Snack Chat

Introducing the Doritos and Major League Gaming 'Pro-Gaming Combine'

Yesterday, Doritos and Major League Gaming unveiled the "Pro-Gaming Combine," a new program in which video game fans aspiring to become professional gamers now have an open door to pursue their passion. The program is the first-ever nationwide skills challenge in competitive video gaming history.  

Starting this week, aspiring video game pros can log on to http://www.doritoscombine.com/ and purchase team passes from MLG for the debut Doritos MLG Pro-Gaming Combine in Nashville, Tennessee March 26-28, 2010.  Passes for individual players go on sale at 7:00 pm ET on Wednesday, February 24, 2010.

Full details about the Doritos MLG Pro-Gaming Combine are available at http://www.doritoscombine.com/, including specifics about the combine format and other upcoming events.  Starting next week fans can also begin to test and hone their skills online in preparation for the first Combine event.

Read more details about the Pro-Gaming Combine.

New Fritos Pie Remix Episode: Vanilla-caramel Corn Fritos Pie

A new episode of Fritos Pie Remix is now available: Vanilla-caramel Corn. Fritos Pie Remix is a new web-based series of cooking episodes featuring Frito-Lay Executive Chef Stephen Kalil and Fritos Corn Chips®. In each episode, Chef Stephen remixes the family-favorite dish, Fritos Chili Pie, using one or more extreme ingredients to create a whole new Fritos Pie experience.

Check out the Fritos Pie Remix Web site now to watch the remix episodes and learn how to "wow" your family and friends with some unique and tasty Fritos Pie recipes -- guaranteed to satisfy even extreme taste buds!  While you’re visiting the site, don’t forget to submit your own ideas for an extreme ingredient. You never know, Chef Stephen may use it in a future episode!

Below: Vanilla-caramel Corn Fritos Pie prepared by Chef Stephen Kalil.

 

Lay's Introduces New Regional Flavors Made with All-natural Ingredients!

When I was developing new products as part of Frito-Lay’s Marketing team, the compelling questions we always asked ourselves before launching a new project were: “What will be the next big food trend?” and “How can we adapt that trend to snack foods?” 

Restaurants always lead new food trends, and for a long time, the leading innovations had an international flair.  We borrowed flavors from Mexican and Caribbean foods, Asian cuisine and Italian and Mediterranean dishes to determine new chip flavors. For example, I helped launch, in the U.S., Gamesa cookies from Mexico, Wasabi Funyuns from Asia and chocolate-filled croissants from Greece.  We found that Americans loved exotic variety, but if we tried to be too different, the flavors wouldn’t catch on with consumers. For example, we once offered a meat-flavored potato chip, inspired by a similar chip in England, but it didn’t do so well in the U.S.  Americans wanted what we called, "mainstream -- jazzed up."

Today, the product developers for Lay's potato chips are doing the same kind of consumer research I did years ago, but the “big food trend” today is very different. They’re finding an emerging trend here in the U.S. called “American regional cuisine.”   Increasingly, consumers are looking for foods that reflect their own regions in the U.S., as food heritage has become a matter of local pride.  

So, the Lay's team collaborated with chefs across the country to understand regional flavor preferences, and they’ve developed six new flavors of Lay’s that represent the best in regional cuisine.  Even better, each of these “regional” flavors is made with all-natural ingredients.  

One of the new regional flavors, Lay's Tangy Carolina BBQ, is being launched nationwide.  The other five flavors are being launched only in the region of the country that inspired the flavor:  

• Northeastern U.S. -- Lay's Pepper Relish 

• Midwestern U.S. -- Lay's Garden Tomato & Basil 

• Northwestern U.S. -- Lay's Balsamic Sweet Onion 

• Southwestern U.S. -- Lay's Southwest Cheese & Chiles 

• Southeastern U.S. -- Lay's Cajun Herb & Spice 

You can find Lay’s Tangy Carolina BBQ and your region’s flavor in the Lay's section of your grocer’s chip aisle.  And, look for a coupon for the Lay’s regional flavors in your Sunday paper on March 14.  Once you try them, I think you'll agree with me that they fit the definition of “American regional cuisine.”

- Dave

Frito-Lay Registered Dietitian Offers Tips For Heart-healthy Eating

Today on Snack Chat, Danielle Dalheim (pictured below with her husband), a Registered Dietitian and Nutrition Scientist with Frito-Lay, shares information about her role at Frito-Lay and offers tips for heart-healthy eating as we celebrate Heart Health Month throughout February.  Our commitment to supporting heart health takes many forms -- education, ingredients, innovation. Using hearth-healthy oils to make our snacks is just one example of this commitment.  Danielle joined Frito-Lay in 2007, after graduating from the University of Oklahoma, and plays an important role in the work we’re doing to enhance our products by using healthier ingredients and bringing better-for-you snacks to consumers.

As a dietitian at Frito-Lay, I get the unique opportunity to work in several different nutrition-related areas, from nutrition labeling to advertising to product development to health professional outreach and employee education.

