Tangentially related, but I take a look at the amount of sugar in a regular cola (39g of added sugar in a 12oz can of Coke!!), and I wonder how much damage that has done to my body (and taste buds) over the years (let alone society as a whole). I always wondered what a Coke with just half the sugar would taste like. I think I would enjoy it. Well, recently, my grocery store has been stocking De la Calle Tepache. It's not cola, but still, it's a carbonated soft drink with just 8g of sugar in a 12 oz can. It's got less than a quarter of the sugar of Coke and it's still plenty sweet!<p>How many people could have avoided diabetes or other health problems if coca-cola just set the standard that 8g of sugar is enough?
It's hard to imagine a more evil company.<p>[0]: <a href="https://youtu.be/MRWWK-iW_zU" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/MRWWK-iW_zU</a><p>[1]: <a href="https://www.zmescience.com/feature-post/culture/culture-society/nestle-company-pollution-children/" rel="nofollow">https://www.zmescience.com/feature-post/culture/culture-soci...</a>
Not trying to give Nestle a pass here since they have done some really bad things.<p>But something I could not find in the article, are there any other differences between the formulas? So it's focused on added sugar, but do the base ingredients have less sugar? So what is the difference after looking at the numbers? Are they using cheaper ingredients in the low to mid income places?<p>No doubt they are doing bad things here, but it feels like I am missing some details.
I've got no idea about finances and would like to invest a meaningful part of my money in ETFs. Because I'm so clueless I assume I cannot really go wrong with a ETF that is tracking the MSCI Developed World Index.<p>My problem: I really really really hate Nestlé and don't want to invest even a single penny in them. What can I do? I assume they're in the included in the index. There are ESG-weighted alternatives, but Nestlé managed to get quite good ESG ratings, so I presume they're included there as well.
A recent piece from ProPublica taps into the related "toddler milk" phenomenon and how, in essence, it's a way for formula manufacturers to capture the market in areas where they legally can't advertise baby formula.<p><a href="https://www.propublica.org/article/how-america-waged-global-campaign-against-baby-formula-regulation-thailand" rel="nofollow">https://www.propublica.org/article/how-america-waged-global-...</a>
Nestlé is a truly awful company, and their CEO has historically been a terrible human being, but… this isn’t a nestlé specific activity? As far as I can tell this is standard behaviour from every company involved in snack foods, candy, soda, etc? And they go to great lengths to to hide that’s what they’re doing - most of the “juice” you can buy at US stores are essentially just soda minus the bubbles, growing up in NZ a huge part of childhood was flavored milk (many more and better flavors than in the US - lime was my favorite :) ) than in the US, but those all had absurd amounts of sugar as well, despite being advertised/pushed as healthy milk products for children (I still love them all and try to pretend they’re not functionally soda when they’re available).
> Parents looking for information on infant nutrition may be directed to this platform and be exposed to content that steers them towards Nestlé products. [...] recipes<p>Perhaps <i>steered</i> in more ways than one. Baby digestive comfort with breast milk varies with maternal diet. Some foods cause substantial infant distress. So there's an exploratory debugging process around material diet expansion, with backing off to a known-good bland diet, and experimental (re)introduction of foods. A friend was very systematic, and ended up with a list of problematic foods. Nothing singular, there are lots of similar lists out there.<p>Now you get a lot of mail around pregnancy and birth - it's a prime advertising window with new habits being formed. One bit of mail was a substantial booklet of recipes for new moms. Oddly substantial, with no ads. Also oddly, the recipe overlap with her breast-feeding distress list was <i>massive</i>. "WTF?" - a puzzle. How could someone manage to write a recipe booklet for new moms where every recipe harms breast feeding?? Until on the back page, in small print, "(c) Nestlé". Then not a puzzle at all.
>children hooked on sugar in lower-income countries<p>The children in higher-income countries were already spoken for by much more well-established multinationals.<p>It started centuries ago after moving tonnes of raw cargo from plantations in tropical agricultural colonies.<p>The crop was not commercialized internationally like the crystals were. The syrup was extracted, crystallized, and accumulated for most efficient transportation as a fungible commodity in bulk. The highly concentrated active ingredient of an agricultural product, at a landed cost very low among the digestible alternatives in so many markets. Tropical oils come to mind as another concentrated active ingredient from other crops.<p>Low cost alone can make some things fly off the shelf by themselves, but when you've got bulk, and trading, you get more <i>surplus</i> than lots of other times. And when the cost of some parcel of excess drops to effectively zero or even negative, it can fly off the shelf with much greater momentum, even if it is temporary while it lasts. But occasional stimulus effects like that over the centuries could outlast a market upset like few other things, sugar (and fat) are widely regarded as habit-forming. No stronger supply-chain to support the habit than to deal with the pure material.<p>Looks like Nestle is a multinational re-exporting a highly value-added commodity in bulk (at its own scale), and to some tropical countries which have great agricultural potential themselves. No wonder it seems to have been accomplished in a deceptive way.
It’s ok to hate on Nestle but let’s not forget that most of the food industry is basically leading a war on the world’s health in search of profits.<p>The amount of terrible ingredients and misleading information they are putting on the market is just stunning. And the cost in terms of people’s health and the cost is enormous.<p>It’s kind of hard to understand that we let them get away with this.
I think sugar consumption is not unique to Lower-income countries. A study showed that a US kids consumes more than 49 pounds of sugar a year. All these are the processed food from the big box grocery stores. I suspect the sugar consumption is way less over in those countries where as a large segment of the population is unable to purchase processed food from the expensive grocery stores. Also sugary drinks are consumed by the kids at school to get some energy, many are unable to afford a breakfast and opt for that sugary syrup sold at the school canteen.
Nestle is an evil company, it has caused deaths of thousands of babies and continues to add to that body count shamelessly. Countries should unite in fighting this evil and prosecute it’s executives with death penalty. Hopefully indian government bans this company
I just think it's hilarious that the Swiss founder, Heinrich Nestle, legally changed his very German name to Henri Nestlé because he thought it sounded more posh and bourgeois, thus masking his family's modest origins.
Obligatory r/fucknestle.<p>Nestle has a long history of doing lots of fucked up things. I try to use as few Nestle products as possible. I don't get why government can't regulate these companies which has a monopoly on everything you eat or drink[1]<p>[1] <a href="https://wyomingllcattorney.com/images/nestle-list.png" rel="nofollow">https://wyomingllcattorney.com/images/nestle-list.png</a>
I know I will burn karma for this but what the heck: If you don't like it, don't buy it. That their sugar-added products are not sold in Switzerland or Germany is simply because people there would not buy them enough to make profit. There is nothing unethical about adding sugar to a food.
Nestlé is a corporate serial killer who should have been given the death penalty years ago. The fact that we know what they've done before, but still have to watch them continue to intentionally hurt children over and over again across decades while nothing is done about it just shows how our society has been shaped to make us powerless. If we had any ability at all to impose meaningful consequences against Nestlé we'd clearly have done it by now. If the literal millions of infants they murdered weren't enough to make that happen, and the millions of child slaves harvesting their cocoa hasn't, I very much doubt that added sugar is going to be the thing that finally does.