The Center for Science in the Public Interest, an organization with a high media profile despite its diminished credibility, is suing Coca-Cola over the labeling of its Vitamin Water drinks. Reports Reuters:

A U.S. consumer group said Thursday it filed a class action lawsuit against Coca-Cola Co, accusing the company of making deceptive health claims about its VitaminWater beverages.
… “In fact, according to CSPI nutritionists, the 33 grams of sugar in each bottle of VitaminWater do more to promote obesity, diabetes and other health problems than the vitamins in the drinks do to perform the advertised benefits listed on the bottles,” the consumer group said.

Reuters, in its characteristic style, only identifies CSPI as a “consumer group.” It doesn’t bother to report that it is a highly ideological lobbying group with a history of misstating the facts when it comes to beverages:

In 1998 CSPI issued a report titled “Liquid Candy,” which claimed that some teenagers get up to 25 percent of their calories from soda. Just one week later, following massive media attention, CSPI admitted that it had overstated this figure by a whopping 100 percent.

Apparently, 100 percent off isn’t enough to get Reuters’s attention.

CSPI is keenly interested in keeping people from saying certain things, whether it’s suing over how Coke labels and advertises its products or trying to stop vintners from advertising the health benefits of moderate wine consumption. They’ve attempted to have the government financially punish NASCAR’s advertising business for accepting beer sponsorships. And while CSPI is interested in blocking certain kinds of speech, it’s also interested in forcing people to engage in other kinds of speech, from the familiar demand for ever-more-cumbrous food-labeling requirements to demands for federally funded anti-alcohol propaganda on television. But free people ought to be able to more or less say what they want, and ought not be conscripted, through taxes, into funding speech they do not wish to fund. (If I’m going to be taxed for alcohol propaganda, I want my commercial to advertise the horrors of ruining perfectly good bourbon with Coke and ice. That’s no way to treat a breakfast.)

CSPI describes its mission in part as to “counter industry’s powerful influence on public opinion.” It’s one thing to do so by presenting your own case in a debate. It’s another thing to do so by using lawsuits and political force to keep people from saying things you don’t want them to say, i.e. that drinking a glass of bordeaux now and again is good for people. CSPI says it derives most of its money from donations and from publishing a newsletter. When you have a large financial interest in publishing a newsletter, it’s a little cheap and dirty to try to stop others from publishing their own points of view. It’s shamefully illiberal, and it’s shameful that our government abets them.

ALSO: Anybody ever heard of the “Center for Health, Communications and the Environment”? CSPI lists this group as a funder, but searching for the name yields nothing beyond CSPI’s web site. Anybody know what this organization is or what it does, or whether it exists for some purpose other than making donations to CSPI? Drop me a note if you have any information.