Part 4 (1/2)

”Somewhere in there, the stalling began in earnest,” says soda activist Simon, who watched negotiations unfold. ”We didn't hear from them to schedule a meeting, and I got nervous and said something was going on.” As it turned out, she was right. c.o.ke was barraged by negative publicity that spring, and even Governor Rell bowed to public opinion, supporting a new bill in Connecticut to ban sugary soft drinks, and diet drinks and Powerade. c.o.ke threatened to pull school scholars.h.i.+ps if the ban pa.s.sed, prompting state attorney general Richard Blumenthal to decry c.o.ke's ”unconscionable practices” and announce an investigation of the Coca-Cola Foundation for violation of its nonprofit status. Despite c.o.ke's threats, the state legislature pa.s.sed the bill in April 2006.

c.o.ke had had enough, calling a press conference a week later along with other soft drink companies to announce its surrender. Reporters from The New York Times The New York Times, The Was.h.i.+ngton Post The Was.h.i.+ngton Post, and other newspapers a.s.sembled to hear the details, when Bill Clinton, former president of the United States, strode to the podium. By his side was Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee, the American Beverage a.s.sociation's Neely, and Coca-Cola North America president Don Knauss. ”I don't think there are any villains here,” said Clinton with his patented earnest delivery, going on to call the soda companies ”courageous” for dealing with the obesity issue head-on. Then with great fanfare, he announced new guidelines that the industry had agreed to limiting soda in schools, which had been negotiated by the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, a partners.h.i.+p between the Clinton Foundation and the American Heart a.s.sociation.

The agreement-which had been in the works since fall 2005-was significantly weaker than what the companies had already agreed to with Daynard, Gardner, and the other anti-obesity activists over the same period, allowing diet drinks, sports drinks, and juice drinks of up to 12 ounces to be sold in high schools. Moreover, unlike the enforceable guidelines under discussion with the lawyers, the deal would be completely voluntary and implemented over the course of three years. Advertising wasn't even addressed.

Daynard found out about the agreement the way most people did-reading the newspaper. ”I think there was considerable bad faith on their part,” he says. ”They did not tell us they were simultaneously negotiating with another group.” Daynard now thinks their talks were nothing but a sham to stall litigation. Even so, he puts the best face on the agreement-arguing that if not for the threat of a lawsuit, the companies would never have taken even the more modest measure of getting rid of sugary soda within three years. ”When we began, we thought that was impossible,” he says.

Even as they were staging a tactical retreat, c.o.ke and Pepsi were able to save face, stressing at the news conference that soda could be part of a well-rounded diet. In the fall, the ABA rolled out a $10 million ad campaign to ”educate” parents about the new policy. They failed to mention that some schools with long-term contracts would not be able to partic.i.p.ate, at least not without buying out the companies to amend the contracts. One school in Wisconsin learned it would have to pay $200,000 to remove high-calorie beverages from vending machines. The Portland, Oregon, school district was told it would have to pay back $600,000 to remove diet soda after the district's wellness policy banned them. Local activists with Oregon's Community Health Partners.h.i.+p cried foul-pointing out that a contract is something that can be renegotiated at any time if both sides are willing. It took six months, however, for c.o.ke to agree to new terms, under which the school forfeited all commissions from drink sales, though it was allowed to keep the up-front fee for signing the contract. they were staging a tactical retreat, c.o.ke and Pepsi were able to save face, stressing at the news conference that soda could be part of a well-rounded diet. In the fall, the ABA rolled out a $10 million ad campaign to ”educate” parents about the new policy. They failed to mention that some schools with long-term contracts would not be able to partic.i.p.ate, at least not without buying out the companies to amend the contracts. One school in Wisconsin learned it would have to pay $200,000 to remove high-calorie beverages from vending machines. The Portland, Oregon, school district was told it would have to pay back $600,000 to remove diet soda after the district's wellness policy banned them. Local activists with Oregon's Community Health Partners.h.i.+p cried foul-pointing out that a contract is something that can be renegotiated at any time if both sides are willing. It took six months, however, for c.o.ke to agree to new terms, under which the school forfeited all commissions from drink sales, though it was allowed to keep the up-front fee for signing the contract.

