The conference covered a variety of topics, including chickpea nutrition, sustainable growing practices, and yield and breeding issues. The crop withstands drought stress, needs little fertilizer as a nitrogen-fixing plant, and contributes to sustainable grain production during cereal-pulse crop rotation.

Chickpea is popular in many parts of the world, particularly in the Indian sub-continent and Middle Eastern countries. It has many uses, with both its leaves and seeds available for consumption.  There are two main varieties – the larger, white Kabuli and the smaller, darker Desi.  It is prepared in a variety of ways – it can be boiled, roasted or fried as part of a main meal; made into spreads such as hummus; and converted into flour for use as an ingredient in breads, crackers, extruded snacks and sweets, and even beverages.

As with other pulses, consumption of the chickpea has the potential to reduce risk of coronary heart disease, diabetes, and obesity. It can lower serum cholesterol concentrations and is a good source of Vitamin A, iron, omega-3 fatty acids, and fiber. Finally, with an average of 22% protein, the chickpea may serve as a more sustainable alternative to meat and is a potential solution to growing soy allergies in developed nations (there is anecdotal evidence of chickpea allergies identified in populations in Spain).

Despite the many advantages of chickpea, it remains a minor, specialty crop. Chickpea is considered by many to be an “orphan crop,” one that plays an important role in regional food security but is less important than major crops on the international stage. Consequently, it has received less attention from crop breeders and agriculture research institutions. Chickpea grows over a total of 11 million hectares worldwide, while in comparison a major cereal like wheat grows over 200 million hectares!  Investment needs to be stepped up on pulse crops like the chickpea to improve yields, quality, nutritional and processing characteristics so that more consumers can benefit from this nutritious and delicious food!

The meeting focused explicitly on the links between agriculture and nutrition and aligned with some new powerful movements gaining momentum such as Scaling Up Nutrition and Hillary Clinton’s Thousand Days Initiative. These programs aim to support nutrition, not just the production of more food for the world’s population.

As the world’s second largest food and beverage company, PepsiCo is embedded throughout entire value chain, from food producers all the way to food consumers. We depend on agriculture for all the ingredients that go into our foods and beverages.  As Indra pointed out in her video message presented at the conference, “Companies like PepsiCo are uniquely positioned to help farmers and growers improve production, processing, and manufacturing. We can use our supply chain expertise to reduce food waste and deliver better nutrition.”

Those strengths are what can make PepsiCo a leader in linking agriculture and nutrition and a relevant participant at conferences such as Vision 2020. Not only could we learn from interactions at this meeting, but we were also one of the handful of private sector players here who can take what we learn and “just do it.”  We believe our scalability across the value chain gives us a natural advantage to make a greater impact than many NGOs and governments working alone. Just as important, we have the motivation to ensure that nutrition is maintained throughout our supply chain.  The value chain approach can help guide us in this effort:

1.    The value chain approach helps to identify gaps and opportunities to unlock consumers’ access, increase demand and acceptability to nutritious food
2.    The supply chain can be used to figure out how adding nutrition value adds economic value to the products
3.    The value chain approach offers possibilities for coordinated, multisectoral solutions, for example in financing, marketing and impact assessment.

The food industry needs to give careful consideration to the nutrition that people need.  One billion people don’t have enough to eat and over 1 billion are overweight and 2 billion suffer from micronutrient deficiencies.  The good news is that a balanced diet rich in certain foods – legumes, fruits, vegetables, low-fat dairy – are good for all, and they’re also good for PepsiCo’s business.  Our work in chickpea in Ethiopia will yield a nutritious supplementary feeding product for undernourished children, but will also be the foundation for nutritious snacks and main meals for retail.  (Contrary to popular perception, about 60 percent of the world’s population can afford and are willing to pay for value-added foods and beverages.)

Engaging in these type conferences gives us the chance to meet with people and organizations that can help us meet our objectives – those who can help unlock financing mechanisms to support our work in Ethiopia, and those who can help us evaluate and communicate our work effectively with governments and civil society.

Most of all, our engagement in this conference helped to dispel some of the concerns that this community of academics and policy-makers have about the food industry.

