2241. The Problem of Garbage Collection in Cuba

By Fernando Ravsberg, Havana Times, March 10, 2016

Garbage collection in Trinidad, Cuba

President Raul Castro has called on citizens to maintain cities clean in order to avoid the spread of diseases transmitted by mosquitos. He suggested increased discipline and drastic measures against those who do not comply with the established norms.

“This can’t be just another campaign,” he said. It’s a commendable proposal, but it is very hard to implement. Garbage collection services and many other State entities are greatly responsible for the sanitary mess that cities and towns are in.

In a Cuban television program, garbage collection authorities in Havana reported that they have the capacity to pick up garbage every 72 hours, but viewers called in and insisted that, in their place of residence, garbage is sometimes picked up as irregularly as every 15 days.

Garbage collection services receive the largest State budget after public health and education. Despite this, it is one of the most inefficient sectors in the country. One of the reasons for this is the degree of corruption that systematically undermines it.

We previously published the video of the interrogations conducted with several officials who embezzled US $ 1.5 million, pocketing the salaries of inexistent garbage units. The more common practice, however, is to leave garbage uncollected in order to sell the excess fuel.

People are forced to live alongside cockroaches, rats and mosquitos owing to the poor practices of garbage collection entities that offer public services. Photo: Raquel Perez Diaz

In a neighborhood at the outskirts of Havana, a self-employed man tells me that “I pay the truck people a monthly quota so that they’ll come pick up the garbage regularly and keep the corner my business clean.” What of those who aren’t able to pay? They quite simply have to wait 15 days.

They’re not the only ones charging for public services. The water and sewage companies specialize in the “run-around,” mutually passing on the responsibility for certain jobs until users give up and decide to pay. When this happens, they immediately sort out their differences, the trucks become available and the work gets done.

They behave as though the means and equipment at their disposal were privately owned by the workers and their bosses. There are two tariffs: the official one, in Cuban pesos, and the real one, in Cuban Convertible Pesos. The latter is like a master key that opens the floodgates of the water bureaucracy.

Broken pipes out on the street, however, have no one to look after them and pay the fee, so they continue to flourish and multiply. Half of the water pumped around Havana is lost thanks to these urban wellsprings, which also become the perfect place for mosquitos to reproduce.

Half of the water pumped around Havana is lost because of the city’s chaotic public services. Photo: Raquel Perez Diaz

Granma, Cuba’s major official newspaper, reported that “in connection with drinking water leaks, 76.2 % of the 9,012 reported have been fixed. Of the 4,647 sewage leaks reported, 3,477 have been fixed.”

It’s likely these figures are blown out of proportion so as to “pull the wool” over the eyes of those above, as is often done. If they were true, however, it would be even more irritating, for it would demonstrate that they have the capacity to solve problems and that these are only fixed during government “campaigns.”

Public services are so thoroughly inefficient that it took over a week to fix a gas leak, despite the obvious dangers that entailed. “We only have two trucks for the city and one of them is broken,” one worker explained.

Nothing gets done by public services in Havana today without money changing hands “under the table.” Employing more inspectors isn’t the solution, as these, like mobsters, extort citizens, offering them “protection” from a shower of fines.

It is next to impossible to get a truck to come empty or unclog a drain without paying something under the table. Photo: Raquel Perez Diaz

On Friday, two men from the electrical company came to my house to check the meter. I let them in and they asked to go up to the roof. I let them do that. Then, they asked to see my receipts for the last two years, to finally tell me they had to inspect my bedroom.

I told them not to waste time because I don’t do anything illegal and that they wouldn’t be able to get a cent out of me. They became irritated and threatened to cut my power, so I kicked them out and complained at the electrical company.

In order for the campaign against the Zika virus not to fizzle out over the next 3 months, as other campaigns have done, many things in Cuba’s public services would have to be changed, particularly in the way they are organized, and, most importantly, in terms of control, which can only be effective if it is exercised by citizens themselves.

Unfortunately, many People’s Power representatives do not behave like the members of a local government but as mere “messengers.” Every time people approach them in search of answers to the community’s problems, they make their heads spin with stories about the “objective and subjective difficulties” faced by the country.

