Nestle Document Says Majority of Its Food Portfolio is Unhealthy (ft.com) 81
The world's largest food company, Nestle, has acknowledged that more than 60% of its mainstream food and drinks products do not meet a "recognised definition of health" and that "some of our categories and products will never be 'healthy' no matter how much we renovate." FT: A presentation circulated among top executives this year, seen by the Financial Times, says only 37 per cent of Nestle's food and beverages by revenues, excluding products such as pet food and specialised medical nutrition, achieve a rating above 3.5 under Australia's health star rating system. This system scores foods out of five stars and is used in research by international groups such as the Access to Nutrition Foundation. Nestle, the maker of KitKats, Maggi noodles and Nescafe, describes the 3.5 star threshold as a "recognised definition of health."
Within its overall food and drink portfolio, about 70 per cent of Nestle's food products failed to meet that threshold, the presentation said, along with 96 per cent of beverages -- excluding pure coffee -- and 99 per cent of Nestle's confectionery and ice cream portfolio. Water and dairy products scored better, with 82 per cent of waters and 60 per cent of dairy meeting the threshold.
Within its overall food and drink portfolio, about 70 per cent of Nestle's food products failed to meet that threshold, the presentation said, along with 96 per cent of beverages -- excluding pure coffee -- and 99 per cent of Nestle's confectionery and ice cream portfolio. Water and dairy products scored better, with 82 per cent of waters and 60 per cent of dairy meeting the threshold.
The only product Nestle sells that is healthy (Score:4, Insightful)
Only 82 percent of their water is healthy. (Score:5, Interesting)
with 82 per cent of waters and 60 per cent of dairy meeting the threshold
That is an interesting situation, unhealthy bottled water... I guess they sell water with additives?
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When asked, a Nestle executive said, "Our heavy water, filled with delicious minerals such as plutonium and lead, failed to meet all dietary requirements in Australia. We will be appealing this outrageous decision!"
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Yes, most bottled water has sodium additives (basically salt) for purposes of taste and making you thirsty faster.
Nestlé adds calcium chloride, sodium bicarbonate, and magnesium sulfate.
Re:Only 82 percent of their water is healthy. (Score:5, Informative)
> None of this should be cause for health concerns, says Marion Nestle, professor of Nutrition, Food Studies, and Public Health and professor of Sociology at New York University. The additives being put into water are those naturally found in water and the quantities of these additives are likely too small to be of much significance. “If you had pure water by itself, it doesn’t have any taste,” says Bob Mahler, Soil Science and Water Quality professor at the University of Idaho. “So companies that sell bottled water will put in calcium, magnesium or maybe a little bit of salt.” -> https://time.com/3029191/bottl... [time.com]
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I agree that some added isn't unhealthy. But some of their brands add a bit more than the healthy limits - one of them added 91mg of sodium to their water. The "limit" to be considered safe tap water is 7mg.
Re: The only product Nestle sells that is healthy (Score:2)
I've been cleaning up my diet (Score:3)
Re: I've been cleaning up my diet (Score:3)
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The problem with most food isnâ(TM)t quality. It is quantity. When you scale mountains you usually take bricks of butter and snickers bars because of the high calorie per lb of weight / cubic inch of volume. It is good for you, if you burn the calories. It is not if you store them. Mountain climbers can burn close to 7000 calories a day.
I'm not sure that's legit.
You probably want a bunch of fat, but nuts are going pack the same energy payload as butter and will be way easier to consume and transport.
And when it comes to carbs you want slow burning complex carbs, not the refined sugar of chocolate bars. And again transportation is a factor, a snickers bar is likely to turn into a icy block or a melted mess. The reason protein bars are popular is they're tasty enough to be a treat but you can actually stuff them in your pocket without meltin
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Looks like nuts have about half the calories of butter. 1 cup of butter has about 1629 calories while 1 cup of almonds has 825 calories. 1 cup of peanuts has 857 calories. Macademia nuts have about 925 calories per cup. Is there some other type of nut I'm missing? Source: https://www.nutritionix.com/se... [nutritionix.com]
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And eating healthier. I can tell you it is a lot more expensive than eating junk food. I've got some weight to lose so that helps. But once I've dropped the weight it's going to be really expensive to eat healthy and maintain the 2,000 or so calories a day that I need at a minimum. You can try living off beans and rice, but there's all sorts of nutritional problems with that especially if the rice isn't the pricey brown rice.