Despite some negative rumblings about PepsiCo being a sponsor of the conference, we had many supporters.  Our India business set up a booth at the conference to showcase our pioneering work with farmers in direct-seeded rice and potatoes; India’s heart health mission; Dr. Mehmood Khan’s presentation on the Global Nutrition Group; and demonstration of some of our more nutritious products including Tropicana juices, Aliva crackers and Quaker Oats.  Many visitors to the booth learned not only that PepsiCo produces much more than just a soft drink and how our work makes explicit links between agriculture, nutrition and environmental sustainability.

We come away from the conference with a sense that there is great momentum and energy to bring together the worlds of agriculture and nutrition.  What we have also learned is that few actors have the ability to have an impact the way PepsiCo does.  One of the key designers of this conference said to us that the public sector and NGOs want to discuss how to do this, and want to get all the details right on paper – while the private sector will just go out and do it!

The first report, ‘2011 State of the World: Innovations that Nourish the Planet’, was produced by the Worldwatch Institute. The report is based on two years of extensive reviews of farming and food across Africa. It highlights the centrality of women as the major contributors to farming, the massive post harvest losses that remain common, and the importance of taking an ecological approach to addressing soil health. It is illustrated with many optimistic stories of real progress in boosting productivity in a continent that contains over 250 million of the world’s 1 billion hungry.

The second report, a product of the United Kingdom’s Foresight team and entitled ‘The Future of Food and Farming: Challenges and Choices for Global Sustainability’ is based in the inputs of over 400 scientists around the world. The report paints a stark picture of a failing food system that will be subject to greater volatility in years to come. It highlights how the current food system has negative impacts on global water use, green house gas emissions, biodiversity and human health.

At the official launch on January 25^th, the report received strong support from the UK government along with a commitment to act on the domestic and international recommendations.  These include: increasing food supply in a more sustainable and intensified way and through greater use of a range of technology options; moderating demand for some foods, particularly meat; reducing waste (post harvest waste in Africa and post purchase waste in developed countries); and building closer links between nutrition and agriculture (with a greater focus on biofortification being just one example cited).

The emphasis on Africa comes just as PepsiCo has announced plans to step up its activities on the continent. This creates unprecedented opportunities to partner with leading development agencies like the UK Department for International Development (DFID) and United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and build private-public alliances aimed at boosting ecologically sustainable forms of agriculture that are directly linked to job creation and hunger elimination.

The focus on sustainable agriculture comes as we implement our bold commitments on health and the environment in a more integrated way. For example, as we expand our dairy business, we will need to consider ways of offsetting the increased methane production it will cause with tree planting and other agricultural investments.

The success of our Global Nutrition Group, and in fact all of PepsiCo, will increasingly depend upon how we secure our supply chain for the future. And this will increasingly require us to redouble our insights and investments in sustainable agriculture. I urge our readers to read these reports and send comments about how you feel we should respond in the short, medium and long term. This might start by committing to eat less meat, starting a vegetable garden, or becoming a volunteer!

We do not expect to be judged by our words alone but rather on the basis of verifiable data. PepsiCo’s recent goals and commitments included many features that show deep change is underway. All commitments are global in scope and many include quantitative data with explicit timelines for implementation. Taken together they address most major public health recommendations for actions including those of the World Health Organization. They cover complex issues including restricted marketing to kids, the elimination of direct sales of full calorie soft drinks for primary and secondary schools by the end of next year, and quantitative targets for sodium, saturated fat and sugar levels in the coming years. Actions are underway across the company in relation to all of these health commitments as well as to a matching set of environmental ones.

As we achieve our targets, we will provide solid evidence of compliance. We would hope that colleagues in the public sector and academia will judge us on the basis of that evidence.

As a modern multinational corporation, we spend considerable time thinking about what we need to do to assure our long-term success. In doing so, we and many others across the corporate world acknowledge the importance of taking actions that might not yield immediate gains to the short term bottom line but are the right actions in terms of improving the health and environment of our future consumers.

