes, boys and girls.

re: Chris
Please note it was you that used the word “unprocessed”, not me. What I meant, and I feel silly having to explain that, is that even if the most ethical company in the world bought their own blog on SB, I’d react with equal outrage. Keyword being “company”, “bought” and “blog”.
While I may concede that this is perhaps technically a lie (me being human and outrage being a feeling hard to stir up on reason alone), I sincerely hope that at least my conscious reaction would be the same; that is, purging ScienceBlogs from my RSS feed.

Chris,

My apologies, you are right, it was JohnV who asked for citations. That said, OleanderTea still didnt come up with any. And I agree with you re the assumption that if its made in a big factory, its automatically bad. That was the point of my question regarding what Pepsico does, in the person of Mehmood Khan, who will be a part of the blog and what Wylie Dufresne, a leader in molecular gastronomy, does. Is it because Wylie calls his workspace a kitchen, while Mehmood calls his a lab?

@Jud 116,

Thanks for the reply.

I happen to have a scale that reads in g, oz, lb, and kg although I don’t have any standard weights to calibrate it with. However, as we used to say in the Air Force, it’s close enough for government work. I.e., it’s not accurate enough to do real science, which most of us had done a little of in earning our Master’s Degree’s, but good enough to be useful for the purpose we needed it for.

I measured 1/2 cup in a vinyl measuring cup. Irregular objects like dog food and Quaker oats are harder to measure exactly than sugar or water, but I weighed it at 44 g. My box says 1/2 cup should be 40 g, so that is probably within the acceptable error bounds. In fact, if you round it off to one significant digit, it is 40 g.

The next time I get to a grocery store, I’ll have to look and see if I can find some cereal that is 1/4 cup for 40 g. That sounds more like Grape-Nuts in density.

For comparison, I checked Cream of Wheat which lists a serving of 3 Tbsp or 33 g for 120 calories. It also has less fiber and protein than oatmeal, which in my pedantically scientific mindset worldview makes it less nutritious than oatmeal.

Enough pedantry, on to pleasantry.

Wow! All of the infighting is interesting. Arguing over terms and definitions? Why wouldn’t you just define your terms? But then you wouldn’t to get be argumentative just to be argumentative.

Pepsi scientist needs to put out a good vaccine article to unite the perceived objectivity of scienceblogs. They should have strategically made public alliances with the Bill Gates Foundation and announced a massive vaccine campaign fund before this announcement.

If anything Pepsi is guilty of not knowing its audience. Scienceblogs is just a business. Why not take Pepsi’s money?

The main reason the bloggers are so mad is because aligning oneself up with a large corporation publicly is indefensible to their ideals. When your schtick is self-perceived objectivity this is huge blow to credibility.

No doubt, there are alternatives. I know some marathoners who like to eat pretzels and drink water. Personally, I don’t care for sports drinks, but I will put up with them because they are a convenient way to get the calories and electrolytes I need during a long run.

I am not saying that Gatorade (BTW not my choice of sports drink) is wonderful, or even necessary, but that diluting it could be dangerous if it is relied on for athletic hydration (especially for those exercising at high intensity in heat for longer than an hour).

So very sorry for trying to be diplomatic. I truly enjoyed your smug sarcasm but it would be better to have a convincing argument to back it up.

The idea that diluted Gatorade is a “real” threat to health is foolishness. It is quite clear that this place is filled with fat people who read too many stories at the Daily Mail and have no idea about what endurance athletics is about.

Folks here might want to consider such incredibly obvious factors such as the differences in hydration needs between a 320 lbs. offensive lineman sitting in the sidelines during practice on a cold day versus a 105 lbs. woman trying to win the LA Marathon on a hot day and looking for something to drink at mile 23. Factors such as perspiration rates and nutritional practices in the days leading up to the exercise event are also quite important, but are clearly beyond this group.

I do not personally have much of a problem with Gatorade diluted or otherwise. It’s basically sugar water with some minerals tossed in. Those can be nice during 20 mile run but water can do the trick too. Making blanket statements about how diluted Gatorade is a “real” threat and “could be dangerous” is dumb, just plain dumb.

Anyone who runs into a problem because he or she drank diluted Gatorade during a one hour workout should not be working out for an hour. It’s that simple.

“The idea that diluted Gatorade is a “real” threat to health is foolishness. It is quite clear that this place is filled with fat people who read too many stories at the Daily Mail and have no idea about what endurance athletics is about.”

Trekkies and sci-fi experts speaking from authority on exercise and performance. LOL. Maybe they’ve read about these extreme cases of hyponatremia or they’ve read an exercise physiology text. I just don’t see all of these sci-fi experts having any practical experience in this area. But they can talk about theory with the storytellers.

