Big Food and the calorie trap
Food companies no longer fear the calorie-counting message: it allows them to take their consumers' focus away from the overall quality of their foods...
"...advertisements for the Coca-Cola campaign actually repeat the dominant public health message regarding calories, proclaiming that "all calories count, and if you eat and drink more calories than you burn off, you'll gain weight. That goes for Coca-Cola and everything else with calories."
The idea that "a calorie is a calorie"—that all calories are the same—suggests that a calorie of sugar is the same as a calorie of carrots, and that the quality of the foods supplying these uniform calories is irrelevant went it comes to weight gain or loss. This plays into the hands of highly processed foods and beverages producers, as it suggests that their products are no different to and no worse than any others, other than the number of calories they contain..."
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/jul/30/junk-food-calories