PepsiCo was part of an exciting announcement this week – we became the first private sector company to participate in one of the Inter-American Development Bank’s (IDB) regional trust funds for development activities. The IDB is the largest multilateral provider of development financing for Latin America and the Caribbean, and we hope that our five-year partnership will spur social and economic growth in 26 countries across Latin America and the Caribbean. The inaugural agriculture project of the partnership will significantly expand commercial sunflower crop production in Mexico and create a sustainable market for sunflower production. For PepsiCo, the sunflower crop will provide a source of heart-healthy high-oleic sunflower oil (HOSO) for cooking many PepsiCo products produced in Mexico under the Sabritas and Gamesa-Quaker brands. Currently the demand of HOSO is increasing because of its heart-healthy properties. This agreement will help to support the supply of healthy local... Read more

Connecting with people about the importance of nutrition requires personal attention. That’s the lesson from Dr. Steven Shapin’s recent book, “Never Pure: Historical Studies of Science as if It Was Produced by People with Bodies, Situated in Time, Space, Culture, and Society, and Struggling for Credibility and Authority.” Dr. Shapin, a professor of the History of Science at Harvard, traces the history of how people have viewed healthy eating and drinking. In particular, I was interested in the section in which Dr. Shapin discusses the meaning of “expert” in the nutrition science context. He outlines the tension between nutrition as hard science and nutrition as popular culture and does so in a compelling manner. Dr. Shapin begins with a discussion of the mainstream hard scientific view of nutrition. His narrative draws parallels between the standard clinical dietary focus of eating to avoid heart disease, diabetes and cancer... Read more

Diabetes is a serious disease affecting over 27 million Americans. If the current projections continue, that number could triple by 2050, according to CDC scientists. Diabetes occurs when a person’s insulin production either shuts down (type 1 diabetes) or insulin and the body’s cells no longer work together as efficiently as they should (type 2 diabetes).  In both cases the result is that glucose, the fuel that the body uses to supply cells with energy, can not enter the cells. This leads to excess glucose in the blood, causing the condition known as high blood sugar.   There is a third type of diabetes, gestational diabetes, which can develop during pregnancy. People with type 1 diabetes need insulin to help balance their blood sugars.  People with type 2 diabetes can often balance their blood sugars adequately with oral medicines.  Both forms of diabetes require a healthy diet and... Read more

Last week, PepsiCo sponsored the American Dietetic Association’s annual Food & Nutrition Conference in Boston, an event that drew more than 10,000 food and nutrition experts to engage in discussions about global nutrition. By bringing together leading dietitians, nutrition science researchers, policy makers, health care providers and food companies, events like this hold significant potential for the advancement of public health. Read more