The very public deal has led to perceptions that the school issue had been dealt with, saving c.o.ke's image and taking the wind out of a push for stronger legislation. Oregon is one of the few states to move ahead with a binding state law against soda in schools after the Clinton soda agreement-pus.h.i.+ng through a law similar to California's tough standards in 2007. Even so, says the health partners.h.i.+p's Mary Lou Hennrich, an initial proposal to ban sports drinks and marketing fizzled when legislators, supported by the school administrators, pointed to the Clinton guidelines as the new standard. ”Their att.i.tude was that now you've crammed this down our throats and we can't have sugar-sweetened beverages for sale, haven't you done enough?” A similar phenomenon happened in Utah, when the new state law to ban soda was specifically written with the Clinton guidelines in mind. In Oregon, Ma.s.sachusetts, and Rhode Island, the local affiliates of the American Heart a.s.sociation told Simon that their national headquarters had requested they stand down in supporting tougher laws. (A past president of the AHA denies this, saying that affiliates weren't counseled either way.) By 2008, thirty-four states had some combination of regulation or legislation curtailing soda in schools. Just eleven banned all sugar-sweetened soda; the rest allowed some portion of soda sales for some portion of the day. Only a few go beyond the voluntary guidelines adopted by the Clinton agreement: six ban sports drinks, five set calorie limits, and only one provides any kind of penalties for noncompliance. On a federal level, an effort led by Senator Tom Harkin and Representative Lynn Woolsey to pa.s.s a bill to ban soda and sports drinks as foods of ”minimal nutritional value” failed in 2007.

In the three years since the first announcement by the Alliance for a Healthier Generation, there's mixed evidence that the voluntary guidelines pushed by industry have been successful. According to a study by a consultant funded by the American Beverage a.s.sociation, 98.8 percent of schools under contract with soda companies were in compliance with the guidelines by the 2009-2010 school year. Even more important, s.h.i.+pments of carbonated soft drinks to schools dropped by 95 percent compared to another ABA-funded survey in 2004. In high schools, sugar soft drinks fell from 47 to 7 percent of offerings, and water grew from 12 to 39 percent. While sports drinks did increase, from 13 to 18 percent of the total, total calories for all beverages were still down 88 percent. ”It's a brand new day in America's schools when it comes to beverages,” said the ABA's Neely in 2008. ”Our beverage companies have slashed calories.”

Some anti-soda activists, such as CSPI's Margo Wootan, grudgingly accept the ABA report, though they point out that much of that decrease in soda in schools has been due to binding state legislation. Others, however, look at the industry-funded study with a jaundiced eye, knowing how favorable those studies have been to the soda company biases in the past. At least one independent study leaves serious reason to doubt the trade a.s.sociation's figures. An annual survey by the University of Illinois at Chicago and the University of Michigan found that in the 2008-2009 school year, only 30 percent of school administrators said they were implementing the guidelines, up from 25 percent the previous year. By contrast, 14 percent said they were not implementing them, and 55 percent-more than half-said they had never even heard of them.

Generally, the fight over schools has been a qualified victory for the anti-soda activists; if nothing else, it was a win in the area of perception; no longer would it be possible for people to drink soda without thinking about the potentially negative health consequences waiting for them inside the can. The fight affected c.o.ke's bottom line as well-stopping the runaway increases in soda sales for most of the previous century. In early 2006, soda sales fell in the United States for the first time in twenty years, by nearly 1 percent over the previous year. That was followed by several more consecutive years of sales drops-by 2.3 percent in 2007, 3 percent in 2008, and 2.1 percent in 2009.

Where the campaign was successful in changing the public's consumption of soda, it succeeded through a combination of public support and the vigorous support of the media, which thrives on stories of conflicts with clear battle lines and combatants on both sides-company executives, school administrators, dogged activists, and parents. However unfair it may have seemed to the soda companies to single out soft drinks as the primary cause of obesity and diabetes, the issue resonated with the public, who after all must have secretly suspected that pouring all of that sugar down their throats just couldn't be good for them in the long term.

The tactical decision to focus the fight on schools also helped to frame the issue in a way that was impossible for the public not to understand. As the campaign against tobacco did with Joe Camel and other instances of child marketing, it garnered the sympathy of the populace, which instinctively understands that even if adults are free to choose what they put inside their bodies, children need protection. Finally, the campaign made effective use of the power of the purse, speaking the language that school administrators and soda companies understood, whether it was Jackie Domac's grant to implement healthy food choices or d.i.c.k Daynard's threat to sue c.o.ke for damages.

