Soft drink giant Cola-Cola has revealed it has spent $1.7 million funding academics and health fitness groups in Australia over the past five years.

In a list released on its website, it confirms that 36 organisations have been funded, including the Exercise is Medicine Project ($247,570), Sports Medicine Australia ($120,000) and the University of Sydney ($375,540).

Leading American food blogger and outspoken anti-sugar campaigner Professor Marion Nestle said the funding would compromise the organisations and their integrity — particularly if they were doing research into obesity.

"If they are doing research on diet and health then the Coca-Cola funding is going to make them look as if they are working for the company. I don't think that's good for their independence or their research," she told 7.30.

"Many of these studies look like they are just there to make it easier for the company to make health claims for its products."

Professor Tim Olds, from the University of SA, has received $400,000 from Coca Cola for an international study on obesity.

He said it did not matter where funding came from.

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"I just don't have a problem with it," he told 7.30.

"That's just the way that capitalism works for the last 150 years, and to deny that, you just have to get with the program."

"I think, frankly, this is old-style superannuated chardonnay socialism. We're not going to have a world where there is no private funding of public sector research. If we did, the loss of jobs and the loss of taxation would just be enormous and unsupportable.

"I have got about $26 million in funding and of that probably less than $2 million would have come from industry sources."

Professor Tim Olds said he did not have a problem with accepting Coca-Cola's cash

Professor Stephen Simpson is one of Australia's leaders in obesity research.

In 2014 he was approached by an American academic, Professor Jim Hill, to join a global research group.

It was not clear to Professor Simpson who was actually funding the group.

"I said send me the details when you get back to the US, and I discussed the opportunity with my engagement with industry, because it was clear that it was funded by industry," he told 7.30.

"But when it became clear that it was singularly funded by Coke, that immediately was against the fundamental principles of our guidelines, so I declined."

He said that an industry future fund would be a better model of industry funding.

"What that would be, would be a substantial fund to which the industry contributes, but that's the end of their relationship," he said.

Coca Cola was approached for an interview by 7.30 but it declined.

List of Coca-Cola's donations in Australia

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