These chickpeas, in pod and on stem, are being grown on a farm in Shoa, Ethiopia about an hour from the capital city, Addis Ababa. The chickpea was originally found in what is now Turkey about 7,500 years ago. Read more

Each year, millions of people are told to change the way they eat for better health. Why?  The bulk of medical spending is tied to lifestyle diseases, like heart disease, all of which are said to be preventable — if we just took better care of ourselves. I have been studying and observing people’s relationship with food for the past twenty years. We all generally accept the fact that what we eat and how we live affect our body and our health.  DON’T WE?!  So now I am more intrigued with another very important question — how can we create a society that’s addicted to health. The current conversation around nutrition isn’t very inspiring.  It’s no wonder (1) Experts rarely agree on nutrition science; (2) Media bombards us with conflicting reports; (3) Most doctors don’t have the time to talk about it.  Most of what we hear... Read more

Earlier this month, Mehmood Khan spoke with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution about research into new salt, beverage sweeteners, bottles made from orange peels, compostable chip bags and “drinkable oats.” Mehmood ended the interview by saying, “You learn, you continue
 to improve, you stay ahead.” Read the whole interview to find out more. Read more

This post is co-authored by Jose Luis Prado, President, Quaker Foods and Snacks North America, PepsiCo // Eating a healthy breakfast is a fundamental step in building a nutritious, total diet that meets the updated Dietary Guidelines for Americans. A growing body of research supports eating breakfast regularly for heart health, lower body weight and improved overall diet quality. Breakfast consumers tend to have higher micronutrient intakes, partly because of the fortification of breakfast cereals, and have a better macronutrient profile than “breakfast skippers” (1). Studies in children suggest that breakfast eaters are more likely to meet daily nutrient intake guidelines compared with children who eat breakfast infrequently or skip breakfast (2). Evidence suggests that regular breakfast consumers also have healthier body weights than those who skip breakfast (3). It has been suggested that skipping breakfast may lead to overall greater levels of hunger later in the... Read more

Two reports were recently released within a week of each other that highlight the continued presence of hunger in a world where obesity is increasing, and the long-term consequences for the environment given current farming practices in many parts of the world. Both are worth reading and have implications for PepsiCo. 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... Read more

Readers of the Hartford Courant and Washington Post may recently have come across a profile on a research lab that we opened in New Haven, Conn., in 2010. The lab has eight full-time scientists whose work focuses on finding ways to make snack foods more healthful. The article quotes three scientists who are also Food Frontiers bloggers: Mark Pirner, Eric Milgram and Jeff Zachwieja. The article reads, in part: “PepsiCo officials say the lab is part of a pattern toward offering more healthful fare. In expanding its product line, Pepsi has bought part of Sabra, a company that makes hummus; its Frito-Lay division now offers sunflower seeds and several types of nuts. And the company recently bought Wimm-Bill-Dann, a Russian dairy company. Placing a greater emphasis on science, Pepsi hired Mehmood Khan in 2007 as its chief scientific officer. Khan, who had worked as an endocrinologist at the Mayo Clinic, has... 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

Co-Authored by Tara Acharya, Senior Manager, Global Health Policy, PepsiCo // Undernutrition is one of the world’s most serious and least addressed global health and development problems. As a global food and beverage company, PepsiCo believes it can play an important role in reducing the human and economic costs of the issue. Women and children are undernutrition’s biggest victims and, along with other development challenges, undernutrition causes an estimated 3.5 million preventable maternal and child deaths a year.  Folate deficiency, which contributes to premature birth, low birthweight and neural tube defects in infants, plays a crucial role in undernutrition. The human body requires folate to manufacture erythrocytes, synthesize DNA, and to regulate normal growth. The recommended daily intake for young women is 400 mg. Poor overall nutrition and lack of access to folate-enriched food products present a critical barrier to women in developing countries. As part of the... Read more

Earlier this week, PepsiCo’s blog, Food Frontiers, was added to ScienceBlogs.com so we could begin open discussions about the role science can play in finding solutions to global nutrition challenges. Since the announcement of our participation in ScienceBlogs.com, we’ve heard some very candid feedback from the ScienceBlogs community. As many of you have undoubtedly heard by now, the Food Frontiers blog has been removed from ScienceBlogs. In hearing the community’s feedback, we agree with this decision and feel that the best approach is to take a step back and first examine the role industry scientists, such as myself, can play in the discussion about nutrition science within the larger scientific community. We knew going in that there would be real differences among scientists within and outside of industry. Our intent is to embrace that conversation, share what we’re doing, and have open discussions to learn from one... Read more