Where the anti-soda forces failed, it was in removing the pressure it had so expertly marshaled just as it was beginning to bear fruit, taking away the cudgel of the lawsuit, their biggest weapon, as they began negotiating with c.o.ke and the other companies, who then had every incentive to stall until they could find a more favorable deal elsewhere. And by focusing so completely on the school issue, the campaign against soda lost a chance to talk about the messier but arguably more significant influence that runaway soft drink consumption has had on both adults and children outside the school walls.

In the end, it's debatable exactly how effective the fight against soda in schools has actually been in schools themselves. A 2008 study in Maine published by the Society for Nutrition Education compared intake of soda by kids at high schools where soda was banned with intake in schools where it wasn't, finding no difference in overall consumption. Another study, of 11,000 fifth-graders in forty states, found soft drink consumption by kids decreased just 4 percent after soda was banned at their elementary schools. After expending all of their political capital on the fight to get soda out of schools, however, activist groups have found it hard to make headway outside that realm. Putting warning labels on bottles or restricting serving sizes are almost a nonstarter, while recent attempts to push a state or national ”soda tax”-Asa Candler's old nemesis-have been slow to catch on.

Whether or not the Clinton deal was a victory for activists, it certainly was one for c.o.ke, which was spared a public thras.h.i.+ng in the courts while tying their s.h.i.+p to one of the country's more popular public figures. Most important, the brand was kept intact, with Diet c.o.ke and c.o.ke Zero in the vending machines, and the Spencerian-script logo flas.h.i.+ng brightly in the hallways. And there was evidence Isdell's pledge to turn around the company was being kept. Throughout his tenure, overall company growth continued to surpa.s.s a.n.a.lysts' expectations-with increases of 6 percent in 2007 and 5 percent in 2008. Much of that growth was thanks to the overseas market, which represents 80 percent of c.o.ke's total sales. But the Clinton deal staved off the worst of the slide in the United States. While sugar soft drinks continued to decline by a percentage point or two a year in the past few years, today's youth has hardly been the ”lost generation” for soda, as one a.n.a.lyst had predicted in 2006.

And to make up the difference domestically, Isdell started a new round of product launches and acquisitions that took the battle to Pepsi on several new fronts, including a big new push on bottled water. c.o.ke might never achieve its once-upon-a-time dream of seeing the C on the tap stand for ”c.o.ke.” But if it couldn't beat water, it could do the next best thing: brand it.

FIVE.

The Bottled Water Lie The noise is deafening on the bottling floor of the Needham Heights Sales Facility, the largest Coca-Cola bottling plant in Ma.s.sachusetts and the sixteenth largest in the country. Cans of Diet c.o.ke swirl around in a giant silver whirligig, blinking lights indicating each is being filled with the proper amount of carbonated water and syrup. The din dies in the warehouse next door, where hundreds of thousands of cans and bottles of c.o.ke, Sprite, Nestle iced tea, Minute Maid juice, and other products under the Coca-Cola umbrella are stacked in rows as far as the eye can see, calling to mind the last scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark Raiders of the Lost Ark.

But tucked amid these boxes is another whirring collection of machinery. Test tube-sized nipples of polyethylene terephthalate (PET) plastic are dumped into a giant centrifuge, where they are blown by compressed air into 20-ounce bottles. On an adjoining piece of equipment, the full bottles reappear, filled to the brim with water. They trundle naked down the a.s.sembly line to get sealed and slapped with their label: Dasani.

It's here that c.o.ke's vaunted brand of bottled water is made, and where, by extension, the fortunes of the Coca-Cola Company were rescued. The actual process by which ordinary water is turned into Dasani is hidden inside a separate ”water room,” which the plant manager describes as a bunch of twenty-foot stainless-steel tubes through which the water is shot at high pressure to be filtered. No amount of pleading will persuade the Coca-Cola Enterprises press agent giving the tour today to allow a peek inside. Like the secret formula for Coca-Cola hidden deep inside an Atlanta safe-deposit box, the process behind creating Dasani is equally shrouded in mystique. And no wonder, since Dasani's brand image is even more important than Coca-Cola's to sell the product.

In coming to dominate the bottled water market, c.o.ke has had to pull a feat of behind-the-curtain wizardry every bit as impressive as turning Coca-Cola into a symbol of American pride and international goodwill a century earlier. Despite promising beginnings, however, Dasani has faced an even more damaging backlash, based not on individual health but on the health of the environment itself.

