Move away from your La-Z-Boy. Don’t trust that bar stool. Get a restraining order against your wingback. The geniuses at Coca-Cola have figured out why we’re so overweight and — drum roll, please — it’s the chairs that are the culprit.

No, this isn’t a joke. Yesterday, Ottawa physician Yoni Freedhoff posted a new Coca-Cola commercial on his blog. My first reaction, upon viewing it, was this must be a parody. No rational corporation or ad agency would ever come up with a concept this dumb. But the commercial is not a parody. It was created by an advertising agency in Madrid, Publicis Spain. Here’s the commercial — I suggest you sit down, in a chair, before you watch it:





Of course, a commercial this stupid and offensive (Coca-Cola seems to be implying that we’re all a bunch of lazy slackers with our posteriors glued to any chair in the vicinity) was bound to trigger our imaginations. Shouldn’t Coke and their loopy ad agency, Publicis Spain, do a follow up and single out other causes of our obesity woes? How about blaming legs (for not moving), mouths (for opening up and ingesting Coca-Cola and Peeps), or grandmothers (for giving us too large a slice of marble poundcake)? Coke could also target cars (for keeping us from walking) or underwear (for bunching up when we walk too fast and causing us to sit in a chair). The causes of obesity are limitless! If you can think of any other causes we’ve missed, please share them in the comments section.

However, according to Coca-Cola, there is one thing that bears no responsibility for today’s obesity epidemic — Coca-Cola. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why it is imperative that we pass strong policies that reign in junk food producers/marketers like Coca-Cola.

I’m going to go sit down now.