Trans-fat removal, sodium reduction and reductions in saturated fat are a few examples of expensive undertakings executed by PepsiCo over the last few years that have not all yielded increased short-term profits. Such changes have not been demanded by governments or even consumers, but have been seen as important actions in response to scientific knowledge.

Finally, we recognise the importance of placing our research and views within the public domain for two reasons. Firstly, to allow our ideas to undergo the rigors of the peer review process, and secondly, to allow colleagues to understand where further advances in science and policy are needed to achieve public health goals. We have recently we summarized views on:

• Chronic diseases in a Globalization and Health journal (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20509876 )
• Our role in addressing undernutrition in the American Journal of Public Health (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20395578)
• Our public statements in conferences are increasingly being webcast in full (questions and responses included) and one recent debate on obesity in Australia is at http://www.themonthly.com.au/obesity-food-industry-more-problem-or-solution-2077

The meeting provided a chance to preview several major papers and discussion themes that will be highlighted during the ICO. Since the last ICO meeting  (4 years ago) there has been a continued unabated upward trend in obesity. The only notable exceptions being in some European countries where evidence of a slowdown is appearing. The most rapid increases are being reported in emerging markets.
 
Boyd Swinburn from Australia highlighted the need to simultaneously address socio-cultural and behavioral factors while tackling environmental and policy issues. Several examples of “obesogenic” socio-cultural factors were provided based on research in diverse populations in the Asia-Pacific region. They included how people value food, body size and image as well as varied attitudes to physical activity.
 
Later papers indicated how important it was to address these issues in designing community based interventions. However, despite efforts to draw upon local values and global knowledge about what works, most of the studies attempting to reduce obesity in kids that were based on school programs showed limited to no impact. This is not surprising and simply emphasizes the importance of Boyd’s call to address environmental factors alongside school improvements.
 
In my presentation I outlined several specific ways in which food companies were starting to address such factors. These include lowering the energy density and increasing the nutrient quality of products; reducing portion sizes; restricting marketing of certain products to kids; promoting calorie transparency and supporting efforts to increase physical activity. As would be anticipated, there was a lively and healthy debate about whether industry was going far enough and fast enough.  And several leading academics raised concerns about processed foods and snacks displacing fresh and minimally processed foods in emerging markets.
 
In response to these critiques I identified several areas of work where combining private and public initiatives could accelerate learning and action in relation to obesity control. These included work to shift from a volume/food quantity culture to one based on an appreciation of food quality, and a willingness to pay for this; research and action to address the reality that many of the most desired foods are relatively more expensive than those contributing to energy dense products ; investment by the public and private sectors in twenty first century nutrition science especially in developing countries; and the development of better metrics to track  and optimally manage calorie flows.
 
A prerequisite to making progress on these areas was the need to build a means of talking and working together in ways in which neither academics nor corporate players feel they need to compromise their values and beliefs.

I believe that the remaining areas of disagreement should not retard working together on issues of mutual benefit. What are some of the opportunities and challenges you see? I look forward to bloggers’ view on this critical point.

The highly-regarded Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and the Trust for America’s Health this week published the seventh annual edition of “F as in Fat”, a report on obesity in the U.S.  The report includes commentary by a variety of notable public figures.   Among them is PepsiCo Chairman and CEO Indra Nooyi.

The fact that the report would include comments from the leader of a food company, particularly one whose product portfolio includes treats like soft drinks and potato chips, has drawn some criticism.  The critics seem to feel there is no place for a food industry viewpoint in such a report.

I disagree.

To suggest PepsiCo and other food companies should not have a voice in the discussion of how to address global obesity seems counterproductive.

The UK Foresight Report on Obesity and the White House Report on Obesity both have spelled out roles industry can play in preventing obesity in children.  And leading food companies, including PepsiCo, have made specific commitments to obesity prevention.

Industry efforts include: reducing portion sizes and energy density through reformulation and replacement; altering marketing to make healthy choices easier; improving labeling; replacing certain products in schools; investing in research on satiety; and evolving business models to shift focus from volume to nutrition quality.

