"How Nestlé gets children hooked on sugar in lower-income countries"

Nestlé’s leading baby-food brands, promoted in low- and middle-income countries as healthy and key to supporting young children’s development, contain high levels of added sugar. In Switzerland, where Nestlé is headquartered, such products are sold with no added sugar. These are the main findings of a new investigation by Public Eye and the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN), which shed light on Nestlé’s hypocrisy and the deceptive marketing strategies deployed by the Swiss food giant. [...]

In its own communications or via third parties, Nestlé promotes Cerelac and Nido as brands whose aim is to help children “live healthier lives”. Fortified with vitamins, minerals and other micronutrients, these products are, according to the multinational, tailored to the needs of babies and young children and help to strengthen their growth, immune system and cognitive development.

But do these infant cereals and powdered milks really offer “the best nutrition,” as Nestlé claims? That’s what Public Eye and the International Baby Food Action Network (IBFAN) wanted to find out, by focusing on one of the key public enemies when it comes to nutrition: sugar. [...]

Our investigation shows that, for Nestlé, not all babies are equal when it comes to added sugar. While in Switzerland, where the company is headquartered, the main infant cereals and formula brands sold by the multinational come without added sugar, most Cerelac and Nido products marketed in lower-income countries do contain added sugar, often at high levels.

For example, in Switzerland, Nestlé promotes its biscuit-flavoured cereals for babies aged from six months with the claim “no added sugar”, while in Senegal and South Africa, Cerelac cereals with the same flavour contain 6 grams of added sugar per serving.

Similarly, in Germany, France and the UK – Nestlé’s main European markets – all formulas for young children aged 12-36 months sold by the company contain no added sugar. And while some infant cereals for young children over one year old contain added sugar, cereals for babies aged six months do not.

Cerelac wheat-based cereals for six-month-old babies sold by Nestlé in Germany and the UK has no added sugar, while the same product contains over 5 grams per serving in Ethiopia and 6 grams in Thailand.

“There is a double standard here that can’t be justified,” said Nigel Rollins, scientist at the World Health Organization (WHO), when presented with our findings. For Rollins, the fact that Nestlé does not add sugar to these products in Switzerland but is quite happy to do it in lower resources settings “is problematic both from a public health and ethical perspective.” Rollins says that manufacturers may try to get children accustomed to a certain level of sugar at a very early age, so that they prefer products high in sugar. “This is totally inappropriate,” he believes.[...] 

“I do not understand why products for sale in South Africa should be different from those that are sold in high-income settings,” states Karen Hofman, Professor of Public Health at the University of Witwatersrand in Johannesburg and a qualified paediatrician. “It is a form of colonization and should not be tolerated,” she adds. “There is no valid reason to add sugar to baby food anywhere,” Hofman insists. [...]

But Nestlé seems to be turning a deaf ear to these appeals. While the multinational publicly recommends avoiding baby foods containing added sugar, these wise words don’t seem to apply to low- and middle-income countries, where Nestlé continues to add high levels of sugar to some of its most popular products.

Nestlé did not respond to specific questions about this double standard. But the company told Public Eye and IBFAN that it “has reduced by 11% the total amount of added sugars in [its] infant cereal portfolio worldwide” over the past decade and that it will “further reduce the level of added sugars without compromising on quality, safety and taste”. Nestlé also indicated that it is phasing out sucrose and glucose syrup of its Nido “growing up milks” globally. The company added that its products “fully comply” with the Codex Alimentarius and local laws. [...]