Sewage water flows among homes in some neighborhoods because of a lack of public sewage services. Photo: Raquel Perez Diaz

This doesn’t happen everywhere, however. Adela, the transsexual elected local representative in Caibarien, tells us they “have had a fair degree of success, considering we presented seven issues to State entities and all have had positive replies.”

She tells us she is the only representative that high officials see, because they fear her. “They know I’m willing to take things to any level,” she tells us, adding, with a smile, that “I’ll do it the easy or the hard way.”

2238. Raúl Castro Calls for Greater Discipline in Nationwide Sanitation Efforts

By Laticia Matínez Hernández, Granma, March 7, 2016

Also participating in the meeting presided by Raúl were Esteban Lazo, President of the National Assembly; Ministers of Health, Economy and Planning and FAR, Roberto Morales, Marino Murillo and Leopoldo Cintra, respectively; Chief of the Civil Defense National Staff, Ramón Pardo; Prosecutor General of the Republic of Cuba, Darío Delgado; and other government authorities. Photo: Estudio Revolución.

On March 6, Army General Raúl Castro Ruz presided a meeting to review nationwide sanitation measures to combat the spread of viruses transmitted by Aedes mosquitoes at the Ministry of Public Health, during which he called for greater discipline, to hold those who fail to comply with measures accountable and for citizens to continue supporting sanitization efforts in cities. 

Also addressed during the meeting was the complex epidemiological situation facing the region, with cases of the Zika virus reported in 31 countries. It was reiterated that thus far two imported cases of the disease, originating from Venezuela, have been detected; while vigilance measures continue to be applied with individuals presenting with non-specific fever being investigated.

During a video conference with authorities from the Ministry Health, government, Party, Revolutionary Armed Forces, Ministry of the Interior and provincial mass organizations, it was reported that at the end of the second cycle of the campaign 12,737 homes had failed to be fumigated, down from 28,627 registered the previous week, owing to inadequate planning, poor notification, and failure to comply with established timetables. 

The number of workplaces testing positive for the vector have also decreased, and by the end of the second week progress had been seen in environmental sanitization efforts carried out in high risk areas. Of a reported 9,012 potable water leakages, 76.2% have been fixed, while 3,477 of 4,647 waste water leakages have also been repaired. 

A daily average of 800 National Revolutionary Police offices have participated in the campaign, dealing with residents who fail to cooperate with fumigators and sanitization personnel, as well as dumpster “divers” and cart vendors who have removed over 100 wheels from garbage containers. 

The President inquired about garbage collection in the capital where 23,800 cubic meters are produced daily, 6,300 of which goes uncollected given a lack of garbage trucks, a situation Raúl described as chronic and requiring a definitive well thought out solution, with an emphasis on discipline in collection schedules, repairs and maintenance of equipment.

Raúl stated that “this can not just be one more campaign.” It is imperative to ensure that everything is being done well, comprehensively and in a timely fashion, he noted.

2214. Zika Outbreak Could Be an Omen of the Global Warming Threat

By Justine Gillis, The New York Times, February 18, 2016

The global public health emergency involving deformed babies emerged in 2015, the hottest year in the historical record, with an outbreak in Brazil of a disease transmitted by heat-loving mosquitoes. Can that be a coincidence?

Scientists say it will take them years to figure that out, and pointed to other factors that may have played a larger role in starting the crisis. But these same experts added that the Zika epidemic, as well as the related spread of a disease called dengue that is sickening as many as 100 million people a year and killing thousands, should be interpreted as warnings.

Over the coming decades, global warming is likely to increase the range and speed the life cycle of the particular mosquitoes carrying these viruses, encouraging their spread deeper into temperate countries like the United States.

Recent research suggests that under a worst-case scenario, involving continued high global emissions coupled with fast population growth, the number of people exposed to the principal mosquito could more than double, to as many as 8 billion or 9 billion by late this century from roughly 4 billion today.

“As we get continued warming, it’s going to become more difficult to control mosquitoes,” said Andrew Monaghan, who is studying the interaction of climate and health at the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colo. “The warmer it is, the faster they can develop from egg to adult, and the faster they can incubate viruses.”

Already, climate change is suspected — though not proven — to have been a factor in a string of disease outbreaks afflicting both people and animals. These include the spread o f malaria into the highlands of eastern Africa, the rising incidence of Lyme disease in North America, and the spread of a serious livestock ailment called bluetongue into parts of Europe that were once too cold for it to thrive.

