TASTING INEQUALITY FROM CRADLE: NESTLE ADDS SUGAR TO BABY FOOD SOLD IN LOW-INCOME COUNTRIES

Sat 20 April 2024:

In March, the World Health Organization (WHO) reported that childhood obesity had increased 2.5-fold over the past 30 years, and the number of overweight children under 5 years of age had reached a shocking 37 million in 2022, with the majority of them living in countries with low and middle income.

Recent research has discovered that Switzerland’s Nestle, the world’s largest food producer, includes sugar and honey in their infant milk and cereal products sold in many economically disadvantaged nations, which goes against international standards that are designed to avoid obesity and chronic diseases.

Public Eye, a Swiss investigative organization, bought the company‘s bestsellers sold in Asia, Africa, and Latin America — Nido, a milk formula designed for infants one year and older, and Cerelac, a cereal targeted towards children between six months and two years — and sent their samples to a laboratory in Belgium for analysis.

Remarkably, the organization first approached Swiss labs, and some of them refused to conduct the analysis. One lab even explained its decision, saying that the results “could potentially have a negative impact” on its existing customers, Public Eye noted.

Overall, Public Eye examined 115 products sold in Nestle’s main markets in Africa, Asia and Latin America, and at least 108 of them (94%) contained added sugar in the form of sucrose or honey.

However, in Nestle’s primary European markets, formulas for babies between six months and one year do not contain any added sugar. So, it turned out the company does not adhere to its standards in other parts of the world.

Let’s look at the study’s findings regarding African countries. Cerelac products contained the following grams on average per serving:

Nigeria – 6.8

Senegal – 5.9

Ethiopia – 5.2

South Africa – 4.2

It’s worth noting that only in South Africa was the added sugar content declared on the packaging (often added sugar is not indicated separately and is included in the total amount of carbohydrates in the product).

Nido products, on the other hand, showed “better” results (no data for Ethiopia was presented):

South Africa – 0.9

Nigeria/Senegal – 0.6

It’s important to note that while honey looks like a healthy alternative to sucrose, both of them are regarded by the WHO as sugars which shouldn’t be added to baby food. It’s ironic that Nestle itself explains it in an educational quiz on Nido’s website in South Africa: there is “no scientific health benefit” in replacing sucrose with honey, since both are linked “to weight gain and possibly obesity.”

“This is a big concern,” Rodrigo Vianna, epidemiologist and professor at the Department of Nutrition of the Federal University of Paraíba in Brazil, said, as cited by Public Eye. “Sugar should not be added to foods offered to babies and young children because it is unnecessary and highly addictive. Children get used to the sweet taste and start looking for more sugary foods, starting a negative cycle that increases the risk of nutrition-based disorders in adult life. These include obesity and other chronic non-communicable diseases, such as diabetes or high blood-pressure.”

In 2022, the WHO advocated for a prohibition on added sugars and sweeteners in food products for kids under the age of three, urging the industry to “be proactive” and “support public health goals” by reformulating baby products.

However, Nestle appears to be ignoring these appeals. While the multinational openly advises against feeding baby foods with added sugar, these recommendations do not appear to apply in low- and middle-income nations, where Nestle continues to add sugar to some of its most popular products and, as Public Eye noted, “uses aggressive marketing methods to promote Nido and Cerelac” in these countries, notwithstanding the WHO’s International Code, which forbids the commercial advertising of such items.

Earlier in the month, another large American company, Johnson & Johnson, came under media attention as South Africa and Nigeria, followed by Zimbabwe, Rwanda and Tanzania, announced the recall of a shipment of the company’s Benylin baby syrup due to its alleged toxicity.

Dangerously high levels of diethylene glycol, a toxic substance that can cause severe symptoms including abdominal pain, vomiting, and kidney injury, potentially leading to death, were found in the syrup by Nigeria’s health authority.

By: Christina Glazkova

Christina Glazkova is a news editor and a graduate of the Department of African Studies, Moscow State University. She joined the Sputnik Africa team in 2023. Christina has knowledge of two African languages — which she currently combines with a sharp interest in the global arena of international affairs, and a commitment to deliver newsworthy information in the most digestible way possible.

This article originally published in Sputnik click here

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