Nestle`s Falsely Healthy Products

THE PROBLEMATIC OF FALSELY HEALTHY PRODUCTS

Nestle is a Swiss multinational food and beverage company. It is, in fact, the largest food company in the world. Their products include baby food, bottled water, breakfast cereals, coffee and tea, confectionery, dairy products, ice cream, frozen food, pet foods, and snacks. According to Nestlé’s official website, twenty-nine of their brands have sales of over $1 billion a year, and owning over 8,000 brands. They have 447 factories across 194 countries, and employ around 333,000 people.

1. Chosen Thematic

Nestlé was chosen as the main subject of this paper because, while it claims to be the world’s leading nutrition, health and wellness company with an unmatched portfolio of more than 2,000 global and local brands, many claim this brand to use GMO’s and manipulating uneducated mothers, pollution, price fixing and mislabeling. This case is related to the following thematics:

1. The Impact of the Toxic Environment on Health,

2. The False Look of Healthy Products,

3. The Corporate Responsibility of Giant Food Industry Regarding the Problematic of Malnutrition.

2. Arguments and Statistics

The Importance of Addressing the Problematic of the Toxic Environment Regarding Falsely Healthy Products To Improve the Health and Wellbeing of the World Society

Nestlé, since its first years in the market, has been using African mothers to obtain fame with the baby formula while avoiding the breast feeding. This was supposed to be an aid for the mothers, making it easier for them to feed their babies. However, the company never took into consideration the importance of translating instructions for its use to African mothers. The formula was given to mothers in several developing countries who could not afford it by themselves, only to cause dependence and a rise in malnutrition for which Nestlé was never held accountable. Eventually, the lack of nutriments necessary to meet the children’s demands in the formula, as well as the poor condition or complete lack of potable water in Africa, increased exponentially the death rate in children.

Nestlé has also been accused of violating consumer rights and environmental laws. The CEO of this company has publicly stated that water is not an universal right, and ever since the company has drained the aquiferous without caring about the damage to the environment, opposing to the actions of other companies such as Starbucks, which decided to move its factories because they were damaging the environment.

Nestlé declared that they would never move. On the opposite, if they could increase the water production, they would do it without caring about the damage to the environment, even when they have been working without permission since 1988, paying an annual fee of only $544,000. Due to the difficulty of finding legal grounds and the utter lack of information, not even the annual fee mentioned previously can be proved, and some independent researchers have found that Nestlé spends over one billion gallons per year in this conditions.

The actions of this company have a global impact. For example, in countries like Pakistan, for example, where kids are dying because of polluted water, Nestlé is draining the aquiferous of the country to sell it, leaving them with only polluted one. They have also been sued because of false labeling, in cases when they sell “more than just water”.

As another example, in 2010, six Chinese children died from drinking Nestlé’s milk. The Taiwan Health Ministry announced that Nestlé’s powdered milk contained melanin, but the company denied its involvement in the matter. The World Health Organization has been involved in some of these cases, referring to them as the “most preoccupying cases regarding giant food industries in recent years”.

There have been multiple responses to this problematic from several international organisms. An example of this is the involvement of the Institute of Environmental and Public Affairs in China accused Nestlé of moving to Asia with the intention of hiding their air, solid and waste pollution.

As if it were not enough, out of the 15 different cereals tested by the UK Consumers Association and found with an excess of fat, sugar and salt, 7 belonged to Nestlé. Recently, the CDC (Center for Disease Control and Prevention) had to warn European people, too, of Nestlé’s crimes, including the fact that its products were polluted with bacteria.

This is also a significant concern in México and other countries in Latin America. According to Marcelo Melchior, CEO of Grupo Nestlé México, Nestlé became in 2013 the second largest player in the market, as shown in the graphs below:

Ase we can see in the information presented above, is important to take action to improve the health and wellbeing of the Mexican society, and even more taking into account that, according to Melchior’s conference in 2013, most of the products consumed by Mexican people are beverages and milk products, and very often by children, as shown in the graph below. Apart from this, they produce, export and sell more than 1,850 products, divided in 80 brands and distributed in 12 categories, including dairy products, coffees, beverages, culinary, confectionery and ice creams, baby formulas, cereals and papilla, among others.

However, Nestlé has left a global footprint, affecting countries in Africa, Asia, North and South America, and Europe, which is why it is also imperative to take action to improve the wellbeing of the world society. Since most of nestle’s consumers are not aware of any of this actual and previous issues with the company and even some are not even aware the products they are consuming are nestle’s brands and the damage they can cause to their health, the objective of our pedagogical activity will be to inform the population in México as various other countries in the world of all this.

3. Pedagogical Activity and Social Action

3.1 Educative Intentions or Objectives of Our Pedagogical Activity

The three educative intentions or objectives of our activity are the following:

1. Inform the population from various spanish-speaking countries of the accusations against food companies such as Nestlé of violating consumer rights and environmental laws, manipulating and mislabeling, and promote the massive