Eat this Pepsi fruit snack.....

Eat this drink: Pepsi creates liquid fruit 'snack' in bid to expand

By DAILY MAIL REPORTER
Last updated at 4:25 PM on 29th December 2010

New line: PepsiCo is trialling a new fruit flavoured liquid snack as it bids to branch out into convenience foods

It's the drink you can eat - and Pepsi is hoping its new pureed fruit product will improve flagging sales. 

Tropolis, an 80-calorie fruit puree, is considered thick enough to be a snack rather than a beverage and is being marketed at mothers and children.

The company's Tropicana unit is trialling apple, grape and cherry flavours of the new product in the U.S. Midwest in January as it tries to expand its product line into nutritious convenience foods.

Shares in PepsiCo have been lagging behind U.S. rivals Coca-Cola Co and Dr Pepper Snapple Group Inc, both of which have no significant food business.

The company is best known for its namesake cola and Lay's potato chips - part of its 'fun-for-you' and 'better-for-you' ranges, which make up $50billion of the company's $60billion in revenue.

Chairman Indra Nooyi is gambling on building up the 'good-for-you' portfolio to close the gap on rivals.

She aims to triple the nutrition arm of PepsiCo from $10billion to $30billion by 2020.

Earlier this month, the company announced it would buy Russian dairy and juice-maker OAO Wimm-Bill-Dann in a deal worth around $5.4billion.

Ms Nooyi told the Wall Street Journal: 'We see the emerging opportunity to "snackify" beverages and "drinkify" snacks as the next frontier in food and beverage convenience.'

Dr Mehmood Khan, who heads PepsiCo's nutrition group, said the idea that snack were dry and beverages wet was outdated.

Branching out: Shares in PepsiCo have been lagging behind rivals including Coca-Cola

'Consumers don't wake up in the morning and say "I'm going to have a whole grain; I want a dairy product",' he said.

'They're looking for combinations of those things.'

Researchers who developed Tropolis said the texture has been designed so it would flow out of the pouch openings.

The mix of juice and puree has been adjusted without the use of gums or starches and ingredients include apple puree, filtered water, banana puree concentrate and three other kinds of fruit concentrate.

But Marion Nestle, a professor of nutrition at New York University, said the product was simply sugar.

She said: 'They start out with real food, so let's give them credit for apple sauce and mashed-up bananas.

'The rest of it is sugar. Kids would be better off eating an apple or a banana.'

PepsiCo already sells smoothies in its Naked Juice line.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1342408/Tropolis-Pepsi-creates-liquid-fruit-snack-drink-bid-expand.html#ixzz19Y1wOzZj