Coca-Cola Responds to Tom Brady’s ‘Poison’ Remarks

Image via Lebook.com

In Tom Brady’s revealing 45-minute radio interview yesterday—spawned by our expose of his BFF, guru, and body man Alex Guerrero—Brady took shots at “Western Medicine” and—clear out of the blue—hurled a bomb at junk food and how it’s marketed.

Here’s what Brady told WEEI’s Dennis and Callahan on Monday:

“You’ll probably go out and drink Coca-Cola and think, ‘Oh yeah, that’s no problem.’ Why? Because they pay lots of money for advertisements to think that you should drink Coca-Cola for a living? No, I totally disagree with that. And when people do that, I think that’s quackery. And the fact that they can sell that to kids? I mean, that’s poison for kids. But they keep doing it.”

Newsflash: From 2007 until 2010, Tom Brady was a paid spokesman for the Coca-Cola Company’s Glaceau SmartWater. You may remember the ads. Back in 2007, Brady said of the drink, “It’s a replacement product that’s better for you, whether I’m working out or for the morning when I wake up.”

Asked about Brady’s comments that Coca-Cola is “poison for kids,” the cola behemoth provided the following statement to Boston:

“All of our beverages are safe and can be enjoyed as part of a balanced lifestyle. We offer more than 200 low‐ and no‐calorie beverages in the U.S. and Canada and a wide variety of smaller portion sizes of our regular drinks. As a responsible beverage company and marketer, we prominently provide calorie and sugar information for our beverages so people can choose what makes sense for them and their families.”

Reminder: Brady is the same human who endorsed a product called NeuroSafe, a drink that purported not only to prevent concussions but also to help people recover from traumatic head injuries.

“NeuroSafe makes me feel comfortable that if I get a concusion [sic] I can recover faster and more fully,” Brady was quoted as saying in a product endorsement in 2011.

Another endorsement for NeuroSafe came from Brady teammate Wes Welker, who suffered numerous concussions and is currently out of the league. The FTC investigated NeuroSafe and found no scientific evidence that it prevented or cured concussions. Guerrero, whose company sold and distributed NeuroSafe, shut down the company and agreed to give refunds to anyone who’d purchased it. He’s now Brady’s business partner in TB12 LLC, with a sprawling fitness and nutrition center at Patriots Place that reportedly treats many Patriots players.

For a guy who claims to perform regular brain exercises, Brady sure seems to have a short memory. He lambasts Coca-Cola but conveniently forgets that he used to endorse a Coca-Cola product. And, as Yahoo Sports pointed out in its recap of Brady’s WEEI filibuster on preventative non-Western medicine, he also seems to forget that he is not, in point of fact, utterly invincible.

“It kills me to see all these pitchers having Tommy John surgery, knowing that could be avoided [Brady told WEEI]. Hamstring pulls and groin injuries, so many of these things that I just shake my head and I go, I can’t believe that this still happens in today’s day and age. That’s why Alex and I started TB12, because I felt based on the care that I received over 10 years, this is what my calling will be after football, is to educate people, and what it really takes.”

Tell that to the Patriots, who listed Brady as questionable or probable with shoulder, finger, rib and foot problems for two straight entire seasons in 2009 and 2010. Maybe it took him a little while to acclimate to becoming an immortal under Guerrero’s guidelines, but that wouldn’t explain last year’s “significant” ankle injury during the regular season or the cold Brady suffered from during the Super Bowl week.

Of course there are benefits to a healthy diet, vegetable supplements and a holistic approach to life—and perhaps those things can prevent some injury and disease—but either Brady doesn’t understand how condescending it must sound to players with injuries he shakes his head at and doctors who treat patients that are suffering from the diseases Guerrero claims to have cured, or he just doesn’t care.