In interviews, experts noted that no epidemic was ever the result of a single variable.

Instead, epidemics always involve interactions among genes, ecology, climate and human behavior, presenting profound difficulties for scientists trying to tease apart the contributing factors. “The complexity is enormous,” said Walter J. Tabachnick, a professor with the Florida Medical Entomology Laboratory, a unit of the University of Florida in Vero Beach.

The epidemics of Zika and dengue are cases in point. The viruses are being transmitted largely by the yellow fever mosquito, Aedes aegypti. That creature adapted long ago to live in human settlements, and developed a concomitant taste for human blood.

Cities in the tropics, the climate zone most favorable to the mosquito, have undergone explosive growth: Humanity passed a milestone a few years ago when more than half the population had moved to urban areas. But spending on health care and on basic public health infrastructure, like water pipes and sewers, has not kept pace. Mosquito control has also faltered in recent decades.

The mosquito lays its eggs in containers of water, of a sort that are especially common in the huge slums of Latin American cities. With unreliable access to piped water, people there store water in rooftop cisterns, buckets and the like. Old tires and other debris can also become mosquito habitat.

Water storage near homes is commonplace in areas where Zika has spread rapidly, like the cities of Recife and Salvador in northeastern Brazil, and where dengue experienced a surge in 2015, like São Paulo, Brazil’s largest state.

Altogether, dengue killed at least 839 people in Brazil in 2015, a 40 percent increase from the previous year. Worldwide, dengue is killing more than 20,000 people a year.

Several experts said in interviews that a main reason for the disease outbreaks was most likely the expansion of the number of people at risk, through urbanization, population growth and international travel. They see the changing climate as just another stress on top of a situation that was already rife with peril.

While they do not understand to what degree rising temperatures and other weather shifts may have contributed to the outbreaks, they do understand some of the potential mechanisms.

The mosquitoes mostly live on flower nectar, but the female of the species needs a meal of human blood to have enough protein to lay her eggs. If she bites a person infected with dengue, Zika or any of several other diseases, she picks up the virus.

The virus has to reproduce in the mosquito for a certain period before it can be transmitted to another person in a subsequent bite. The higher the air temperature, the shorter that incubation period. Moreover, up to a point, higher temperatures cause the mosquitoes to mature faster.

With rising temperatures, “You’re actually speeding up the whole reproductive cycle of the mosquitoes,” said Charles B. Beard, who heads a unit in Fort Collins, Colo., studying insect-borne diseases for the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. “You get larger populations, with more generations of mosquitoes, in a warmer, wetter climate. You have this kind of amplification of the risk.”

Aedes aegypti is present across the southern tier of the United States. Brief outbreaks of dengue have occurred recently at the warmest margins of the country, and one is underway in Hawaii. But with pervasive window screens and air-conditioning, the risk of disease transmission is far less for most Americans than for people in poorer countries.

The mosquito does not thrive in areas with cold winters. Some research suggests that continued climatic warming could allow the mosquito to colonize more of North America in coming decades, though how much of a disease risk that would represent is anybody’s guess.

The yellow fever mosquito competes with a cousin, the Asian tiger mosquito, that has also colonized the United States, and is more tolerant of cold weather. Whether one would beat out the other in a hotter climate is unclear. Likewise, it is unclear how effective the Asian tiger mosquito might become at transmitting Zika or dengue viruses.

In principle, the risk from continued global warming applies not just to temperate countries, but to cities at high altitude in tropical countries. Researchers are keeping a close eye on Mexico City, for instance.

With 21 million people in the city and its suburbs, Mexico City is the largest metropolis of the Western Hemisphere. While the lowlands of Mexico are plagued by yellow fever mosquitoes and the viruses they transmit, the country’s capital sits on a mountain plain that has — up to now — been too cold for the mosquitoes.

But temperatures are rising, and the mosquitoes have recently been detected in low numbers near Mexico City.

“The mosquito is just down the hill, literally,” Dr. Monaghan said. “I think all the potential is there to have virus transmission if climatic conditions become a bit more suitable.”

