How PepsiCo’s nutrition lead is making Big Food healthier

When Sue Gatenby began studying nutrition back in the 1980s, it was far from the headline-grabbing subject it is today.

“There were emerging signs of interest,” she recalls, “but it certainly wasn’t trendy”.

Fast forward forty years and Gatenby’s field dominates. Be it dominating packaging, filling social media feeds or boldly reshaping the regulatory landscape, nutrition is big.

And few people have witnessed this transformation as closely as Gatenby. With a career spanning academia, healthcare, nutrition policy, and industry, she’s had a front-row seat to the change – more than that, she’s helped drive it.

Gatenby has been central to many of the most influential nutrition initiatives in recent history. She helped develop the precursor to today’s Eatwell Guide, for example. But it’s at PepsiCo, where over the last two decades, she’s made a global impact in her role as senior director of Global Health and Nutrition Sciences.

Here, Gatenby helps lead nutrition science and health strategy across PepsiCo’s portfolio worldwide, working at the critical intersection of research, product development and public health, to shape the company’s nutrition agenda.

A passion that started at home

While Gatenby’s scientific credentials are impressive – a degree and PhD in Nutrition Sciences from King’s College London, plus postgraduate qualifications in dietetics and sports nutrition – she credits her interest in food and health to a much earlier influence.

“My mum was an avid cook and was always listening to Radio 4 and picking up tips about nutrition,” she says. “That’s really where my interest in food and how it impacts health and wellness came about.”

Though it was research that drew her attention more, and not only that, but “translating it into something tangible the real world could embrace”.

Delivering change

That search for something tangible led to Gatenby joining PepsiCo, a business not just famous for Pepsi Cola, she admits to learning quickly.

Soon, she got to grips with a diverse portfolio, encompassing cereals and snacks, and realised she had a real opportunity to make a meaningful impact on consumer nutrition through everyday products, and predominantly through reformulation.

One of the most high profile being the recent reformulation of Doritos in the UK, which achieved an 18% reduction in salt and a 14% reduction in fat.

But the project wasn’t easy. It took years to complete and included a site investment of around £13m (€15.2m).

That long-term commitment to reformulation has been a recurring theme throughout Gatenby’s time at PepsiCo. Earlier on in her tenure, the company made the bold decision to switch the entire Walkers core range to oils significantly lower in saturated fat, reducing levels by up to 80%.

“I was so proud of that change,” Gatenby says, adding she still keeps a bottle of that oil in her office.

Healthier products gaining ground

Today, PepsiCo’s nutrition strategy is centred on what it calls positive nutrition – an approach that moves beyond simply cutting nutrients of concern such as sugar, salt and saturated fat, and instead focuses on increasing the nutritional value of foods and beverages through ingredients such as fibre and wholegrains.

For Gatenby, this reflects a broader transition taking place across the food industry. Rather than viewing nutrition solely through the lens of reduction and reformulation, companies are increasingly looking at how products can actively contribute to healthier diets. That means paying much closer attention to nutrient density, the quality of ingredients and the role foods play in delivering beneficial nutrients, rather than focusing exclusively on what can be removed.

Consequently the conversation is shifting from simply making products less unhealthy to making them more nutritious, with a greater emphasis on adding ingredients that consumers need more of, and helping people build balanced diets through everyday food choices.

The rise of GLP-1

Looking ahead, Gatenby expects nutrition trends to become even more focused on quality rather than quantity.

As obesity medications such as GLP-1 drugs become more widely used, she believes consumers will increasingly prioritise getting more nutrition from fewer calories.

That puts nutrient density firmly in the spotlight. And two nutrients – fibre and protein – stand out.

According to Gatenby, consumers taking GLP-1 medications are paying closer attention to both, as smaller portion sizes means it’s harder to consume the recommended daily amount. Though she says this trend extends beyond people taking weight-loss medications.

Nutrition misinformation

But for all the progress made in nutrition science, there is a challenge neither Gatenby nor the food industry can reformulate out of – misinformation, particularly in an online setting.

While social media has made nutrition information more accessible, it has also amplified less evidence-based voices.

“Those who communicate misinformation do it extremely effectively,” she says.

By contrast, scientists are often less visible and less skilled at communicating complex research in a compelling way.

As a result, consumers are faced with an increasingly confusing nutrition landscape.

“It’s been an evolution,” she says of nutrition’s rise in popularity, “but not always necessarily in a positive direction for science”.

Though efforts are being made to redress the balance, with organisations like the International Food Information Council and the European Food Information Council stepping up.

Nutrition’s next challenge

Despite the challenges, Gatenby remains optimistic about the future. After four decades in the field, she believes consumers are more engaged with their health than ever before, while nutrition has moved from a niche concern to a mainstream conversation shaping everything from product development to public policy.

But for all the debate around diets, ingredients and food processing, she sees growing interest from consumers in understanding what they eat and how food contributes to long-term health.

For the industry, she believes the challenge now is turning that interest into meaningful improvements in people’s everyday diets.

And she loves her work just as much as she always has.

From a little girl listening to cookery programmes with her mum, Gatenby has become one of the food industry’s most respected nutrition voices and she’s “still excited and challenged” by her work every single day.