[BendtheBar]

Posting for discussion...

Working in the industry, I often receive unsolicited "plea" emails from folks asking me to help them get coverage for their stories. This week I received an email from someone who was very upset about Olympic athletes shilling fast food:

Junk Food OlympiAds: Athletes Fuel Games? Fast-Food Assault

Hurdler LoLo Jones would love for you to bite into a Big Mac. And wrestler Henry Cejudo would be thrilled if you’d wash that down with an ice-cold soda. It’s what they do all the time – or so they make you think. On the Olympics page of Coca-Cola’s website, amputee Paralympic swimmer Jessica Long appears in her swimming suit, hair wet, holding — you guessed it — a soda. She apparently doesn’t even have time to towel off after a tough workout or a race before grabbing a bottle of the high-calorie, high-sugar fizzy beverage to recover.

“They’re giving people mixed messages,” says Claire Kennedy, MS, RD, a licensed dietitian nutritionist at Tufts Health Center in Boston. “The worst thing you can do when you’re coming in from a swim or a run is to grab a Coke.”

So, the question is...do you find this to be a big issue, or no big whoop?