2205. Guess Who Is Polluting Our Waterways

By Emerson Urry, Truth-out.org, February 15, 2016

Tyson Foods is a top polluter of U.S. waterways

Advocacy group Environment America has "crunched the numbers" in an effort to reveal who the largest polluters of American waterways are. The culprits that crack the top-15 list may very well surprise you.

If you ask people on the street who America's biggest water polluter is, for many, oil Goliaths like Exxon or Chevron might be first to come to mind - but not by a long shot would either of those be the correct answer.

AK Steel Holding Corp took the slimy grimy first-place prize, with transnational mega meat marketer Tyson Foods coming in a very close second. Two oil companies, Phillips 66 and ExxonMobil, did make the top-15 - but only in 13th and 15th places respectively.

Interestingly, nearly half the entities on the list were food and meat producers, but it's the third-place finisher that's been raising some eyebrows as well.

According to the analysis, the US government, and specifically the Department of Defense (DOD), is the third largest water polluter in America, having dumped some 63,335,653 pounds of poison into waterways from 2010-2014.

The data was compiled using numbers from the Environmental Protection Agency's (EPA) Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) program. According to EPA's website, "TRI tracks the management of certain toxic chemicals that may pose a threat to human health and the environment. US facilities in different industry sectors must report annually how much of each chemical is released to the environment."

Environment America Analysis of EPA Toxic Inventory Release Program.

Amongst the many potentially deadly substances released by DOD are chemicals, rocket fuel and toxic sewage - but it's the carcinogenic and mutagenic radioactive isotopes let loose by its nuclear munition plants that make DOD's emissions exceptionally dangerous. The Department's myriad facilities, dedicated steadfastly to perpetuating ongoing participation in the nuclear bomb game, have been leaking and leeching lethal radiation from the dawn of the nuclear age, to the present day.

In other words, the very Defense Department that is supposed to be protecting American citizens from mortal threats, is, in and of itself, one of the deadliest threats Americans face - not from bombs or guns, but from millions of pounds of pollution, perpetrated on the country's unsuspecting population every year, by way of the Pentagon itself.

A perfect example can be drawn by examining Hanford, the infamous Manhattan-era nuclear bomb manufacturing plant and waste dump, in Washington State. A classic investigative long-read in Rolling Stone Magazine, from all the way back in 1990, titled, "America's Worst Polluter," sounded the alarm over DOD/DOE's exorbitant toxic emissions, and wrote of Hanford:

By far the most dangerous form of pollution caused by government mismanagement comes out of the Department of Energy's nuclear-weapons facilities… After four decades of research and manufacturing, the DOE is stuck with billions of gallons of radioactive and chemical byproducts, principally at four locations:.. …at Hanford alone, the wastes would cover an area the size of Manhattan with a lake forty feet deep.

America's Worst Polluter 

Another interesting point that must be drawn from Environment America's summation is that although the Department of Energy (DOE) didn't crack the top-15 list, it is nonetheless a huge polluter as well. Additionally, NASA, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Department of the Interior (DOI), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Department of Justice (DOJ) and multiple other agencies are also offenders, leaving the befuddling question: Is the US government the biggest polluter of all?

It is important to note that Environment America's recent analysis specifically addresses releases into waterways, and excludes air pollution and landfill sources - also part of TRI reporting. Nevertheless, the sheer scope of the government's polluting activities needs further examination across the board.

Stay tuned to EnviroNews, as we intend to explore this question more thoroughly in future investigative reports, but let's just say for now that the stats aren't looking good for the US government - and those numbers look even worse if you live in any of the many communities poisoned by the ongoing and nebulously toxic deeds of the US government.

2162.Air Pollution Killing Millions, Threatening Global Health Systems

By Nadia Prupis, Common Dreams, January 18, 2016

The World Health Organization (WHO) over the weekend warned that skyrocketing air pollution levels are killing millions of people in thousands of cities and are poised to take an "enormous" toll on public health services worldwide.

"We have a public health emergency in many countries from pollution. It’s dramatic, one of the biggest problems we are facing globally, with horrible future costs to society," said Dr. Maria Neira, head of public health at WHO.

"Air pollution leads to chronic diseases which require hospital space. Before, we knew that pollution was responsible for diseases like pneumonia and asthma," Neira said. "Now we know that it leads to bloodstream, heart and cardiovascular diseases, too—even dementia."

