Pepsi Wants You to Snackify

By Robin Wheeler Thu., Dec. 30 2010 at 7:00 AM

Categories: The Morning Brew

Time to snackify your soft drinks. The Wall Street Journal says that Pepsi believes customers wants to "snackify" their drinks. What the hell does that mean? It means they're looking for ways to market a new fruit puree that's thin enough to drink but thick enough to be a food. Apple, grape, and cherry Tropolis will be test marketed starting next month. Nutrition expert Marion Nestle says whatever it's called, it's still sugar. "'They start out with real food, so let's give them credit for applesauce and mashed-up bananas,' but 'the rest of it is sugar,' she said. 'Kids would be better off eating an apple or a banana.'"

Frito-Lay's looking to go natural with its snackified products, since going natural with their Sun Chips bags didn't work. USA Today has the low-down on what snack foods are losing stuff like MSG (Lay's BBQ potato chips, Tostitos Hint of Lime tortilla chips), and which will maintain their fluorescent orange glory (Cheetos, Doritos).

Meat might not have MSG, but how do we know what else it has? Huffington Post reports that'll change in 2012, when packaged meat will start bearing nutritional information labels. The new ruling will apply to 40 common cuts of meat.

Even the Neanderthals ate vegetables, so why don't we? According to the BBC, new studies show that the hunters and gatherers had little bits of cooked vegetables in the remains of teeth studied at George Washington University. Previous studies of Neanderthal bone materials indicated they were mainly meat-eaters.