"CHICAGO—You could comfortably call Carlos Abrams-Rivera a health nut. He practices intermittent fasting—eating two meals a day, both between the hours of 11 a.m. and 7 p.m. His diet leans #Mediterranean, heavy on salads, beans and hummus. Six days a week he lifts weights, does high-intensity workouts, or bikes in the woods near his home in Chicago’s northern suburbs. One day a week, he eats dessert, often a scoop of mint chip ice cream.
The strict regimen is a bid to live better for longer, Abrams-Rivera said. It also gives him energy for his day job: selling $27 billion of ketchup, macaroni and cheese and hot dogs to consumers around the globe as Kraft Heinz’s KHC -0.55%decrease; red down pointing triangle
new chief executive.
Abrams-Rivera, 57 years old, is four months into the job and reports first-quarter results this coming Wednesday. The packaged-food giant, he says, shares his health mission: Kraft Heinz is in the midst of a multiyear effort to improve the nutrition of supermarket staples like ketchup and juice drinks, aiming to offer consumers healthier options amid rising concern over ultra-processed foods, obesity and chronic diseases linked to our diets.
Abrams-Rivera grew up in Puerto Rico and began paying more attention to eating well and exercising often after his father suffered two back-to-back heart attacks beginning in his 40s. His grandfather and an uncle died of heart attacks by the age of 47.
Inspired by the CEO, employees around the company are also trying intermittent fasting, with some shedding significant weight. Abrams-Rivera said he’s also working on psychological and spiritual health, drawing inspiration recently from a Netflix documentary series called “Live to 100: Secrets of the Blue Zones,” on people living to 100 at the highest rates in the world.
Abrams-Rivera has spent his career in packaged food. He said food companies can lose sight of what they are selling—arriving at Kraft Heinz in 2020 to run its U.S. operations, he said that “when you walked into the company, you couldn’t tell that we were selling batteries or semiconductors,” he said.
Scrutiny over its #Lunchables shows the scale of the challenge Abrams-Rivera is facing. The company last year unveiled two re-engineered versions of the yellow, prepackaged meal kits to comply with the National School Lunch program, sparking opposition from child-nutritionists and others concerned with their sodium levels, use of processed meat and more. In April, Consumer Reports called on the U.S. Department of Agriculture to remove Lunchables from school meals after the group found that store-bought versions of the kits contain relatively high levels of lead, cadmium and sodium.
...A package of Kraft Heinz’s turkey-and-cheese Lunchables made for schools contains 270 calories, 16 grams of protein, 6 grams of saturated fat and 930 milligrams of sodium, or about 40% of the daily recommended maximum for adults..."
Conservation and sustainable development grantmaker
4moTragically, there is no necessary connection between his personal behavior and what he sells to others. For him to talk about offering "healthy choices" is like an arms dealer saying "we also sell some non-lethal weapons."