The latest figures come from pollution data in 2,000 cities, where growing populations have led to a surge in traffic, construction, and power generation—leaving huge areas to grapple with toxic smog and rising greenhouse gases that cannot be resolved without an overhaul of infrastructure. The WHO next month will issue more in-depth statistics showing the steady rise of pollution in urban areas since 2014.

"We are storing up problems," Neira said Saturday. "These are chronic diseases that require hospital beds. The cost will be enormous."

The announcement comes as activists around the world call on governments to do more to tackle the crisis.

In China last month, the government issued its most severe air pollution warning for the second time in as many years, requiring a reduction in cars on the road and a halt in production at certain factories. Recent research there has found that pollution kills more than 1.5 million people in China annually, or 4,400 per day—comprising 17 percent of the country's total deaths every year.

Lord Stern, a leading British economist, told the Guardian on Saturday, "Air pollution is of fundamental importance. We are only just learning about the scale of the toxicity of coal and diesel. We know that in China, 4,000 people a day die of air pollution. In India it is far worse. This is a deep, deep problem."

1977. Coca-Cola Funds Scientists Who Shift Blame for Obesity Away From Bad Diets

By Anahad O'Conner, The New York Times, August 9, 2015

Coca-Cola, the world’s largest producer of sugary beverages, is backing a new “science-based” solution to the obesity crisis: To maintain a healthy weight, get more exercise and worry less about cutting calories.

The beverage giant has teamed up with influential scientists who are advancing this message in medical journals, at conferences and through social media. To help the scientists get the word out, Coke has provided financial and logistical support to a new nonprofit organization called the Global Energy Balance Network, which promotes the argument that weight-conscious Americans are overly fixated on how much they eat and drink while not paying enough attention to exercise.

“Most of the focus in the popular media and in the scientific press is, ‘Oh they’re eating too much, eating too much, eating too much’ — blaming fast food, blaming sugary drinks and so on,” the group’s vice president, Steven N. Blair, an exercise scientist, says in a recent video announcing the new organization. “And there’s really virtually no compelling evidence that that, in fact, is the cause.”

Health experts say this message is misleading and part of an effort by Coke to deflect criticism about the role sugary drinks have played in the spread of obesity and Type 2 diabetes. They contend that the company is using the new group to convince the public that physical activity can offset a bad diet despite evidence that exercise has only minimal impact on weight compared with what people consume.

This clash over the science of obesity comes in a period of rising efforts to tax sugary drinks, remove them from schools and stop companies from marketing them to children. In the last two decades, consumption of full-calorie sodas by the average American has dropped by 25 percent.

“Coca-Cola’s sales are slipping, and there’s this huge political and public backlash against soda, with every major city trying to do something to curb consumption,” said Michele Simon, a public health lawyer. “This is a direct response to the ways that the company is losing. They’re desperate to stop the bleeding.”

Coke has made a substantial investment in the new nonprofit. In response to requests based on state open-records laws, two universities that employ leaders of the Global Energy Balance Network disclosed that Coke had donated $1.5 million last year to start the organization.

Since 2008, the company has also provided close to $4 million in funding for various projects to two of the organization’s founding members: Dr. Blair, a professor at the University of South Carolina whose research over the past 25 years has formed much of the basis of federal guidelines on physical activity, and Gregory A. Hand, dean of the West Virginia University School of Public Health.

Records show that the network’s website, gebn.org, is registered to Coca-Cola headquarters in Atlanta, and the company is also listed as the site’s administrator. The group’s president, James O. Hill, a professor at the University of Colorado School of Medicine, said Coke had registered the website because the network’s members did not know how.

“They’re not running the show,” he said. “We’re running the show.”

Coca-Cola’s public relations department repeatedly declined requests for an interview with its chief scientific officer, Rhona Applebaum, who has called attention to the new group on Twitter. In a statement, the company said it had a long history of supporting scientific research related to its beverages and topics such as energy balance.

“We partner with some of the foremost experts in the fields of nutrition and physical activity,” the statement said. “It’s important to us that the researchers we work with share their own views and scientific findings, regardless of the outcome, and are transparent and open about our funding.”