I'm not sure that will be your experience long term. When doughnuts used to show up at the office I'd often joke they were negative calories, typically because I didn't feel hungry before eating one but then I'd typically need a snack after.
Those super processed foods are cheaper, but you also eat more of them because they don't fill you up in the same way.
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How long after did you need a snack?
If you eat high carb foods you can get a high blood glucose level shortly after. Depending on the type of sugar and how well the sugars are dissolved in a solvent (like in soda) your blood glucose levels can peak only minutes to an hour after.
This will prompt your pancreas to produce a lot of insulin, which in turn, if you're healthy will cause you to have low blood glucose shortly after, which will make you hungry.
Now if you also have some unfortunate genes, if you repeat this procedure frequently over the course of years it might develop into insulin resistance, also called Type 2 Diabetes.
Probably about half an hour or less.
This wasn't a blood glucose thing, rather, more of a big reminder to eat. I find things like doughnuts and cake to be very yummy, and when I indulge I want more of the yummy thing, or really just anything to go in the stomach.
I think people focus too much on things like blood sugar and not enough on the brain, which is the organ that has the biggest effect on our perception of hunger. Put a doughnut in front of someone, it doesn't matter what their blood sugar level is, t
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Cooking your own food, from scratch, eliminates most of that cost gap at the cost of requiring hundreds of hours of learning a new skill and an extra 30-60 minutes of work every day in prep and cooking. It only costs my wife and I about $10 in groceries per day, and we don't eat crap. But I've spent years learning how to cook. One of my more laborious meals is homemade pizza, with dough and sauce from scratch.
So I don't want to minimize the downsides here... it's a ton of work to learn to cook, and it takes
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Indeed. I was working on my beef stew recipe, tailored to the nearby wet markets' wares, and decided to give beets a try. They were a nice addition, but that one ingredient seemed to add at least fifteen minutes of prep and cleanup time.
In the end, it didn't even fulfill my nutrition goal: meat as flavor, not calorie source. Because the chunks of meat were the highlight of the stew. (Compare to fried rice, which does not tempt eaters to go hunting for the slivers of meat.)
Cooking isn't easy, and it's drudge
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If you are actually trying to lose weight to be healthy, your requirements will be close to 1800 calories or less.
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>I can tell you it is a lot more expensive than eating junk food.
What have you switched to that is so expensive?
When I went healthy a few decades ago the cost per calorie went up a bit, but the reduction in calories more than made up for it.
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Fat opinions don't count
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they really don't
they are a drag on the economy
compulsory camps for fats
OMG!!! (Score:2, Funny)
I thought that Tollhouse chocolate chip cookies were health food. So, eating them when hiking does not help me get a 6-pack?
I am so shocked!
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and burn 1500 calories sitting on a couch, you are not getting a six-pack today
I'm getting my six-pack from the fridge, as soon as I manage to get off the couch, you insensitive clod!
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I'm a lot healthier than you, I drink from 12-pack of soda cans!
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Why get a six-pack when you can have the whole keg?
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No kidding- a company known for making chocolate and candy sells mostly unhealthy foods? Somebody bring me my feinting couch
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HTF?! (Score:5, Interesting)
How the **** do you fail a health standard on 18% of water?!?!
Are they shipping mud?
Re: HTF?! (Score:2, Interesting)
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And it doesn't leach enough to be relevant if you're otherwise eating a varied diet.
For a similar reason mineral water is mostly marketing bullshit.
Now if you had no food whatsoever and tried to survive a month on distilled water alone, that might become a problem. This is where mineral water might increase the odds of surviving a bit. Though you'd be far better off with an isotonic drink.
