At PepsiCo, we want to provide parents and their kids with a fun and safe place to play in an effort to promote healthier lifestyles.

As part of our ongoing commitment to providing families with solutions for healthier lifestyles, we are proud to build Smart Spot playgrounds across the country.

Partnering with KaBOOM!, a non-profit organization that envisions a great place to play within walking distance of every child in America, we are building playgrounds at organizations that service low-income communities.

For example, PepsiCo joined forces with CentroNia, a Washington, D.C. based organization that provides high quality education, professional development and family-support services to more than 1,000 low-income Latino, African-American and multiethnic kids and families, to build the playground from the ground up.

We're building playgrounds as part of our S.M.A.R.T. lifestyle program which includes five simple steps to healthier lifestyles. The five steps include:

tart your day with a healthy breakfast;

ove more;

dd more fruits, vegetables and whole grains;

emember to hydrate and

ry lower-calorie and lower-fat foods.

The S.M.A.R.T. steps are based on research by James O. Hill, Ph.D., a developer of the National Weight Control Registry and co-founder of America on the Move. Dr. Hill's research with the National Weight Control Registry identified behaviors of the most successful weight loss maintainers. His work with America on the Move found that people who were most successful in improving their health and maintaining weight loss didn't make drastic changes to their lifestyle but rather did a few basic things that could be easily incorporated into everyday lives. From that information, the five S.M.A.R.T. steps were developed.

The S.M.A.R.T. steps were designed to be easy-to-remember, easy-to-follow and easy-to-incorporate into daily life. S.M.A.R.T. touches both sides of the energy balance equation: managing the calories consumed through food and the calories burned from physical activity.

We believe that providing families with solutions like our Smart Spot products and our S.M.A.R.T. lifestyle program that healthier lifestyles can be achieved.

The S.M.A.R.T. program complements PepsiCo's efforts to introduce energy balance lesson plans in schools across the nation, develop new products, reformulate existing products and identify healthier choices with the Smart Spot symbol, which means a product has met nutrition criteria based an authoritative statements from the FDA and the National Academy of Sciences. For help on how to live healthier, families can log onto www.smartspot.com and find tools on how to start the S.M.A.R.T. program.