Dr. Blair and other scientists affiliated with the group said that Coke had no control over its work or message and that they saw no problem with the company’s support because they had been transparent about it.

But as of last week, the group’s Twitter and Facebook pages, which promote physical activity as a solution to chronic disease and obesity while remaining largely silent on the role of food and nutrition, made no mention of Coca-Cola’s financial support. So far, the social media campaign has failed to gain much traction: As of Friday, the group had fewer than 1,000 followers on Twitter.

The group’s website also omitted mention of Coke’s backing until Dr. Yoni Freedhoff, an obesity expert at the University of Ottawa, wrote to the organization to inquire about its funding. Dr. Blair said this was an oversight that had been quickly corrected.

“As soon as we discovered that we didn’t have not only Coca-Cola but other funding sources on the website, we put it on there,” Dr. Blair said. “Does that make us totally corrupt in everything we do?”

Coke’s involvement in the new organization is not the only example of corporate-funded research and advocacy to come under fire lately. The American Society for Nutrition and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics have been criticized by public health advocates for forming partnerships with companies such as Kraft Foods, McDonald’s, PepsiCo and Hershey’s. Dietitians have also faced criticism for taking payments from Coke to present the company’s soda as a healthy snack.

Critics say Coke has long cast the obesity epidemic as primarily an exercise problem. “The message is that obesity is not about the foods or beverages you’re consuming, it’s that you’re not balancing those foods with exercise,” Dr. Freedhoff of the University of Ottawa said.

Now, public health advocates say, Coca-Cola is going a step further, recruiting reputable scientists to make the case for them.

Dr. Hill, the nonprofit’s president, is a co-founder of the National Weight Control Registry, a long-term study of people who have lost weight, and has served on committees for the World Health Organization and the National Institutes of Health. The American Society for Nutrition refers to him as “a leader in the fight against the global obesity epidemic.”

Barry M. Popkin, a professor of global nutrition at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, said Coke’s support of prominent health researchers was reminiscent of tactics used by the tobacco industry, which enlisted experts to become “merchants of doubt” about the health hazards of smoking.

Marion Nestle, the author of the book “Soda Politics” and a professor of nutrition, food studies and public health at New York University, was especially blunt: “The Global Energy Balance Network is nothing but a front group for Coca-Cola. Coca-Cola’s agenda here is very clear: Get these researchers to confuse the science and deflect attention from dietary intake.”

Funding from the food industry is not uncommon in scientific research. But studies suggest that the funds tend to bias findings. A recent analysis of beverage studies, published in the journal PLOS Medicine, found that those funded by Coca-Cola, PepsiCo, the American Beverage Association and the sugar industry were five times more likely to find no link between sugary drinks and weight gain than studies whose authors reported no financial conflicts.

On its website, the new nonprofit promises to be “the voice of science” in discussions about healthy lifestyles and contends that the concept of energy balance provides “a new science-based framework” for achieving a stable body weight.

The group says there is “strong evidence” that the key to preventing weight gain is not reducing food intake — as many public health experts recommend — “but maintaining an active lifestyle and eating more calories.” To back up this contention, the group provides links to two research papers, each of which contains this footnote: “The publication of this article was supported by The Coca-Cola Company.”

In March, Dr. Hill, Dr. Blair, and Dr. Hand announced the creation of the organization in an editorial in the British Journal of Sports Medicine. They argued that the public and many scientists largely overlooked physical inactivity as a cause of obesity. They said they were creating the Global Energy Balance Network to raise awareness “about both sides of the energy balance equation.”

The editorial contained a disclosure that the group had received an “unrestricted education gift” from Coca-Cola.

In response to a request made under the state Freedom of Information Act, the University of South Carolina disclosed that Dr. Blair had received more than $3.5 million in funding from Coke for research projects since 2008.

The university also disclosed that Coca-Cola had provided significant funding to Dr. Hand, who left the University of South Carolina last year for West Virginia. The company gave him $806,500 for an “energy flux” study in 2011 and $507,000 last year to establish the Global Energy Balance Network.

It is unclear how much of the money, if any, ended up as personal income for the professors.

“As long as everybody is disclosing their potential conflicts and they’re being managed appropriately, that’s the best that you can do,” Dr. Hand said. “It makes perfect sense that companies would want the best science that they can get.”

