CEO: Don't punish food makers

Corporate leaders and public health officials gathered Monday at the Raleigh convention center to talk about how to tackle the challenges and opportunities created by the country's health-care crisis.

The discussions were part of the 26th annual Emerging Issues Forum, which concludes today at 2 p.m. Today's lineup includes speeches by Sanjay Gupta, CNN's chief medical correspondent, and Mick Cornett, the mayor of Oklahoma City.

Among Monday's highlights was a speech by PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi.

A native of India, Nooyi is consistently ranked as one of the most powerful women in business. She's also the driving force behind Pepsi's efforts to add more nutritious products to its portfolio and reduce the sugar, salt and trans fats in its snacks.

The company recently set a goal of expanding its revenues from its more nutritional products, such as Tropicana orange juice and Quaker Oats cereals, from $10 billion to $30 billion over the next decade.

During a 30-minute speech, Nooyi talked about Pepsi's efforts to be a good corporate citizen. She also made the case for why the country needs to get behind one anti-obesity campaign that involves both the public and private sectors.

"I don't have all the answers," Nooyi said. "But we're a company searching for answers, and we went to be part of the solution."

She said blaming specific companies, products or people for the epidemic of childhood obesity is a mistake.

"It's counterproductive," she said. "There's no one food we can eliminate to get rid of this issue. There's no pill on the horizon to stop the growth of obesity."

Food and beverage companies do, however, need to think about how and what they market to children. Nooyi said Pepsi doesn't market to children younger than 12 and has stopped selling sugary drinks in schools.

"We've been out there taking fairly bold steps to change the face of obesity in the nation and the world," she said. "We've got to get all food and beverage companies to make the responsible move."

Among the problems with the current system is that the incentives given to agriculture are not aligned with nutrition, she said.

"What incentives are given to agriculture are not necessarily for fruit and vegetables, grains or dairy," she said.

There's also needs to be one coordinated nutritional education campaign, Nooyi said, along with a consistent nutrition labeling standard.

"We need to leverage the best of the best. Come up with one approach for the country that every state, every community can easily understand and take part in," she said. "This campaign has got to be inspirational not punitive. It's got to inspire people do something, not ban them from doing other things."

She said the labeling standard recently adopted by the food and beverage agency is a good start, and should be implemented now and tweaked later on if necessary.

Nooyi called for the country's school lunch programs to be overhauled, and for a stronger effort to make healthy eating seem cool.

She noted that, while her company has reduced the salt in a bag of Lay's potato chips to where it is less than a slice of bread, it doesn't dare say it on the bag.

"Because if I told you it has less salt you won't eat it," she said.

"That's the problem. You'd say it tastes different. ... The fact of the matter is we have to sneak goodness into each of the products."