Even as awareness of the obesity crisis was beginning to hit, threatening sales of c.o.ke's trademark carbonated sodas, the company was readying its Plan B. In the summer of 1998, CEO Doug Ivester began toying with selling the most basic of beverages-water. The company had watched from the wings as other companies had made a fortune on the beverage, which the French company Perrier had introduced in the United States in the late 1970s. The fad had taken off quickly, after Perrier's marketers appealed to a new demographic of yuppies as conscious about their health as they were about the conspicuous consumption of paying top dollar for something others were getting for free. Perrier's profits from water rose from $20 million in its first year to $60 million by its second. awareness of the obesity crisis was beginning to hit, threatening sales of c.o.ke's trademark carbonated sodas, the company was readying its Plan B. In the summer of 1998, CEO Doug Ivester began toying with selling the most basic of beverages-water. The company had watched from the wings as other companies had made a fortune on the beverage, which the French company Perrier had introduced in the United States in the late 1970s. The fad had taken off quickly, after Perrier's marketers appealed to a new demographic of yuppies as conscious about their health as they were about the conspicuous consumption of paying top dollar for something others were getting for free. Perrier's profits from water rose from $20 million in its first year to $60 million by its second.

Starting in 1984, another French company, Evian, pioneered the use of lightweight bottles made of a clear plastic called polyethylene terephthalate (PET) just as the fitness craze was taking off, making the pink-and-red logo ubiquitous at the gym. Perrier stumbled briefly in 1990 when the supposedly pristine water was found contaminated with trace amounts of benzene, leading to a $160 million recall and cutting sales in half overnight. But the industry quickly recovered, led by the Swiss company Nestle, which swooped in to acquire Perrier, as well as dozens of other brands-Deer Park, Arrowhead, Calistoga, Poland Spring-that were left from America's first flirtation with bottled water at the turn of the last century. Between 1990 and 1999, bottled water sales shot up from $115 million a year to more than $5 billion.

With profit margins on water as high as 50 cents on a $1.50 bottle, c.o.ke and Pepsi couldn't resist entering a market that had been dominated by foreign companies. Instead of selling natural spring water, however, the cola giants didn't see why they couldn't just take the same water flowing through their bottling plants and package that that. Pepsi was first, shooting its purified water into a blue bottle with a squiggle evocative of snow-covered mountains.Voila, Aquafina.

c.o.ke could have gone the same route, licensing a new brand to its bottlers. But the Coca-Cola Company had always sold syrup, and there was no syrup that you could use to create water. Ivester stewed for the better part of 1998 before he hit upon the solution. c.o.ke scientists would formulate a proprietary mix of minerals that it would s.h.i.+p to bottlers to put in their purified tap water. This was its new new secret formula, which it could market as every bit as unique as c.o.ke's own. After much focus-grouping, c.o.ke created the perfect pan-national combination of syllables for its new beverage. Intended to signal relaxation and refreshment, the name Dasani could just as well be that of an Italian winemaker or an African tribe. secret formula, which it could market as every bit as unique as c.o.ke's own. After much focus-grouping, c.o.ke created the perfect pan-national combination of syllables for its new beverage. Intended to signal relaxation and refreshment, the name Dasani could just as well be that of an Italian winemaker or an African tribe.

Dasani actually wasn't c.o.ke's first entry into bottled water; it had bought Belmont Springs in the 1980s and Mendota Springs in the 1990s, both times suffering lackl.u.s.ter sales. But that was when water was a mere side venture to the runaway growth in sugary soda. Now water itself was the growth market. c.o.ke put the full weight of its advertising power behind a new $20 million campaign intended to both sell the product and grow the market itself.

c.o.ke targeted women, who consumer surveys showed were more focused on healthy living (and not coincidentally, more concerned with their kids' drinking so much soda). In the same way that ”The Pause That Refreshes” had addressed the anxieties of workers suffering from grueling production schedules, c.o.ke played on the stresses of women struggling to balance the demands of the workplace and their responsibilities to home and family with new slogans such as ”Life Simplified” and ”Replenish the Source Within.” In 2002, c.o.ke teamed up with Glamour Glamour magazine to give away an all-expenses-paid weekend in New York to the woman who wrote the best one hundred words about ”Women at Their Best.” Applicants were ”encouraged to list the ways in which they pamper themselves, thereby replenis.h.i.+ng their own spirit everyday” (no doubt scoring extra points if they replenished themselves with Dasani). magazine to give away an all-expenses-paid weekend in New York to the woman who wrote the best one hundred words about ”Women at Their Best.” Applicants were ”encouraged to list the ways in which they pamper themselves, thereby replenis.h.i.+ng their own spirit everyday” (no doubt scoring extra points if they replenished themselves with Dasani).