The group’s president, Dr. Hill, also has financial ties to Coca-Cola. The company last year gave an “unrestricted monetary gift” of $1 million to the University of Colorado Foundation. In response to a request made under the Colorado Open Records Act, the university said that Coca-Cola had provided the money “for the purposes of funding” the Global Energy Balance Network.

Dr. Hill said he had sought money from Coke to start the nonprofit because there was no funding available from his university. The group’s website says it is also supported by a few universities and ShareWIK Media Group, a producer of videos about health. Dr. Hill said that he had also received a commitment of help from General Mills, as well as promises of support from other businesses, which had not formally confirmed their offers.

He said he believed public health authorities could more easily change the way people eat by working with the food industry instead of against it.

On its website, the group recommends combining greater exercise and food intake because, Dr. Hill said, “ ‘Eat less’ has never been a message that’s been effective. The message should be ‘Move more and eat smarter.’ ”

He emphasized that weight loss involved a combination of complex factors and that his group’s goal was not to play down the role of diet or to portray obesity as solely a problem of inadequate exercise.

“If we are out there saying it’s all about physical activity and it’s not about food, then we deserve criticism,” he said. “But I think we haven’t done that.”

But in news releases and on its website, the group has struck a different tone.

“The media tends to blame the obesity epidemic on our poor eating habits,” one recent news release states. “But are those french fries really the culprit? Dr. Steve Blair explains that you shouldn’t believe everything you see on TV.”

In the news release, Dr. Blair suggests that sedentary behavior is a bigger factor.

Most public health experts say that energy balance is an important concept, because weight gain for most people is about calories in vs. calories out. But the experts say research makes it clear that one side of the equation has a far greater effect.

While people can lose weight in several ways, many studies suggest that those who keep it off for good consume fewer calories. Growing evidence also suggests that maintaining weight loss is easier when people limit their intake of high glycemic foods such as sugary drinks and other refined carbohydrates, which sharply raise blood sugar.

Physical activity is important and certainly helps, experts say. But studies show that exercise increases appetite, causing people to consume more calories. Exercise also expends far fewer calories than most people think. A 12-ounce can of Coca-Cola, for example, contains 140 calories and roughly 10 teaspoons of sugar. “It takes three miles of walking to offset that one can of Coke,” Dr. Popkin said.

In one of the most rigorous studies of physical activity and weight loss, published in the journal Obesity, scientists recruited 200 overweight, sedentary adults and put them on an aggressive exercise program. To isolate the effects of exercise on their weight, the subjects were instructed not to make any changes in their diets.

Participants were monitored to ensure they exercised five to six hours a week, more than double the 2.5 weekly hours of exercise recommended in federal guidelines. After a year, the men had lost an average of just 3.5 pounds, the women 2.5. Almost everyone was still overweight or obese.

“Adding exercise to a diet program helps,” said Dr. Anne McTiernan, the lead author of the study and a researcher at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center in Seattle. “But for weight loss, you’re going to get much more impact with diet changes.”

But much like the research on sugary drinks, studies of physical activity funded by the beverage industry tend to reach conclusions that differ from the findings of studies by independent scientists.

Last week, the Pennington Biomedical Research Center in Louisiana announced the findings of a large new study on exercise in children that determined that lack of physical activity “is the biggest predictor of childhood obesity around the world.”

The news release contained a disclosure: “This research was funded by The Coca-Cola Company.”

Kelly D. Brownell, dean of the Sanford School of Public Policy at Duke, said that as a business, Coke “focused on pushing a lot of calories in, but then their philanthropy is focused on the calories out part, the exercise.”

In recent years, Coke has donated money to build fitness centers in more than 100 schools across the country. It sponsors a program called “Exercise is Medicine” to encourage doctors to prescribe physical activity to patients. And when Chicago’s City Council proposed a soda tax in 2012 to help address the city’s obesity problem, Coca-Cola donated $3 million to establish fitness programs in more than 60 of the city’s community centers.

The initiative to tax soda ultimately failed.

“Reversing the obesity trend won’t happen overnight,” Coca-Cola said in an ad for its Chicago exercise initiative. “But for thousands of families in Chicago, it starts now, with the next push-up, a single situp or a jumping jack.”