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Plastic packaging leeching BPA into the liquid.
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I'm guessing it's "flavored water" products with a lot of citric acid dumped in to erode your teeth, or artificial sweeteners that trigger an insulin response. Maybe even sodium - it probably wouldn't fit under the "water" category (or "dairy" for that matter) but Yoo-Hoo chocolate drink has almost 10% (adult) DV sodium in each child-size juicebox.
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You will also find tonic water grouped with the actual water sometimes. They have almost as much sugar as Coke does.
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Not enough salt. Pure water is actually not healthy.
Bullshit myth. Maybe if all you ever drink is distilled water and you never eat anything, ever, it might be a problem. But then you have bigger problems to worry about.
Re: HTF?! (Score:2)
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They probably have some water products with sugar added to them
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Just add sugar.
They are probably counting all of their flavored waters under the "water" category.
uh... yeah. (Score:1, Offtopic)
In other news, leaked internal Trump administration document says "President Trump is kind of a jerk."
Nestle is the Facebook of food products (Score:3)
'nuff said.
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I don't think they value health, or at least they didn't as of a few years ago. I used to buy powdered milk from a brand owned by Nestle. One day after shopping, I found the taste was different. I checked the ingredients, and sure enough it was a roughly 50/50 mix of dehydrated milk and maltodextrin. They had not significantly changed the packaging, but just pulled a switcheroo, replacing an expensive actual food ingredient with crap.
Nestle gave me a refund, but this is not something a health-conscious comp
Oh no its cancel culture (Score:2)
Re: Oh no its cancel culture (Score:2)
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only Nestle ? (Score:4, Insightful)
What about Kellogg, Post, Bimbo, General Mills, Oscar Meyer, Armor Meat, every beverage company and countless others who monopolize the food offerings in America and beyond? There's profit in sugar and starch! That $5 loaf of bread has 30 cents worth of wheat and $5,000 worth of medical costs associated with it.
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What about Kellogg, Post, Bimbo, General Mills, Oscar Meyer, Armor Meat, every beverage company and countless others who monopolize the food offerings in America and beyond?
For pretty well the same reason that only Apple gets mentioned in all the stories on labour.
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An Apple a day keeps the I.T. BofH away!
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every beverage company and countless others who monopolize the food offerings in America and beyond
I do not think that word means what you think it means.
All about the branding (Score:2)
If Armour Meat would work with some sports drinks manufacturer, they could make "healthy" Body Armour Ham!
What do you expect from a candy maker? (Score:1)
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
No Such Thing As "Unhealthy Food" . . . (Score:3, Informative)
Only unhealthy *diets.*
No one is forcing food in your mouth.
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WTF!!! (Score:1)
"Water and dairy products scored better, with 82 per cent of waters and 60 per cent of dairy meeting the threshold."
What the hell are they doing to 18% of their waters that they do not meet the healthy threshold!!!! Something seriously wrong when your water offerings don't hit 100% healthy!!!
This isn't so bad (Score:2)
That isn't so bad. Compare it to tobacco or alcohol companies. Alcohol consumption is extremely skewed, something like 10% drink 90% of everything that's consumed. Imagine if alcohol companies decided to be responsible, and said, "we don't want to make money on extremely heavy drinkers"... pretty much no way how they defined it, they would see almost all of their busines
Comment removed (Score:3)
Not surprising; it's almost a tautology. (Score:5, Interesting)
There aren't many foods that are truly *unhealthy* -- artificial trans-fats I suppose, but those are largely banned. Something like a sugar-laden soda isn't really the moral equivalent of a cup of poison, unless those kinds of empty calories are too much of your diet. It's *dose* that makes the poison.
So what "unhealthy foods" are, for the most part, are simply foods we eat too much of. And it automatically follows that's what food companies sell too much of.