The marketing worked-by 2003, bottled water was the one bright spot in a disastrous year for c.o.ke. Bottled water sales were up to $8.5 billion overall-and Dasani had pa.s.sed Perrier, Evian, and San Pellegrino to become the second-best-selling brand behind Pepsi's Aquafina. And c.o.ke had yet to go international with Dasani-the arena where it always out-fought Pepsi. As the company planned to launch Dasani across the Atlantic, it seemed there might actually be life after soda pop after all.

For its big overseas splash, c.o.ke followed the same playbook it had for its soft drinks a century earlier, tackling the English-speaking world first. The launch for the United Kingdom was planned for March 2004, with drives the following month into Belgium and then France, the ultimate prize. The average French person drank more than twice what an American drank in bottled water, some 145 liters a year. Cracking big overseas splash, c.o.ke followed the same playbook it had for its soft drinks a century earlier, tackling the English-speaking world first. The launch for the United Kingdom was planned for March 2004, with drives the following month into Belgium and then France, the ultimate prize. The average French person drank more than twice what an American drank in bottled water, some 145 liters a year. Cracking that that market would be a sweet victory for the company. Just a couple of decades after France had introduced bottled water to the United States, America would be returning the favor under the banner of the quintessential American brand. For the UK, c.o.ke spared no expense, pouring 7 million ($13 million) into advertising, trumpeting the slogan ”The more you live, the more you need Dasani.” For weeks, billboards around London declared, ”Prepare to get wet,” and just before the launch, high-divers plummeted ninety feet with flaming capes into tanks of water to draw attention to the brand. market would be a sweet victory for the company. Just a couple of decades after France had introduced bottled water to the United States, America would be returning the favor under the banner of the quintessential American brand. For the UK, c.o.ke spared no expense, pouring 7 million ($13 million) into advertising, trumpeting the slogan ”The more you live, the more you need Dasani.” For weeks, billboards around London declared, ”Prepare to get wet,” and just before the launch, high-divers plummeted ninety feet with flaming capes into tanks of water to draw attention to the brand.

No amount of theatrics, however, could prepare c.o.ke for what happened next. Just weeks after the launch, a British newspaper broke the story that c.o.ke's ”pure” water was actually bottled in the southeast London suburb of Sidcup, which got its water from the River Thames. It was the equivalent of discovering that bottled water served in New York came from the Hudson. Immediately, c.o.ke came under fire from the Food Standards Agency (FSA), the British version of the FDA, for the improper use of the word ”pure.”

Of course, Dasani wasn't exactly tap water. While c.o.ke might not let prying eyes into one of its water rooms, it touts a multistep scouring to turn pedestrian water into the final product. First, there is ”ultrafiltration” to remove particles, followed by a carbon filter to remove odors, and a zap of ultraviolent light to kill bacteria. Most important, it pa.s.ses through a reverse-osmosis filter-a technique, c.o.ke told the skeptical British public, ”perfected by NASA to purify fluids on s.p.a.cecraft” to remove 90 percent of anything still remaining. Only then does c.o.ke add back in its mineral mix, as the company has oxymoronically explained, to ”enhance the pure taste.” Finally, the water is given a dose of ozone to get rid of hard-to-kill parasites such as giardia and cryptosporidium. The result, c.o.ke claimed, was ”as pure as water gets.”

Despite such a.s.surances, the launch was a disaster. Soon, Dasani was being handed out for free in train stations and supermarkets in a desperate attempt to win customers. But the death blow was what happened next: Two weeks after the Sidcup jokes started, consumers stopped laughing when c.o.ke tersely announced it was voluntarily recalling half a million bottles of Dasani. The water, it explained, had been contaminated with levels of the carcinogen bromate at 22 parts per billion, twice the amount allowed by the FSA (or FDA).