Before turning a cold shoulder on the food industry, consider how other large-scale problems have been addressed.  In my 10 years at the World Health Organization I saw private-public partnerships tangibly improve people’s lives by helping to tackle challenges ranging from AIDS and polio to motor vehicle injuries and child survival.  In every case, initial mistrust gave way to new solutions with real benefits.

With 5 years to go before the MDG goals, set in 1990, need to be achieved, there was strong evidence of progress on several global health goals. Progress includes improved access to water, declines in under nutrition, sharp increases in vaccine coverage, and greater access to malaria bed nets. However, the attainment of these goals remains uneven with little progress evident in reducing under nutrition, particularly in two large countries – India and Nigeria – which account for 21% and 12% of all stunted kids respectively worldwide. Further, very little evidence of progress in reducing maternal deaths is reported, and across Africa and Asia, access to modern sanitation services remains poor.

My task was to reflect on the role of the private sector in contributing to more rapid progress. I highlighted the potential of food companies to address world hunger through many strategies PepsiCo already has underway, the power of companies to reduce poverty through employment creation, and the critical need to fully activate one of the most neglected MDGs - namely MDG 8 that explicitly calls for private-public partnerships.

Audience reaction was mainly positive especially when I highlighted how real progress has been made in improving vaccine access because of a massive 10-year old private-public partnership, the Global Alliance for Vaccines and Immunizations (GAVI). GAVI has created markets for vaccine companies to innovate and develop products for the poor, actively established an incentive system through advance purchase agreements to support long term investment by companies, and developed a new, efficient governance structure that involves the WHO and UNICEF without becoming bogged down in their bureaucracies.

I stressed that a GAVI formula for nutrition related issues seems long overdue!

For more details on the meeting, visit: www.globalhealthconference.org.

The report highlights the reality that heart disease and stroke are the leading cause of death worldwide, accounting for 28% of all deaths. Death rates in developing countries such as China, India and Mexico have become much higher than those in developed countries. Of growing concern is that deaths occur up to a decade sooner among patients in these countries as compared to the developed world.

The major risk factors have been known for decades and include unhealthy diets (mainly related to the quality of fats, the levels of sodium intake, and a lack of fresh foods), lack of physical activity and excess alcohol use. However, additional factors have emerged in recent years. Overweight and obesity, and closely related, type II diabetes, are universal problems undermining health gains in many countries. Overweight and obese mothers have children at greater long terms risks for CVD, and babies born either underweight or overweight are similarly at greater risk many decades later.

The report does not dwell on the causes of CVD but rather focuses on actions needed by many sectors of society – including the private sector. The importance of food companies collaborating with international public-sector efforts of governments is stressed in several places. In particular companies’ responsibilities in lowering sodium, saturated fat levels, unhealthy oils and sugars in foods and supporting efforts to address obesity including marketing restrictions to children, clearer labels, reformulated products with lower energy densities and high nutrient quality and support for physical activity programs are all mentioned.

The conference addressed conditions needed to enable the MDGs to be met, including economic growth, stable states, the empowerment of women and tackling climate change. PepsiCo was one of two food companies, along with Unilever, invited to participate along with over 80 technical experts, key ministers and policy makers from developing countries.

Of particular interest was DFID unveiling their first global under nutrition program which targets six countries. Two of them, Nigeria and India, coincide with work PepsiCo is doing in those countries on under-nutrition. I also was impressed with the focus on the fundamental importance of investing in girls as a key element of for progress on all MDGs. The conference made it clear that we must all work with old and new partners to help poor countries participate in, and benefit from, high and sustained economic growth which creates markets, jobs and incomes in order to reach the MDGs.

For more information see the conference photo stream on flickr and a series of videos on the DFID site.

The policy details were drawn up based on discussions with the World Heart Federation which exemplifies our belief that working in collaboration with a variety of partners is the best way to make a difference in the health of people around the world.

We are working with our bottlers, vending companies and distributors – along with parents, community leaders, and school officials around the world – to help make school settings conducive to the health of students. This global school beverage policy advances our existing commitments to reducing calories in schools by offering students a wider range of low-calorie and nutritious beverages in appropriate portions. For more information please see our press release.