PepsiCo: When will nutrition really get personal?
PepsiCo SVP Gregory Yep kept his cards pretty close to his chest during his presentation, in which he talked about "white space opportunities", "changing paradigms" and the importance of cross-disciplinary research (Pepsi has statisticians, biologists, chemists, engineers and computer scientists all under one roof).
Delegates also got a top-line view of how PepsiCo spends its R&D budget, from working with athletes at the Gatorade Sports Science Institute to technology scouting, taste trekking around the globe and searching for the next big natural high intensity sweeteners.
On the subject of nutrigenomics, Dr Yep said PepsiCo does not yet have any products that embrace this technology as it is "not ready".
But he added: "Eventually it's a tool that all food companies will be looking at."