Transfer of authority. It happens a lot.

So after all this time there’s still no support for OleanderTea’s food woo (but some goal post shifting). Yet only a couple of us called him on it. That’s depressing, given the typical anti-woo nature of the readership of respectful insolence.

The idea that diluted Gatorade is a “real” threat to health is foolishness. It is quite clear that this place is filled with fat people who read too many stories at the Daily Mail and have no idea about what endurance athletics is about.

What, exactly is your expertise on this subject?

I happen to be an endurance athlete, asshole. I am no expert, but I do know what happens when one loses too much sodium from sweat and only replaces the loss with water (been there).

The problem is that athletes have been told to over-hydrate (“if your thirsty your already dehydrated”). Sports drinks don’t contain enough sodium to replace that lost from a hard effort over a long period, but they replace some, all water does is dilute sodium more. It is not perfect, but it is what it is. I make my own, and only drink commercial when I am participating in a race.

You are correct in saying that when a person who is not working out for a long period of time sports drinks are simply soft-drinks. More or less everything else you said it meant to cause argument, especially since the points you argued against are not points I made.

“Enough of this distraction, let’s all to get back to work subduing the pharmaphobic wackaloons at AoA and enslaving the planet for your reptilian overlords.

Enduringly yours,

Lord Draconis Zeneca, VC, iH7L
PharmaCOM Orbital HQ”

Is there any hope that AoA would deduce that if Seed Media is pimping themselves out to Pepsi that the BigPharma $$$ must not be appearing to influence Orac? I mean, soda sales are chump change compared to Pharma sales.

Mind you, it’s hard to find a currency bureau to change the gold drakklons from Lord Draconic Zeneca.

Dude, grow a spine.

Check out page 3.14 and Adam Bly.(BTW, thanks, Lord D.)

Kristen:

But don’t sit there expressing shock when I call you an asshole.

Yeah, I noticed he went nuts over an honest late night typo. I couldn’t figure out what put a bee under his bonnet when I said he lost “credibility”… but I made a type. He went ballistic over one word (I guess he just thought he had to fill in the website box, possibly because there is no indication that it is optional). Because of his reaction he has even less credibility.

k, thanks for that. It kind of proves Brian Dunning’s statement at Organic vs. Conventional Agriculture:

Nearly 100% of organic food in supermarkets comes from a producer owned by one of the major food companies that also sells regular food. Don’t think for a minute that any well-managed food company has not already been on this bandwagon since it started rolling.

Still, without knowing the corporate pedigree some would try to argue that those supposedly politically correct companies are more welcome than PepsiCo. Unless one plans on growing and processing their own food (like this), they are going to have to buy stuff from some company.

Good idea on electrolyte drink, I cannot evaluate whether is works or not. My sport is swimming, and I don’t think I need to replace my electrolytes after swimming 2000 yards. I am usually hungry, so I usually plan to some form of food and a beverage (fruit, a sandwich and juice, perhaps even a soda). I vaguely recall that one way from close to thirty plus years ago to prevent or treat heat stroke was to drink bouillon and/or juice instead of plain water. But that may be a faulty memory.

But I do know there is an entire industry catering to sports nutrition. I read about the high calorie sport gels in a Gina Kolata book. That is how I knew what I found when a depleted gel tube was discarded in my yard waste bin. Some yahoo had thrown it in there instead of carting it to their own car, which was probably parked on my street so they could do their extreme run or cycle stint on the trail that goes by the end of my street (I am highly amused by the folks that live ten blocks away who drive and park in front of my house to run/bike the trail!).

(by the way, I do think it is ironically funny that I did have a typo when I chided him on using a common misspelling of a blogger’s name, I just don’t stress or obsess over things like that)

I’ve been trying to understand what the big deal is about Pepsi getting a blog. This is the best I came up with. Many of us have come to believe that ScienceBlogs provides unbiased science-based information to its readers. The concern of having a corporate blog is that it can either (1)not be unbiased or (2)cannot be science-based. Although a clear conflict of interest (COI) exists, one cannot cast blanket dismissal of any potentially science based claim. This is basically the same argument that alt med people use against pharmaceutical research. COIs are good reason to be more suspiciousness and critical but are not alone reasons to reject an argument. The COI has been made public, so all of you bloggers are aware of it and can farther scrutinize their posts.

Besides this basic argument, others I’ve heard are that it would ruin the reputation of SB. This is a typical “poisoning the well” logical fallacy. It is not a reasonable criticism.