Now industry does play a role in maintaining our unhealthy eating habits; it uses some impressive food technology to transform dirt cheap (often subsidized) food stock into products that are palatable, convenient, and affordable. By in large doctors don't want us to eat more of *any* foods that have all those qualities; they want us to eat things that take more effort to store, prepare, and eat; or which are relatively expensive because they're what Federal budgets call "specialty crops": fruits, nuts, and vegetables, which receive very little public subsidy.
Re:Not surprising; it's almost a tautology. (Score:5, Insightful)
There aren't many foods that are truly *unhealthy* -- artificial trans-fats I suppose, but those are largely banned. Something like a sugar-laden soda isn't really the moral equivalent of a cup of poison, unless those kinds of empty calories are too much of your diet. It's *dose* that makes the poison.
So what "unhealthy foods" are, for the most part, are simply foods we eat too much of. And it automatically follows that's what food companies sell too much of.
Now industry does play a role in maintaining our unhealthy eating habits; it uses some impressive food technology to transform dirt cheap (often subsidized) food stock into products that are palatable, convenient, and affordable. By in large doctors don't want us to eat more of *any* foods that have all those qualities; they want us to eat things that take more effort to store, prepare, and eat; or which are relatively expensive because they're what Federal budgets call "specialty crops": fruits, nuts, and vegetables, which receive very little public subsidy.
Fundamentally, one of the big reasons that food companies make processed food is so that they can crank up the fat and sugar to make it super-palatable. Even with labelling it's not easy to tell how healthy processed foods are so they tend to compete on price and palatability.
The reason unprocessed food is healthy by comparison is that it's hard to crank up the sugar on a tomato or even an orange enough to make it unhealthy.
Just more Nestle bashing (Score:2)
Just like EVERY other company.
As someone mentioned how accurate is this report?
Sheez, did some more reading, Milo doesn't get a high rating if you don't use skimmed milk.
Did some more reading, the star rating is for fat people who need even more guidance on not to eat too much crap.
Did a quick browse of products which have high star ratings... yeah, they need all the a
"Food" vs nutrution (Score:2)
We have lots of food here in the US. In fact we have too much of it, that comes with obesity and all kinds of ailments. However what we are lacking is actual nutrients.
Those "unhealthy" foods are just empty calories. Almost every food we eat had seen so much processing, by the time it reaches our mouth, there is not much useful stuff left in those.
For a thought experiment, remember when baby formula initially started, it was very simple. Now, try reading the labels, and understand 10 of the 50+ different in
Follow (Score:2)
Is someone doing a hit job on their stock price?
Why is this on this web site?
Follow the money.
So? (Score:2)
There is a small family owned chocolatier that sells 100% nothing but junk food. (glorious, delicious junk food) Should they be selling more healthy items in their shop? Hell no. Should people expect to walk into their shop and get a balanced, healthy meal? Also no.
When your business is junk food, it should be expected to be bad. Unless your company itself is tasked with feeding a population, you shouldnt feel the need to feed everyone nothing but healthy wares. Thats the job for others who DO make wholesom
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Excellent point. It looks like I wrote the same comment, at essentially the same time though. Sorry.
Let them eat cake (Score:2)
If my neighbor wants to eat something unhealthy, then who am I to get in the way of that. If he's unaware of what he's eating, then I can try to tell him about the health risks. But I think most people who eat unhealthy foods are _very_ aware of it, so that it becomes condescending even to bring it up. Adults can, and should, be able to make their choices free from interference to the extent that those choices don't harm the rights of others. And no, the existence of socialized medicine in a country sho
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I read a very prescient science fiction short story about food in 1978 or there about. The protagonist went to his local goverment food store (the only source of food allowed) to buy his weekly allowance. Attached to his arm was his personal computer, permanently attached and with an always on wireless connection. Remember, this is 1978.
As he makes his selections the device warns him he can not buy that item, it is too unhealthy. He selects healthier items, again, those are not healthy enough. Exasperated
junk food company makes junk food (Score:2)
and this surprises anyone?
And I assume they mean "82% of their product catalog", not 82% of gross sales, or 82% of product sold. Netle is a pretty diverse company, with a lot of different products.