We evaluate the extent to which Coca-Cola tried to influence research in the Global Energy Balance Network, as revealed by correspondence between the company and leading public health academics obtained through Freedom-of-Information (FOI) requests.

US state FOI requests were made in the years 2015–2016 by US Right to Know, a non-profit consumer and public health group, obtaining 18 030 pages of emails covering correspondence between The Coca-Cola Company and public health academics at West Virginia University and University of Colorado, leading institutions of the Global Energy Balance Network. We performed a narrative, thematic content analysis of 18 036 pages of Coca-Cola Company’s emails, coded between May and December 2016, against a taxonomy of political influence strategies.

Emails identified two main strategies, regarding information and messaging and constituency building, associated with a series of practices and mechanisms that could influence public health nutrition. Despite publications claiming independence, we found evidence that Coca-Cola made significant efforts to divert attention from its role as a funding source through diversifying funding partners and, in some cases, withholding information on the funding involved. We also found documentation that Coca-Cola supported a network of academics, as an ‘email family’ that promoted messages associated with its public relations strategy, and sought to support those academics in advancing their careers and building their affiliated public health and medical institutions.

Coca-Cola sought to obscure its relationship with researchers, minimise the public perception of its role and use these researchers to promote industry-friendly messaging. More robust approaches for managing conflicts of interest are needed to address diffuse and obscured patterns of industry influence.

To (i) evaluate the extent to which Coca-Cola’s ‘Transparency Lists’ of 218 researchers that it funds are comprehensive; (ii) map all scientific research acknowledging funding from Coca-Cola; (iii) identify those institutions, authors and research topics funded by Coca-Cola; and (iv) use Coca-Cola’s disclosure to gauge whether its funded researchers acknowledge the source of funding.

Using Web of Science Core Collection database, we retrieved all studies declaring receipt of direct funding from the Coca-Cola brand, published between 2008 and 2016. Using conservative eligibility criteria, we iteratively removed studies and recreated Coca-Cola’s transparency lists using our data. We used network analysis and structural topic modelling to assess the structure, organization and thematic focus of Coca-Cola’s research enterprise, and string matching to evaluate the completeness of Coca-Cola’s transparency lists.

Three hundred and eighty-nine articles, published in 169 different journals, and authored by 907 researchers, cite funding from The Coca-Cola Company. Of these, Coca-Cola acknowledges funding forty-two authors (<5 %). We observed that the funded research focuses mostly on nutrition and emphasizes the importance of physical activity and the concept of ‘energy balance’.

The Coca-Cola Company appears to have failed to declare a comprehensive list of its research activities. Further, several funded authors appear to have failed to declare receipt of funding. Most of Coca-Cola’s research support is directed towards physical activity and disregards the role of diet in obesity. Despite initiatives for greater transparency of research funding, the full scale of Coca-Cola’s involvement is still not known.