In the ultimate irony, then, c.o.ke's water was not only no more pure than London tap, but also more dangerous to drink. Quickly, Thames Water declared its its water safe. Soon it became apparent the contamination hadn't come from the pipes, but rather from a by-product of ozonation, one of the very methods c.o.ke boasted of to ”purify” its water. In a statement, c.o.ke all but blamed the British government, saying that it was legally required to add calcium chloride into the water in the UK. The high level of bromide in calcium chloride, it continued, led to the formation of bromate when exposed to ozone. water safe. Soon it became apparent the contamination hadn't come from the pipes, but rather from a by-product of ozonation, one of the very methods c.o.ke boasted of to ”purify” its water. In a statement, c.o.ke all but blamed the British government, saying that it was legally required to add calcium chloride into the water in the UK. The high level of bromide in calcium chloride, it continued, led to the formation of bromate when exposed to ozone.

That explanation might have held more water if the tendency to create bromate through ozonation wasn't already well known in the industry. Just two years before, the FDA had warned manufacturers to use care in ozonation and test finished products for the presence of the chemical. An industry trade publication at the time went so far as to provide a formula for how much bromate can be formed given the amount of bromide in the source water. As a result of the warnings, Nestle stopped using ozonation for Perrier in June 2001, even as c.o.ke and Pepsi continued the process.

Whether through carelessness or arrogance, c.o.ke had turned a public relations hiccup into a disaster, as Britons now vocalized their anger at the American company. ”Should I Really Despise Coca-Cola?” read a typical headline, and there were plays on c.o.ke's own branding, such as ”Things Get Worse with c.o.ke” and ”Dasani: It's a Real Disaster.” In the face of such criticism, c.o.ke declared an end to its European conquest, swallowing a cost of more than $45 million and giving up dreams of converting the French.

For the Europeans, it was the perfect opportunity to stick it in America's eye during a time when the continent was chafing under George W. Bush's invasion of Iraq and anti-American sentiment was at an all-time high. Any c.o.ke exec tempted to write off the fiasco as the cranky proclivities of another continent, however, was due for a rude awakening back on American sh.o.r.es.

It's a bl.u.s.tery spring day in Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts, where sets of four blue Dixie cups are arranged on a folding table in the middle of a city square. Three of the cups contain bottled water from the country's most popular brands-Dasani, Aquafina, and Nestle's Poland Spring. The fourth cup is full of tap water from a cafe up the street. One by one, pa.s.sersby stop by to sample them and guess which is which. If you think it'd be easy to tell the difference between the bottled water and the tap, you'd be wrong. The success rate of folks is only slightly better than random. Typical is Joe Marsden, a Cambridge resident, who stares in sullen disbelief at the table after identifying tap water as Dasani. ”I thought I would have at least gotten Dasani or Aquafina right because I drink them the most,” he says. ”I couldn't tell the difference at all.” in Cambridge, Ma.s.sachusetts, where sets of four blue Dixie cups are arranged on a folding table in the middle of a city square. Three of the cups contain bottled water from the country's most popular brands-Dasani, Aquafina, and Nestle's Poland Spring. The fourth cup is full of tap water from a cafe up the street. One by one, pa.s.sersby stop by to sample them and guess which is which. If you think it'd be easy to tell the difference between the bottled water and the tap, you'd be wrong. The success rate of folks is only slightly better than random. Typical is Joe Marsden, a Cambridge resident, who stares in sullen disbelief at the table after identifying tap water as Dasani. ”I thought I would have at least gotten Dasani or Aquafina right because I drink them the most,” he says. ”I couldn't tell the difference at all.”

Dubbed the ”Tap Water Challenge,” the update of the Pepsi Challenge is run nationally by young activists belonging to the group Corporate Accountability International (CAI), which has made bottled water the latest front in what it sees as the excesses of corporate power. Like anti-soda lawyer d.i.c.k Daynard, CAI cut its teeth in the fight against Big Tobacco in the 1990s, when it waged a boycott against Kraft, parent company of Philip Morris. However, the group dates back to two decades before, when it was originally founded as the Infant Formula Action Coalition (INFACT) to attack Nestle for its promotion of baby formula over breast milk overseas. After a bitterly fought campaign, Nestle eventually agreed to stop pus.h.i.+ng its formula in 1984. Now, twenty years later, Nestle was profiting off another product that the activists thought should be distributed for free, as one of the four largest bottled water producers along with European giant Danone (parent company of Evian), PepsiCo, and Coca-Cola.