THE JUNK FOOD PUSHERS - Foodopoly: The Battle Over the Future of Food and Farming in America - page 29

food sales: “Right now, good-for-you products are about 22 percent of the [PepsiCo] portfolio. It might rise
to 27 or 30 percent of the portfolio ten years from now, but the rest of it is also growing.” 19 In 2012 Pep-
siCo announced it would increase advertising and marketing by $600 million, focusing on twelve bever-
ages and snack foods.
Among the hundreds of products that PepsiCo owns, in addition to its signature drink, are Sierra
Mist, Mountain Dew, Mug Root Beer, AMP Energy, numerous fruit punches, Gatorade, SoBe drinks, and,
through a partnership with Starbucks, a range of Frappuccino products. Aquafina, its filtered tap water
product—falsely marketed as pure—comes in many sweetened and flavored varieties. The Frito-Lay line
comprises sixty-five different and mostly salty snack foods, including Lay's potato chips, Doritos, Ruffles,
Cracker Jack, Cheetos, and Tostitos. Pepsi subsidiary Quaker Oats' many brands include Aunt Jemima
mixes and syrups, Cap'n Crunch, and Rice-A-Roni. Pepsi's Tropicana juices are the largest source of
branded juice in the United States.
These thousands of products are produced in facilities throughout the world: 711 in Latin America; 759
in Europe; and 1,465 in Asia, the Middle East, and Africa combined. People concerned about health would
probably find the company's portfolio—60 percent junk food sold through glitzy advertising—as nothing
to brag about, especially since Nooyi's definition of healthy food is certainly suspect. She recently told Fox
Business TV, “Let me first correct you on one thing: Doritos is not bad for you. Pepsi-Cola is not bad for
you. Doritos is nothing but corn mashed up, fried a little bit with just very little oil, and flavored in the
most delectable way. And Pepsi-Cola was discovered in a pharmacy for a stomach ailment. So these are
not bad-for-you products.” 20
Although Nooyi is atypical of multinational CEOs, because she was born in India and later became a
U.S. citizen, she is typical in many other regards. She graduated from Yale with an MBA in public and
private management, then honed her skills as a corporate strategist at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG),
a prominent management-consulting firm that has spawned many CEOs and business leaders who sub-
scribe to the religion of ever-increasing corporate fusion through mergers and acquisitions. She worked at
BCG for client companies in textile and consumer goods, including retailers and chemical producers with
global operations.
Nooyi, whom Fortune magazine has twice named the most powerful businesswoman in the United
States, serves on various corporate, foundation, and nonprofit boards. Most notable are the GMA, the U.S.-
China Business Council, the foundation board of the World Economic Forum, the U.S.-India Business
Council, the Trilateral Commission, the Consumer Goods Forum, and the Peter G. Peterson Institute for
International Economics. She was appointed to the U.S.-India CEO Forum by the Obama administration
and was formerly a director of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York—the most important bank in the
reserve system.