Weekend Plate: Pepsi Goes Healthy

Pepsi is attempting to go healthy. Yes, soft drink, snack food wielding Pepsi. A January article in Business Week says that in the past five years, the snack food behemoth has hired “a dozen physicians and PhD’s”. Their biggest name hire has been Derek Yach who was the executive director of the W.H.O. Along with the nice draft picks, their research and development budget has increased 38% in three years.

While it would be nice to think Pepsi Co. had a morality epiphany to change their products to benefit the health of their consumers, that is far too optimistic. Pepsi is a business. Therefore, their primary agenda is to make a profit. The point is consumers have decreased their soft drink consumption substantially in the past decade, letting the fizz out of the company’s profit margin. To survive, the company is providing the market with what it demands, a healthier option. How perfect that this article was under the strategy and competition section of the magazine.

I can’t fully slather on the compliments for the company. Using aspartame and other additives to lower the calorie values of foods isn’t making a food healthy. Those are still empty calories, basically nutrient vapid. It’s a step in the right direction, but Doritos are still Doritos. There’s something unnatural about fluorescent orange powder residue no matter how you spin it…even though they are delicious.

To read the article for yourself see the January 25th article “Pepsi Brings in the Health Police” of Bloomberg Business Week.