Evan Ackerman
DVice
Feel like chewing your food is just too much work? PepsiCo knows exactly what you’re going through, so they’re taking all those annoying fruits that you’d otherwise have to bite into and ‘drinkifying’ them into semi-liquid goop. And it gets worse.
PepsiCo’s new ‘Tropolis’ purées take real fruit, smash it to a plup, add a bunch of sugar, and package it in a squeezable pouch. Instead of calling it a beverage, they’re calling it a snack, effectively putting an end to solid foods. According to PepsiCo:
“We see the emerging opportunity to ‘snackify’ beverages and ‘drinkify’ snacks as the next frontier in food and beverage convenience.”
Don’t get me wrong, turning fruits into liquid isn’t a bad idea. I like smoothies. It just seems like the mindset that the most important quality of food be ‘convenience’ is at best short-sighted and at worst totally gross. PepsiCo, however, is in no way being held back by such conventional perceptions of decency and reason:
Mehmood Khan, a former Mayo Clinic endocrinologist who heads PepsiCo’s nutrition group, said in an interview that it’s outdated to think that snacks are dry and beverages are wet.
“Consumers don’t wake up in the morning and say, ‘I’m going to have a whole grain; I want a dairy product,'” Dr. Khan said. “They’re looking for combinations of those things.” Dr. Khan wouldn’t specify what combinations might come next.
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