PepsiCo's Drinkifying Your Snack

It may surprise you to learn that PepsiCo, the largest food-and-beverage company in the U.S., doesn’t just make cola. Eighteen of its brands, including Tropicana, Gatorade, and Quaker Oats, are billion-dollar businesses. And collectively, these brands are responsible for many of the ultra-processed, insanely-sugary snack foods that are killing us. Plainly put, PepsiCo is making people fat and sick.

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But according to this week's New Yorker, PepsiCo’s CEO, Indra Nooyi, wants the company to help battle the obesity epidemic, and to “lead the fight in the public health realm.” How? By selling "healthy," “scientifically advantaged” snacks that are “good for you."

“It’s not a question of selling less,” Nooyi has said. “It’s a question of selling the right stuff.”

Wow! Does this mean PepsiCo’s going to stop selling, say, PEPSI? Or TOSTITOS? Or AUNT JEMIMA SYRUP (which lists corn syrup AND high fructose corn syrup as its two primary ingredients)?

More after the jump...

Cheeseburger Smoothie

Sadly, this ain't real. (Or, more precisely, it's too good to be true.)

Jamba Juice produced this video to make the point that McDonald's has no business selling smoothies -- despite the fact that McDonald's smoothies contain fewer calories and less sugar than Jamba Juice's Banana Berry smoothie. In fact, a McDonald's cheeseburger contains far fewer calories (300 versus 480), overall carbs (33g versus 112g) and sugar (6g versus 99g) than the Jamba Juice smoothie.

Weirdly enough, a cheeseburger smoothie might actually be less damaging (and possibly tastier) than an actual Jamba Juice smoothie.