Last Friday, hundreds of Frito-Lay’s female employees wore red in support of Heart Health Month and the American Heart Association’s (AHA) Go Red for Women campaign. It really made me proud to work for a company that takes the well-being of both its consumers and its employees to heart (no pun intended). People tend to think of heart disease as a condition that affects men, but what many people don’t know is that heart disease is also the No.1 killer of women.  So, whether you are male or female, as we celebrate Heart Heath Month, I’d like to offer a few dietary tips that could help you to reduce your risk for heart disease:

1. Eat whole grains: Several epidemiological studies show that people who consume whole grains regularly are less likely to develop heart disease. The Dietary Guidelines for Americans recommend eating three servings of whole grains daily. A 1-ounce serving of SunChips provides 18 grams of heart-healthy whole grains. So for lunch, have a sandwich made with two slices of whole wheat bread and a side of SunChips, and you’ll get your recommended amount of whole grains for the day!

2. Consume heart-healthy oils:  You should try to limit your intake of “bad fats” -- saturated fat and trans fat -- and increase the amount of the “good fats” -- monounsaturated and polyunsaturated fats.  Bad fats increase total and LDL cholesterol (bad cholesterol) in your body while good fats have been shown to reduce a person’s risk for heart disease. The FDA considers vegetable oils such as sunflower, corn, olive and soybean oil to be heart healthy because they are low in saturated fat and high in mono- and polyunsaturated fat. Frito-Lay only uses these types of heart-healthy oils to cook our chips.

3. Get your fiber: There are two types of fiber that occur in our diet – soluble and insoluble. Soluble fiber is associated with a decreased risk of developing heart disease, and is found in foods such as oats, beans, nuts and certain fruits.  Quaker Oatmeal provides 2 grams of soluble fiber per serving and can be a great addition to a heart healthy diet.

4. Reach for nuts: Recent science suggests that people who eat nuts have a lower occurrence of heart disease. The FDA recommends consuming 1.5 ounce of nuts daily. You should choose the nuts that are lowest in saturated fat -- almonds, hazelnuts, peanuts, pecans, pistachios and walnuts. 

5. Manage your weight:  Maintaining a healthy weight is essential to heart health; people who are overweight or obese are more likely to develop heart disease. Calorie balance is the key to weight management, and controlling portions can really help you to meet your daily calorie target. Frito-Lay has a variety of single-serve offerings designed to help consumers manage their portion sizes.  The Singles line offers six pre-portioned 1-ounce bags of your favorite snacks -- Lay’s, SunChips, Cheetos, Fritos and Doritos. You can also find SunChips, Cheetos and Doritos snacks in convenient 100-calorie portion packaging, which helps take the guesswork out of portion control.

If you’re looking for more information on how to live a heart healthy lifestyle, visit www.americanheart.org.

- Danielle

Frito-Lay and Wal-Mart Launch "Be Snack Ready" Web site

Raising four children, my wife, Janis, and I had to be both cost-conscious and time-efficient food shoppers.  Apparently we were also a bit of hoarders. 

About three years ago, our now-grown daughter, Kristen, was rummaging through our spices and discovered that many of them were seriously dated -- including one rusty Allspice can from 1966.  This prompted an embarrassing purge of our cupboards and refrigerator as we uncovered many items that should have been consumed or tossed out years ago. 

Today, we're much more mindful of code dates yet maintain our life-long goal of saving time and money when we shop for food.  So, to get some shopping tips and help us with this goal, we turned to a new Web site that Frito-Lay and Wal-Mart just launched, Be Snack Ready.   

"Moms told us that they want value and a convenient place on the Web where they can find information   about events happening at Wal-Mart, recipes, new Frito-Lay snacks and fun snack ideas,” Marissa Solis (pictured right), Senior Brand Manager on Frito-Lay’s Wal-Mart Shopper Marketing team, told me.  “Ultimately, they want to better preplan activities for their families and friends." She and Laurie Ballard (pictured left), Associate Marketing Manager on Frito-Lay’s Wal-Mart Shopper Marketing team, worked with Wal-Mart to create Be Snack Ready.

When you hit the Be Snack Ready homepage, you’ll find the "Tip of the Day,” and five tabs to dive into for more shopping tips and tools: 

1.  "Recipes & More" features recipes from Stephen Kalil, Frito-Lay's Executive Research Chef in our Culinary Innovation Center.  He’ll add new recipes every month, and consumers can rate the recipes so you can see which recipes become favorites among the site’s visitors.

2. "Snack Fun" provides a monthly calendar filled with snacking ideas, a fun game and a snacking “quick poll” that you can answer and use to immediately see how your answer compares to other consumers. 

3. "Snack Ready Alert" gives information on new Frito-Lay snacks available at Wal-Mart.

4."Snack Scoop" directs you to more information -– nutritional details, flavors, and more -- about your favorite Frito-Lay products.

5. "Seasons and Occasions" tells you what's happening at Wal-Mart for key shopping occasions, like back-to-school; in-store events, such as DVD releases; and holiday events, like summer gatherings and Halloween.

I found Be Snack Ready full of useful information, and I hope my brief explanation of the site gives you a jump start in navigating it yourself.  I wonder if Chef Kalil will ever post a recipe that calls for Allspice.  If he does, Janis and I will have to buy a new can, since we never did replace the one that expired in 1966!